A Shoreline Dream ‘Room For The Others’ Review: Progressive-shoegaze duo release 5th single from forthcoming album.
[rating=5]
Colorado neo-shoegazers A Shoreline Dream are working steadily on their next full-length album, but they’re giving fans a taste of each new development, releasing each completed track as a single.
Each song paints a picture of a band at the peak of their creative powers, working in a variety of sub-genres that they’ve weaved together masterfully: Revolvist was an evocative and mysterious hybrid of post-punk and dream-pop, The Heart Never Recovered painted a picture of doomed romance via cinematic overtones and painterly washes of sound while Whirlwind offered an ominous goth churn and whip-crack beat. And Time is Machine Gun was a lovely piece of New Wave minimalism anchored by a hypnotic Cure-ish bass line.
Each song showcases the duo’s studio wizardry and adventurous spirit. They’re each substantively different yet cohesive to their musical identity. And that pattern also applies to Room For The Others, their fifth and most recent single (out July 14th via Latenight Weeknight Records).
Room For The Others is a deep-dish slice of heavenly shoegaze textures, expertly layering guitar and synth soundscapes until one is indistinguishable from the other. At times the track recalls the gossamer sonics of Slowdive. There is also an underpinning alt-rock melody keeping things only slightly earthbound, offering a wonderful push/pull dynamic that conjures images of cumulus clouds and healing sunbeams.
Vocalist Ryan Policky’s soothing androgynous vocals exists confidently in the mix, weaving around to dizzying, dramatic effect. Often shoegaze lyrics lack narrative structure, but Policky stated the lyrics for Room were deeply personal in a recent press release: “Given the nature of all the amazingly overwhelming things going on these days politically, socially, etc., this track became a personal reflection on it all. Both the good and the bad. The love and the sadness.”
And lyrics like “you’ll break your heart/and mend your soul/there’s no room for the others/they’ll take your heart/and not let go” lends itself perfectly to the song’s dichotomy of melancholy and euphoria.
Room For the Other’s makes one even more excited for A Shoreline Dream’s new album, and wondering to what musical vistas the group will visit next.
You can buy Room For The Others through A Shoreline Dream’s Bandcamp page or via Amazon below.
