3 out of 5

Label: trace / untrace records

Produced by: Zac Nicholls (recorded and mixed by)

Over in a world where shoegaze took over all of music, Bathysphere would be the kindly matron, patting its disciples and offspring on the head to say “good job,” then reminding of the long legacy that brought us to where we are, and then strapping on a guitar and reminding you, like, shit, this group can shred.

I admittedly never made it very far in the ‘gaze scene, and some of the reasons for that remain coded in Bathysphere’s sound: the guitar overdrive and “floaty” nature of the pace and vocals dominates every track, preventing, or making it hard for songs to emerge separate from the crowd. There’s also often (from my perspective) a lack of punctuation because of the reliance on noise as the base; Bathysphere especially displays a kind of slacker slowroll into conclusions, songs often rattling to a question mark end as opposed to a declarative or more satisfactory one.

…But: between shoegaze’s peak and Heaven is Other People – a quaintly sarcastic and / or celebratory title – trace / untrace label head Julie Dunn and her band have found a way to rope in the intervening years of post-rock and grunge into the mix, giving songs a bit more quirk and pop than the genre stalwarts might employ, and sprinkled with some aforementioned shredding when guitars and drums will angst into some momentary thrashing at any given point, with Dunn’s airy vocals taking on a frayed edge to support. An apparently ad hoc recording session somehow produces a big studio sound, again getting a leg-up on more general shoegaze mush: the bass bounces; guitars ring out; percussion is crisp; and the vocals sit on an appropriately reverbed layer.

Bathyscape may not be the band to grab all the headlines, then – and it’s ultimately limited by some genre affectations – but this is a group which has learned all the lessons, added to them, and turned out a wildly impressive update.