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COLD GAWD – I’ll Drown On This Earth (2024)
Review:
“I’ve seen so many shit bands throughout the year and often have found myself saying, ‘I can do better than that.’ So that’s what I’m doing. There’s a lot of bands that are almost there or just have no idea how to make something cohesive, or with swag, or literally anything that elevates the experience of just being people with instruments. So I gotta have a vision that’s better than the competition.” That was Matthew Wainwright, frontman and principal songwriter for Rancho Cucamonga heavy shoegazers Cold Gawd, in an interview promoting 2022’s God Get Me the Fuck Out of Here, his band’s first album for the darkly stylish indie label Dais Records. It was a bold statement, borderline cocky, but Wainwright has consistently backed it up. Cold Gawd’s records are cohesive aesthetic statements. They have swag. At a time when shoegaze has become an oppressively trendy subgenre in rock, their music stands out from the buzzword-humping masses. Despite Wainwright claiming the influence of hip-hop and R&B, which manifests in his band’s sick merch and overall sense of style — the gold fronts with “C” and “G” on the packshot for lead single “All My Life, My Heart Has Yearned for a Thing I Cannot Name” were a brilliant touch — sonically Cold Gawd are not doing a lot to update the now-familiar formula of dream-pop merged with the low-end crunch of post-hardcore. But if they’re simply channeling a lineage that runs from My Bloody Valentine to Nothing and Whirr, man are they doing it well. New album I’ll Drown On This Earth is marvelously pretty, and it hits hard. True to its title, this is music you can submerge yourself in. From the scream that carries us into opening track “Gorgeous” like a bird of prey sweeping over the landscape, Cold Gawd’s new LP is a gripping listen. At eight tracks spanning 35 minutes, it’s also concise enough to leave you wanting more. The tracklist more or less divides into two halves: First comes a torrent of glowing, crushing songs that prove Cold Gawd’s mastery of their aesthetic, then the homestretch presents a softer, quieter side of the band that proves they can be magnetic without the bombast. (The slow jam “Tappan” is almost unbelievably lush, while you could possibly trace “Nudism” back to Deftones’ embrace of Sade.) In terms of structure, it’s not unlike the way the back half of Radiohead’s The King Of Limbs disappears into darkness and quietude for a while before once more emerging into the light of day. But unlike The King Of Limbs, Cold Gawd fans will not have to argue about whether I’ll Drown On This Earth is a classic. Wainwright’s other stated goal for Cold Gawd in that interview was to simply “add more beauty to the world” — not just a mundane prettiness but the kind of beauty that tears your attention away from the horrors of this world. I’ll Drown On This Earth succeeds in that capacity as well. The album is a major level-up for the band, partially thanks to vibrant production from Wainwright and Colin Knight that makes everything feel bigger, louder, and more immersive, full of visceral downbeats and eerie blasts of sonic color. But just as important as the high fidelity are the melodies that soar across these songs. Wainwright’s vocals, which present a more obviously human spin on the classic ethereal shoegaze vocal style, are always there to brighten up the noisy churn like a lighthouse in a storm. Often, the guitars get in on the action too, breaking away from the wall of distortion to skywrite patterns across the music’s upper register. Wainwright’s lyrics complement this sound with an honest mix of hope and despair and a generous helping of dumbstruck love. Despite the title’s negative connotations — a sentiment that certainly manifests on songs like “Duchamp Is My Lawyer” — there are hints of optimism in lyrics like “Tried to pull my life together this time/ Could’ve failed, but I think it will come in time.” More often, he’s overcome with passion toward the object of his affection, who provides deep comfort when he’s there and inspires even deeper longing when he’s away. These are themes that lend themselves well to shoegaze’s inherent gauzy sensuality, and they saturate I’ll Drown On This Earth like the static that clings to every blown-out chord. By the time the album is finished, you may find yourself all starry-eyed too. — Stereogum
Track List:
01 - Gorgeous
02 - Portland
03 - All My Life, My Heart Has Yearned for a Thing I Cannot Name
04 - Duchamp Is My Lawyer
05 - Malibu Beach House
06 - Tappan
07 - 'Nudism'
08 - Bird in Space
Media Report:
Genre: post-rock, shoegaze
Origin: USA
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)
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