ALBUM REVIEW: I Don’t Know – bdrmm

BDRMM were met with an incredibly positive reception for their debut album Bedroom; ‘who knew shoegaze from Hull could be so magnificent?‘ seemed to be the train of thought for many of the new listeners. Lauded by the likes of BBC 6 Music and the army of dads in tow, they soon began charting in 2020 as their hard work started paying off after several years. Now they return with another shoegaze instalment which will make you want to melt into your mattress; I Don’t Know’s eight tracks each have their own personality to keep you engaged. 

Opening track Alps slowly rises up with a subdued bubbliness and spacey vocals, but unfortunately it doesn’t give much away for an opener — you’ll have to keep listening to suss the album out. Be Careful keeps the calm temper but with more intent to have its sonics explore a space and continue steadily forward, it could seriously soundtrack a montage of nomads travelling the world. Lead single It’s Just A Bit Of Blood is a glimpse of an easily navigable track, blending riffs on the chunkier side, for this album, with the previously heard vocals from Ryan Smith with a ghostly profile. 

A drop in tone is called for, and We Fall Apart adapts to melancholy and invites some unease to the track. Full of gloom and grittiness, it’s a well-suited track to change the pace of the album so far. Unsurprisingly the thinness in some of the tracks can get boring, nobody wants to feel like they’re going round in circles after all. Hidden Cinema is technically one of the more interesting tracks, where keys and guitars share similar chord progressions to the point where they overlap each other to make some seriously satisfying sound.

Pulling Stitches opens with an aptly painful whack of some guitar strings, producing what is the best and most unique thing to hit your ear so far. Much like It’s Just A Bit Of Blood, harsher qualities are present all throughout which compliment the more indie leaning tendencies. These scratchy guitars are paired with wailing vocals to make the track robust in conveying a distant pain. The album closes out with the eight-minute marathon A Final Movement, which is slow like a first dance and clear that this was always meant to be the closing track, the idea that you’re losing something with the end of the album washes over you just as the track does. 

BDRMM make their second album more pleasant to listen to with the nuance in each track; there’s not an overall message being driven home either, making it an easy listen. It may take some adjusting for some to be able to relax with I Don’t Know’s striking thinness at points, but it won’t take long after to see that it’s one of its true beauties. 

Rating: 7/10

I Don’t Know is out now via Rock Action.

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