EP REVIEW: Rebirth – Graywave
We’re looking at a time where KATE BUSH is back in the zeitgeist of popular culture, 90s fashion is back, and the general mood of the world is one of gloom and angst. So what better artist to enjoy the amalgamation of these things in than GRAYWAVE. The UK-based shoegaze dreampop artist’s second EP Rebirth boasts a talent for working a nostalgic sense of melancholy into a modern context.
An EP dripping with gothic melancholy and dramatics, it’s a shoegaze soundscape of trembling guitars that scream and drone out into the abyss. COCTEUA TWINS are clearly a big influence, and the band share a love of intense reverb and layering of clean and distorted guitars, both rhythm and lead. If that band were ever to move into a darker direction and continue into the 21st century, this would have been how they sounded, no doubt.
All the songs fit nicely as a larger body of work, but they are also separate entities of their own that can be enjoyed and demonstrate GRAYWAVE’s personal style in their own way. Build has an otherworldly energy that THE SMASHING PUMPKINS would be proud of. Think DEFTONES mixed with EMMA RUTH RUNDLE, or imagine THE SMITHS’ How Soon Is Now? for a contemporary audience. Moody and haunting with tonnes of replay value, it’s an instant hit from this EP.
Rebirth will be the tonic for anyone looking for a sullen, shimmering synth style of music. The drone of the vocals is beautiful in contrast to the deep, spacious guitars that swell and expand out. Exoplanet is perhaps the most upliftingly dark tune on this record, full of wonder but also the promise of depths that pull you into dark places. There’s a slight dissonance throughout the record that leans every so slightly into a feeling of loneliness and longing, urging you to return to each song as it comes to a close just to fill yourself up with its emotional core once more.
Red is positively psychedelic in its snappy snare and dreamlike arrangement, while the final track Closer would serve as the soundtrack to an especially bittersweet or hopeless moment of your life. It’s great to hear a band embody the sounds of the alternative indie and rock scenes of the mid 90s, and the nostalgia of the mindset of that time. Dreamy, dark, brooding and grungey, this style of shoegaze has so much emotional weight to the long drawn out vocals and the powerful performances.
Rebirth is an emotionally engaged EP, and shows how tonally proficient GRAYWAVE are at making shoegaze dreampop. Pulling from brooding influences all through the last 30 years of alternative culture, GRAYWAVE have a unique and disquiet grasp on the mind through their soaring, melancholy music.
Rating: 7/10
Rebirth is set for release on June 24th via Church Road Records
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