A Shoreline Dream - Recollections of Memory
Verdict: Like ()

Every so often I find myself talking to people who aren't as stupidly addicted to contemporary underground music as I am (weird huh?) and I have to describe what I mean by "post rock" or "shoegaze". I wonder, every time this happens, why more people aren't familiar with bands such as My Bloody Valentine or God Speed! You Black Emperor. I long ago figured out that in order to be interested in such thing, there has to be something deeply wrong with you, making you unable to be happy with what you're given, and needing to search for music that by all means is sometimes difficult to get into. Eventually this becomes the only kind of music you can like, which means the music is no longer difficult to get into, but, instead, it is the best thing to have happened to sound since we were able to perceive it. We simply have to 1) want to get into it and 2) have become accustomed to it, like everything in this world (the argument could be made for popular music too, it's just that we are usually first introduced to it, so that's all we know).

That is a very long winded way of saying that A Shoreline Dream's new album may be hard for some people to get into. It's almost a throwback to Space Rock, but is still heavily rooted in post rock, with shoegaze elements (does it make more sense as to why I started this review out this way?). The post rock side is more in the vein of Do Make Say Think, in that its more jazz oriented drumming mixed with spaced out feelings than, say, GY!BE would. There are elements of the texas-rock-band post rock style (Explosions in the Sky style), but it's still waaay more spacey than that. There are these glowing, ethereal vocal-type sounds that float around the entire album, making some of the songs kind of bleed together, leaving the album feel more like a score than an actual album, which has it's ups and downs. Because it doesn't have the variety of a GY!BE release, I don't think it's entirely good, because there are these songs underneath all the space vocals that I have a feeling aren't going to get the recognition they truly deserve. The album kind of floats on by if you don't pay specific attention to it.

On the other hand, the songs are all very well crafted, each track layered and complex, but never boring or overwhelming. The album, in many ways, is perfect. They obviously put a lot of work into it, because there's no way they could get the album to sound this well mixed with out it. The album, however, is not for everyone. It may not even fully be for me, though I have overwhelming respect for it.


A Shoreline Dream - The Night Before
A Shoreline Dream - Mid Decembers
A Shoreline Dream - Hypermode