Oh, God. I do not think I have ever listened to an album that seemed so fully put together on first listen. I was at work when I put it in, and I felt like I was floating away when the beautiful wash of "Big Day Coming" drifted through my skull. Feeling like I was riding on the tail of a shooting star, I shot through the night sky at a pace that somehow manages to be both neck-breaking and sluggish. After listening to this album only twice, I added it to my top 20 favourite albums list. I am not sure if I would still stand by that, but I do genuinely love this album.
Shoegaze should not be allowed to be this beautiful. And SO interesting! Shoegaze is almost stereotypically boring, right? Actually, I really like shoegaze, but still! This is one of the prettiest and most cohesive albums out there.
I have a tradition of starting to listen to the album again as I write the review. And this is making it very difficult to write the review. Writing is a fairly grounding process. It tends to pull you down to earth. Free flow is actually much more difficult than it sounds. Particularly when listening to this album. Am I wrong to call it Beethoven's 9th Symphony? Or at least the indie rock equivalent? It is unsettling how gorgeous this album is. I definitely see it as being a lot like Loveless by My Bloody Valentine in that I really could not tell you the names of many of the songs. They all just seem to blend into one another like the whole album is bleeding. How Yo La Tengo takes such long guitar riffs and crafts them into such a beautiful and enlivening album, I shan't ever know.
Give it a listen. I would put it up with Loveless.
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