Enter: Her New Knife, the Philadelphia by way of Tallahassee shoegaze outfit. chrome is lullaby is their latest EP released under Julia’s War. They’ve been active for a while lumbering onto the scene with 2021’s Destroza, a four track effort only just breaking 15 minutes. It would lay the groundwork for the sound that they’d become known for. Destroza was generally regarded positively upon its release, and for good reason, playing into the more alternative rock influenced side of shoegaze, the EP is a vast, brooding, and impactful effort for the quick runtime. Listeners get exactly what they want from buried melodies, and eyes of the storms whipped together in a haze of malaise and morose fuzz. Already, the band’s knack for patient builds, explosive climaxes, and roiling sonic palettes is evident, as is their tendency to deliver the goods in bite-sized chunks.

chrome is lullaby is the fourth EP they’ve put out, with no album, which is a refreshing change of pace in an era where the biggest artists in the industry are putting out entire second deluxe albums for each release. Her New Knife does not saturate the listener. From here, the band appears to shift from their roots in subsequent singles and EPs from the heavy, chugging pacing of prior projects to a new emphasis on dynamism and tempo, all with the same blissed-out staticky halo, of course.

This is all to preface chrome is lullaby. At six songs and just over 20 minutes, this marks Her New Knife’s most significant project to date, and for good reason. They lean further into their aforementioned trajectory of dynamism, occasionally favoring a more stripped back sound entirely. Such is the case on opener “kittyriff”, featuring gloomy Spanish vocals over driving guitar lines that begin quite bare but gain weight as they continue. The lead single “purepurepure” continues this formula, this time with grinding bass, and clattering instrumentals creating the impression of a heavier, less whimsical feeble little horse, circa Girl with Fish. The back half of this track, with its screamed vocals in particular, are sure to be a pit pleaser.

“vitamin beauty” marks a shift to a more jangly sound, reminiscent of earlier acts, most prominently Majesty Crush. Her New Knife ensures though that the sound remains thoroughly their own, with jagged riffs and high, murmured vocals. “12r” is without a doubt the most outright riotous of the EP, with aggressive, industrial tinged riffs akin to Model/Actriz, backed with clanging metallic sounds and dark yet cloying vocals. The track then ignites towards its end.

Following it, “skinny/baby” marks another swerve, this time into a sweeter, lighter acoustic approach, while falling into a feeling of disgrace in the middle. It shows the diversity of the tones the band can put into any space, giving an emotional richness. “vesselera” serves as a vivid closer to a quality EP, leaving the listener enticed by its slightly dinged, pacifying sheen before ringing out at the very end. chrome is lullaby is perhaps the most developed of anything the band has put out thus far. It’s undoubtedly worth checking out for anyone remotely interested in contemporary shoegaze.

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This feeling was incredibly significant when I discovered They Are Gutting a Body of Water for myself. I can’t possibly claim that I was there as a fan starting from the band’s offset. I was a 15-year-old high school sophomore living in Dubuque, Iowa when the album dropped in 2019 with no logical way of knowing what was going on in the underground Philadelphia rock scene at the time. I had first heard the song “eightball” off their album Destiny XL when I was driving to see one of my friends who lived 30 minutes north right along the Mississippi in the late summer of 2022 before I left for college. The noisiness and discordant arpeggio melodies were much to my liking, but the tracks punctual switch-ups were what was so captivating.  

College’s initial great change must’ve made everything too crazy to find time to sit down and listen to things, because the album sat in the back of my mind until I heard “eightball” fade in over some breakbeats in a DJ set. I gave Destiny XL a full listen the next morning and was enraptured by its searing, discordant distortion and blown out, battering riffs with interludes of drum and bass in-between. I saw they were playing a show in Davenport in October but wasn’t able to find anyone with a car or time to go in those early isolated times. I just had to view the photos taken from somebody’s backyard in the following days. 

Not too long after that time I had also been entranced by feeble little horse’s Hayday and all its sparkling energy. It was very healing listening to the buzzing noisy tracks. The record was originally release #008 on the Julia’s War label. Being obsessed with Hayday led me to discover more that revolved around the label, like the Wednesday monthly vlogs and music videos, the Hotline TNT Audio Tree performance in a ski shop, and the “I THINK IT’S OVER” video that followed TAGABOW on tour.  

After the first semester of college in December of 2022, I visited Chicago with my friend who was going to a national composer conference. One night, I didn’t really have much to do, so I just walked around the frozen dark streets in Armour Square and put on Destiny XL. The semi-sprawled grids, highway overpasses towering over otherwise normal city blocks, fluorescent streetlamps staining the cracked concrete white, and dirty tiny snowbanks defined the winter urban environment. It accentuated the atmosphere while walking around with the album’s dark grittiness and sheathing frostiness, fully enveloped in place and time.  

When the cold was too numbing to further bare, and I returned to the place we were staying, I laid in front of my laptop. Its blue glow and the orange lights from outside were the only things that lit up the dark room. I just searched They Are Gutting A Body Of Water and looked through their old webpages and accounts, most of them stylized with appropriated mashed up early 2000s imagery. I came across the band’s SoundCloud which had the recently released lucky styles and FC GORIS EP, along with a bunch of unreleased drum and bass tracks, and somewhat fleshed out riffs. I spent that night just listening through as much as I could, enticed by the treasure trove of music that I found. 

Only a couple months later, this bubble of east coast shoegaze burst to where everyone was rightfully appreciating it. At the time, I felt like I had come across something incredible that was new and unknown since no one else I really knew at the time was talking about it. It was that enthralling feeling of discovery that made the world around me feel exciting and optimistic despite the surrounding chaos at the time. 

In June, TAGABOW released swanlike a collection of loosies from 2020-2023. Most of the tracks on this compilation album come from the band’s SoundCloud page on playlists titled “sc bp excl” and “finger top digital good”. On the first listen through, most of the songs were recognizable. “killfraiser” and the opener “solo gay bowser” stood out as iconic. It still gave this frontier feeling having these songs in a new lens.

swanlike is a very different vibe from Destiny XL or any other TAGABOW release. Some of the tracks do come off like they were just thrown on there, such as “lu tamé” or “voicememmo” but it makes sense since they are all demos in a way. It’s not inherently cohesive, but that’s what you would expect from something referred to as “loosies”. The essence of each track though matches, and that probably comes from their shared origin on a SoundCloud page just made by a guy trying to see what he could get to sound cool. Experimentations out of boredom and making something not boring, making it feel earnest. Maybe it comes from the overall lo-fi fuzzy sound in the instrumentals, the strange ideas that shine through in parts like the middle of “elysian fields”, or the constant switch-ups.  

Of course, along 22 tracks there is a wide range of tones and emotions reflected in swanlike. A song like “clit eastwood” is an all-out rager with a bouncy blasting ending, impossible to quell any excitement. This is along with a plethora of other blistering drum and bass tracks. “beautysleep” and “day of the dead” feels in a way like signature TAGABOW with dragging, chorused acoustic parts and dejected vocals found in gestures been mixed with the drum machine loops and digital sound flairs in the band’s newer material. A lot of these tracks generate a very poignant yearning.

The first listen to swanlike was in a similar situation to the night walk with Destiny XL, just a different time, setting, and context. It was in Berlin just after I had recovered from jet lag and didn’t know what to do yet, so I just walked. I went through different areas in Friedrichshain and Kreuzburg in the early evening golden summer sun that seemed to linger on forever. The aimless drift dragged me along an urban fabric of faux-old ornamental stone buildings, on bridges over worn out metro tracks with vegetation sprouting through, and through ribbons of green space with occasional ruins.  

Again, the environment was accented by the varying sounds in the songs playing. Drudging acoustics often bit crushed in a processor, spacey reverberating drums, windy or pitched up vocals, quick switching samples, digital audio artifacts, and rapid drum brakes define the record. They all wove in with the scenery itself. All of it felt very vibrant and spirited. Even the more exhausted, low-energy moments like on “pacey” felt very grounded, as if there were just an overall acceptance of the way things would be. It has an air of defeatism, but without overbearing anguish.  

This feeling was ever more pervasive when “heavy vegetable” switched on near the end of the record’s runtime. A plucked, saccharine guitar plays throughout most of the track, and the ghostly phases that oscillate throughout the track give a very tender and longing feeling. A lightly hustling drum loop plays underneath in contrast. Everything around was so in touch with me, like it was whirring by my body. In that vivid moment, with that mix of feelings, it was all very lucid. There was a sharp resignation, but with the urge to continue to move along in hope the next thing would be better. On the path of discovery I found in that new place, in that new moment, it was better. 

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