New Orleans-based duo
Belong
set a high bar for themselves with their 2006 debut album,
October Language
, a masterpiece of deep, formless, textural drone that sounded like shoegaze with every last trace of song subtracted, leaving behind just the beautiful and mesmerizing sound of the dust on the record needle. The group introduced more structure to their sound from there, with their 2011 sophomore album,
Common Era
, having discernible vocals, rhythms, and melodies rather than just thick blurs of guitar noise.
Realistic IX
,
's first new album in 13 years, refines their abstract sound world even further, landing somewhere between frayed, deconstructed guitar rock and submerged ambient fuzz. The mystical, whammy-bar riffs, cooing vocals almost inaudible in the mix, and steady drum machine beats of songs like "Souvenir," "Realistic (I'm Still Waiting)," and "Jealousy" sound like more obscured takes on the
My Bloody Valentine
style, in particular the songs that showed up on their pre-
Loveless
EPs
Glider
and
Tremolo
. The sound is so similar to the classic shoegaze template that it gives these tracks a nostalgic, familiar feeling, but also renders them somewhat generic. It's the way
ties together these relatively straightforward tracks with more repetitive, caustic ones that keeps
interesting. "Bleach" is little more than a dubby kick drum and hi-hat pattern barely holding together overlapping loops of brittle noise, and "Crucial Years" buries its minimal rhythm so deep beneath waves of sputtering, decaying sound shrapnel, it becomes easy to lose the tempo completely, much like the blissful confusion of a
Gas
track.
rides the line between dreamy songs and noisy nightmares expertly throughout the album. Most of the band's records are best experienced in full, front to back, and
is the same but in a different way. Taking any one song on its own wouldn't reveal the tension, uneasy wandering, and moments of resolution that all play out when these disparate pieces interact and disagree with one another, and that captivating balance is what continues to set
apart from any number of shoegaze revisionists. ~ Fred Thomas