What do you think of when you hear that a Swedish band are using boy-girl vocals? Yep, we know what you’re thinking of, and that thought is probably better left unsaid – just pretend you didn’t. Sweden has produced a whole heap of non-europop music as well, you know, and a lot of it shits all over the averageness of The Hives.
Dreamy Stockholm four piece Star Horse have just released a double A side titled Don’t Get Closer // 100 Eyes. With the prospect of having to write four more articles in the next few hours, I’m kinda regretting getting Star Horse out of the way first – their eight or so minutes of sleepy, poppy bliss would have been a welcome 4pm reprieve from the acoustic wankery and downright boring psychedelia that I’m gonna have to write about later.
New double A-Side from Swegazers Star Horse – Don’t Get Closer // 100 Eyes
Don’t Get Closer bounces around, which is a word that isn’t used in many dream pop/shoegaze song reviews. When I say bounce, I mean something more like clunking, tapping, clicking, like a masterfully angled minigolf putt.
Its the combination of scratchy clean guitar echoing throughout and the strange brushiness of the snare drum – ever since that fateful snare roll of 1991, noisy, effected music has been defined by it’s mind kicking drums, and it’s refreshing to hear a shoegaze drummer taking from the Slowdive school of things. Beware of the 3:40 mark onwards, for here lies the monsterous snarl of a phaser effected electric bass, eerily rolling in and out of sight like a great sea dragon.
100 Eyes rises and rises, and just when you want it to fall, it rises some more. If there was ever a song to snap you out of a bad LSD freakout in a Vegas hotel bathtub, and you didn’t have your Jefferson Airplane tapes on you, 100 Eyes is it. Chanting, wraithlike vocals rock you steadily out of the world of deadlines, word counts and time in general.
The only thing is space – the warm glow of the synthesised mids wrapping you in a blanket of deep blue warmth as a tambourine rattles in the next room and the beautiful do do dooo’s intertwine and seem to eminate slowly from inside all the other sounds.
This is afternoon withdrawal music. Reminiscent of those days where you have so much work to do that you decide to take a nap, Star Horse’s latest single is the soundtrack to the escapist’s doze. Download Don’t Get Closer//100 Eyes from Star Horse’s Bandcamp below.
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