Grids & Dots release their long-awaited debut EP ‘What Happens To Friendships?’, pulling listeners into a dreamy shoegaze sunset.
Speckled with neon colours and vintage hues, Grids & Dots celebrate the release of their 7-track EP What Happens To Friendships.
Swinging back and forth between the studio, Dan, Carmen, Pat and Saskia had to patiently simmer on their album during COVID until the vibrations of the tracks simply burst it open.
The album, compiling of previously released tracks including; The Great Divide, Hazy Jane and City Skies, pins Grids & Dots on the reflective map of the shimmering shoegaze genre, dreamy enough to melt in.
Vocalists Daniel and Carmen spoke with Happy last year about where the Grids & Dots name came from. Turns out both singers work as visual designers during the day: “we really use grids and dots in everyday life” Daniel recalls. The artists undoubtedly harness their visual skills to paint their music with the colours of a bubblegum lollipop.
Each track trickles effortlessly to the next, pulling you deeper into a romantic 80’s haze. Harmonies melting like honey and strings saturating in liquid gold, What Happens To Friendships feels like a lustful antique of reverbs and nostalgic synths.
When reminiscing on the album-making process during the lockdown hiatus, the group recalls that; “it was strange, but in a way it allowed us some breathing room in between sessions to think about how we wanted to sound and figure out the details in an organic, unhurried way”.
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What this “breathing room” cultivated for the group was a tidal wave of rhythm, pulling you back and forth, painting the Sydney sky a vivid shade of rosy pinks and lavender.
From the blushful indie track City Skies, accompanied with a delightfully playful music video of a dog running across King Street Newtown, to the eerily humming soft ballad What Happens To Friendships In Winter?, there is no disputing that Grids & Dots have captured nostalgic indie shoegaze in a bottle, and we are just lucky enough to hear a glimpse of it.
The hazed and utterly soothing album is not only a gift to the ears, but the eyes, painting a visual masterpiece of the “western sky” and the sounds of busy inner-city lives.
Check out What Happens To Friendships? here:
