Chasing Fridays: Cloakroom, Bassvictim, Alien Boy, more

Heyo and welcome back to another (mini) edition of Chasing Fridays. I had a busy week this week and didn't have the bandwidth to sink into an older record at the end of this column, but rather than leaving my gracious readers out to dry, I figured I'd at least publish my thoughts on four new pieces of music. I've got a review of the new Cloakroom LP, some thoughts on another shoegaze EP, a plug of the new Alien Boy single, and then a glimpse into the 2010 electroclash nostalgists Bassvictim. Spoiler: I liked everything I wrote about this week! Check out what I had to say below.

Last Days of Heaven - Out of Body

When I tell you that this is a shoegaze band, you're probably thinking what I first thought. "Hm, some more Holy Fawn or Cloakroom doomgaze type shit, just what we need more of right now 🙄" Wrong! Last Days of Heaven are bringing woozy, sunburnt psych-pop of the Deerhunter variety back to shoegaze's shores. The first track on their new Out of Body EP, "The Night Comes For You," sounds like it was plucked right off Microcastle and then doused, tie-dye-like, in the sneering fuzz-pop of The Jesus and Mary Chain circa Darklands. That track and "Pain Medicine' also remind me a little of Pure X – one of my favorite psych-gaze bands of the early 2010s who no one seems to be referencing these days.

Last Days of Heaven are actually from Texas, so when they slip into Mojave 3-ish ranch-gaze on "Nothing Left to Torture" and "Babygirl," the wide-skied pastoralism doesn't feel like an aesthetic put-on. I'm genuinely shocked that a shoegaze band doing the red herring metal aesthetic are capable of writing a sweetly sophisticated song like "Before the Sadness," which sounds like "I Got You Babe" by way of early Japanese Breakfast. Again, don't let the ill-fitting cover art (which kind of looks like that Sundays album gone doom-metal) fool you into mistaking this for "hardcore kid listens to Whirr once." It's nothing like that. It's so much better.

Bassvictim - Basspunk 2

Were all your high-school photos taken on a grainy iPod Touch camera? Do you still refer to someone's Facebook page as their "wall"? Did you ever go to Pacsun with your friend the summer before college so they could buy a t-shirt depicting jungle animals partying with red solo cups? If so, then you'll either be perplexed or soothed by the rise of Bassvictim, a London duo who provide the answer to the question, "what if Snow Strippers liked Die Antwoord more than Crystal Castles?" Their new mixtape, Basspunk 2, the follow-up to last spring's 1, dropped at the end of January, and I think by the time spring rolls around, everyone who's now pretending like they never had a hyperpop phase will be have Bassvictim alongside Fakemink in their party playlists.

Bassvictim make music for two demographics: 1) zoomers who imagine the early 2010s as a halcyon epoch of #yolo debauchery that they wish they could've lived through as young adults 2) 30-year-old millennials who actually lived through that time period, but are more interested in clinging to their youth in the present day by listening to Nettspend. So, is the music more than just aesthetic signifiers and surface-level rehashes of "Like a G6" et al? Yeah, I think so. "Alice" and "Forever Salty" are two standouts from the uneven yet enjoyable Basspunk 2, songs that bring to mind early Grimes in their ethereal hipness, The Prodigy in their big beat rumble, and Kreayshawn in their mean-girl gaudiness. I don't think any of these songs are instant classics, but Bassvictim are working toward a sound that could very well define the next two years of urban coastal club culture. Or at least offer something snotty and visually repulsive enough to make people my age and up feel ancient.

Alien Boy - "Changes"

Alien Boy have been a band's band for far too long. Their 2018 LP, Sleeping Lessons, was one of the more underrated pieces of Tiny Engines' late-2010s run, but 2021's Don't Know What I Am was when the Portland group really hit their stride. Peppy, chorus-drenched, kinda emo, kinda dream-pop, and totally explosive with their three-guitar ensemble in the live setting, Alien Boy's sound is tough to fully convey with one adjective, but their new joint "Changes" is instantly likeable before the first chorus even hits. Melodically, structurally, and even lyrically, it could easily be plunked down into the tracklist of Fountains of Wayne's self-titled debut, but the swooshes of hazy guitar effect – along with Sonia Weber's wavering voice – give this power-pop nugget a rain-drenched melancholia of its own.

Cloakroom - Last Leg of the Human Table

I'm seeing mixed reviews of the new Cloakroom out on the timeline, but this might be my favorite LP they've ever released. I always wanted to like Cloakroom more than I actually did. The concussive doom-gaze of Further Out (2015) and Time Well (2017) took the heavy lurches of Nothing and Whirr one step further, repackaging True Widow's desert doom with a cold, Midwestern gait. Those are extremely important pieces of shoegaze's lineage in the 2010s, but I just never got over the hump of "solid yet boring" that plagues many 'a pedalboard peddler. Dissolution Wave (2022) did even less for me, so I went into Last Leg of the Human Table feeling apprehensive, and left with a higher satisfaction rate than Cloakroom have ever received from me.

What works so well here is the diversity in the songwriting. The saminess of Time Well is in service to the album's trance-like pull, but I prefer to hear Cloakroom shaking up their low-and-slow trudges (of which there are plenty here) with rip-roaring fuzz-pop ("Ester Wind"), chopped-up ambient loops ("On Joy and Unbelieving"), watery goth ("Unbelonging"), and bone-weary country ("Bad Larry"). I'm pleasantly surprised at how many standout hooks the band penned for this lot, and I think they fully succeeded at laundering quicker, catchier, more dynamic maneuvers into their approach without sacrificing all of their earth-shaking might. Hum fans can still rejoice around "The Pilot" and "Clover Looper," and people like me who're tired of hearing bands channel Hum can appreciate the brighter and weirder moments, like the supremely cool ambient-gaze ballad "Turbine Song."