Slowshine – Living Light
Release Date: 8th October 2021
Label: The Lasting Dose Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Psychedelic Doom, Stoner Rock, Shoegaze.
FFO: Earth Ship, Torche, Crippled Black Phoenix, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.
Review By: Paul Cairney
LivingLight is the debut album by German trio, Slowshine and it features lyrics about ‘wandering around as the last person or soul on a destroyed planet where nature has finally taken everything back’. Don’t let the idea of this fool you, this album isn’t as bleak as the guitarist/vocalist, Jan Oberg, would have you believe. Instead, it includes you in its journey across the 8 tracks, making you that last person’s companion if you like.
Opening track, ‘Trails’ is a song that could sit in the world of 90’s era Britpop, complete with the vocal delivery. This presents a large problem for me, as I loathe Britpop. However, I can’t review an album based on my loathing for an entire genre, and so on my first listen, I decided to persevere and indulge the rest of the album. Although I have not yet bought into the first track, I am glad I kept going as the album does drastically improve.
The improvement is immediate. Second song, ‘Brittle Bones’, starts to move away from the Britpopness of the opening track, with a more sludge-based sound and riff that gains respect from your neck muscles. Hereafter, Living Light is a minor joy to behold. Each song seems to up the ante, with the band discovering their own path, a comforting psychedelic shoegaze approach that feels like having a nice cold Guinness with your oldest friend. A feeling that continues through the laid-back ‘Wanderer’, a sprawling 8 minutes that builds up to the 2nd half of the album.
You see, Living Light is an album of 2 halves, with the first leaving you with a false sense of security before the second half ramps things up and brings a bit of a heavier, more intense, urgent atmosphere.
This is the beauty of the album. It doesn’t stand still, is not repetitive and it builds upon itself until reaching its climax and it does this by growing organically. It doesn’t feel like a disjointed album, it all makes sense as it grows and develops. ‘Dunes of Time’, for example, would sit utterly out of place in the first half of the album, its sludge, almost doomy, tone would not fit in. The track placement on Living Light is pretty much perfect.
Slowshine have delivered a very enjoyable album. Without ever hitting massive heights with any of their songs, they don’t plunge to the deepest of depths. Even the opening track that I dislike is down to my personal taste and not the quality of the song. I would imagine many listeners will love it.
Living Light is a very promising debut that gives Slowshine a very solid foundation. You could do a lot worse than giving this a spin on your turntable when the vinyl is released later in the year.
(3.5 / 5)
