Lacing - Never

 

 

Lacing - Never
Elder Magick Records / Bummer Recordings / Handstand Records - 2022 / 2023
Shoegaze, Metalgaze, Dreampop, Postrock, Indie
Rated: ****

Out since July 2022, the album has just become available on beautiful pink swirled clear vinyl through Handstand Records. We’re talking about the five-track release by Chattanooga, Tennessee foursome Lacing. The release is called Never and offers you a pretty intense shoegaze ride, that borrows from grunge and noise, to produce something that borders on metalgaze one moment, postrock the next and even indie inspired dreampop a second later. I know, all these labels right? Useful shorthand in trying to explain what a certain album might be about, but sometimes also a hindrance and a bit debilitating. For the distorted drone, the psychedelic swirls present in opening track Day alone warrants labeling Lacing as a million other things as well. So, let’s just use them labels in whatever fashion we want and try and state what the five tracks on Never did for me. Autumn. Pictures of the fall will be blowing through your head, as their version of dreampop, sounds grayer and dustier then most other shoegaze releases. The slumbering tempo, strolling towards a rainswept corner of a street, where heated moments might be laying in wait, cause there’s something here that goes against the grain. But it’s like that foxtail grain, when it sinks its hooks in, you must keep following along. The amorphous, slowly rippling fields of melancholy mash only turn into a golden field of grass where one can lie down and dream off into neverland when we hit that middle track Windswept. Still immensely dense, this composition has the ability to clear your mind and serve you images of an Indian summer, that is, until those final echoing screams, and fade out distortion, bring you back from that little drowsy paradise. And then to slowly submerge that final track Dilate into a pool of doom, with an arc that becomes statelier with every second that passes, and a moody tenuity that simply seems to explode into the cosmos as the decibels go up and the distortion screeches everything to a halt. Stunning. We were going to conclude that Lacing's ability to make this kind of dreampop so interesting and engaging sets them miles apart from their contemporaries. But we must add that the final almost ten-minute-long track alone, boldly goes where very few dreampop and shoegazers have gone before. And we love it!

(Written by JK)

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