After reviewing Timelost’s debut album Don’t Remember Me For This only a year and a half ago, I mentioned that I was curious to see if the band would stick to their angsty shoegaze sound or decide to follow their debut album up with a blackened metal sound more closely aligned with their origins in heavier, more aggressive music. With an album name like Don’t Remember Me For This, my hypothesis was that Timelost would go for the latter in lieu of the former. Yet again, my hypothesis was proven incorrect. With Gushing Interest, Timelost again decided to forgo their traditional black metal roots and instead graduate to a new offshoot of shoegaze music, a sound they’ve coined “grungegaze.”
I’ve come to understand that employing a quintessential shoegaze sound is more forgiving to a musician or band’s musical and technical skill with their instruments than other genres. I do not mean to say that this detracts from a shoegaze band’s music in any particular way. Rather, I simply mean to say that I have noticed this quality to be a byproduct of the genre’s sound. Undulating billows and clouds of sound provide a warm and fuzzy security blanket for covering up minor imperfections. I find it much more difficult to make out deficiencies through layers of reverb. Shoegaze haze allows for and even enhances rather than exposing for worse the archetypical cracks and blemishes in a raw, bedroom studio type of sound. Unfortunately, the panoramas of shimmering guitars on Timelost’s Gushing Interest were not enough to conceal the band’s current lack of ingenuity. It’s not hard to arrive at the conclusion that Timelost have found themselves in a bit of a musical rut simply by observing the album’s length of barely twenty-five minutes. This is especially surprising given that the last track on the album is a cover of The Psychedelic Furs’s “Love My Way.” I don’t think Timelost is in a position to redefine what the length of an LP should be.
Timelost’s woozy palette fails to cover up and blanket more than just the band’s lack of inspiration on Gushing Interest’s six tracks. Beginning with the beachy opening track “Better than Bedbugs,” one of the first observations I made was that the glaringly forward vocals peaking out of the sun-kissed haze were consistently on the verge of out of tune. On the subdued “Alone, Clean, and Slow,” the vocals again sound unintentionally discordant, and the vocalist on “Love My Way” distractingly sounds like he is being stretched far past his limits.
Nevertheless, what compelled me to give Timelost my ears is their ability to craft a sound a few shades heavier and a hair more gritty than the glittery shoegaze bands of the 90s like Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine. After a listen to second track “Deep End of the Cut,” most won’t need any convincing there. The dramatic “Deep End of the Cut” has subtle metal undertones and is undeniably heavy. Similarly, “T.K.O.” begins quiet, unassuming, and melancholic before heavy riffing and a brief bout of tremolo picking is introduced. Towards the end of the track, the guitar takes center stage while gentle oohs are relegated to the background. These instrumental forward moments are the best moments on the album. Soft bells bring the song to a close, indicating a gentle optimism for what’s to come.
Gushing Interest does have pleasant moments. But just as the times when the sun hits just perfect and faint enough to spark joy in the late afternoon in your bedroom, these junctures are fleeting. After only listening to Gushing Interest for twenty-two or so minutes, I wasn’t too thrilled to learn that the closing track of the album was a song Timelost didn’t even compose themselves, a move that came across as lazy to me. I was pleasantly surprised by the band’s execution on this 1982 song, though. The lyrics wailing “Love my way, it’s a new road” seemed fitting, and the guitar slide is just plain fun. While Timelost’s latest release may not be the most inspiring of albums, the band was still capable of pulling their act together to release new music in the middle of a pandemic. That, at least, is worth something.
Rating: 2.0/5.0
DR: n/a | Format Reviewed: n/a
Label: Church Road Records
Websites: wearetimelost.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/wearetimelost
Releases Worldwide: February 26th, 2021
