Luby Sparks – Luby Sparks

I share Ihoyski’s enthusiasm for the album (and thanks for those other recs, very well worth it) because it’s something really special.

The album starts with these beautiful melancholy vocals without words over slow, moody drums and droning guitars that just effortlessly blurs into the opening track.

The opening two tracks are very good, but honestly they pale in comparison to the literally breathtaking tone choices made later on the album.

Still Awake opens with a looping trippy sample before two contrasting guitar tones (jangly, dreamy, surfy vs sharp, brittle, reverby) and a PHAT bass strum collide headlong into soft, wistful male and female vocals. The groove on this song is phenomenal and makes me want for more shoegaze to explore this funkier/surfier sound.

Tangerine just starts off with wailing overdriven guitars that may as well be a square wave function out of a generator, they are so god damn crunchy. Some really nice use of muting for punctuation, really gets the blood going. The interplay of the panning guitar, the vocals swapping, and the absolutely blissful groove on this track brings a tear to my eye, extremely strong finish to the track, what an absolute delight.

The Short Lived Girl is a beautiful song, just listen to it.

This review is too long already, but I’ll just close by saying something about Life of Misery. This song is absolutely haunting if you have experienced depression and had it affect a relationship. “I’m watching movies all day long” or “Another day/another night/spent in my room” or “i’m looking to see if you can find me/but your love turns into my pain” are devastatingingly personal emotional things to sing in such a sing song voice but the closing chant of “I’m living a life of misery/I wish that we had never met” really brings it all together into a really potently emotional song with fantastic performances all around.

Listen to this album; many listens later and no regrets here other than not finding it sooner.