By: Rich Buley
La Casa al Mare | facebook | bandcamp | soundcloud |
Released on May 1, 2015 via Bandcamp
Having spent some years in other like-minded bands and in production, Rome three piece La Casa al Mare have had some time to hone a conviction and maturity of sound that belies the fact that This Astro is just their third release, following two double A side singles towards the end of last year.
In fact this EP collects up those 4 tracks released during 2014, and adds three more, to create a relatively substantial Extended Play offering, although you will bizarrely only own the title track legitimately if you purchase the CD!
La Casa al Mare (which for those of you who don’t know and/or haven’t looked it up already translates quite simply as The Beach House) are trading in a brand of Shoegaze that has quite obviously been infused with a very healthy dose of Isn’t Anything era My Bloody Valentine. Personally, despite the inherently derivative nature of what is to be heard here, I find this to be quite a good thing. You could count on the fingers of five hundred hands the number of bands that have taken the overwhelming studio complexity of MBV’s Loveless as their blueprint for creating music in this style, and then possess neither the cash nor the creativity to come remotely close to replicating the ground-breaking genius of that record, and end up sounding confused, drowned out and melodically challenged.
Isn’t Anything is a very different record to Loveless, and retains much of the classic guitar pop sensibility of MBV’s earlier work, despite an increasing arsenal of effects and noise being added to the mix. This is where La Casa al Mare sit for me, and this makes for an accessible, refreshing and crisp sounding change. I guess being only a three piece helps, as it gives the various elements room to breathe, and actually to be heard!
The introduction to opener ‘I Don’t Want To’, one of the three new tracks, could quite easily be the legitimate offspring of ‘Soft As Snow (But Warm Inside)’, but this is where I stop with the lazy MBV-the numbers journalism and ban myself from mentioning them for the rest of the review. It’s the wooziest track on the EP by some distance, and is slightly misleading as a guide to what follows.
‘Sunflowers’ crashes out of the speakers with a wonderfully catchy, reverb soaked central riff and a Chapterhouse-esque drumbeat. The band is most certainly on the right side of Dream Pop here, the darker, deeper, heavier, more interesting side, with centre piece ‘M’ a slower paced, head-swirling cacophony of everything that can make Shoegaze (when it is done as well as this) such an enticing proposition.
The light comes again with ‘At All’, a furious-paced, incandescent, gem of a pop song, where the impressive vocal melodies are intertwined perfectly against the raging guitars, and then there follows the acoustic, semi-ambient ‘Tonight Or Never’.
The digital release concludes, possibly ironically, with ‘CD Girl’, and this one has the same lonesome, windswept, mid-paced harmonies that underpinned much of the recent Swerverdriver comeback record, although set apart by dreamier, understated vocals.
Physical buyers can enjoy the instrumental title track, and lord it over their digital slaves by telling us how perfect an ending it is to a great record, and what unconfined, blissful euphoria is to be found with the extra investment.
An assured and captivating release, and if La Casa al Mare can move onto a debut album and find the same dynamic range, involving depth and melodic intent regularly displayed on this EP, we could be in for a bonafide Shoegaze classic.
