By: Chad Murray
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For whatever reason Winter to me is all about the lo-fi and the shoegaze, there’s just something about walking down the street crumpling ice to Loveless that feels so right. LSD and The Search For God are a welcome addition to that shoegaze canon and an excellent gift for me to plunder over Christmas. The artwork to Heaven is A Place is also something to behold; a psychedelic garment wearing the heart of the album on its sleeve.
A host of distorted guitars and celestial tones croon harmoniously into ‘Heaven’. Ethereal, matter of fact vocals flutter through the mix; often indecipherable but, the chorus rings true “heaven is a place” whether it is real or not does not matter if we can imagine something so sublime… or maybe, the track is emblematic of the band itself: With a name like LSD and The Search For God one can question whether or not ‘Heaven’ represents the euphoria and exploration one can seek through psychedelics such as LSD but, it also is representative of the band itself as a track in not only the style but, the manner in which it simply confronts you unbiased and yet, bold with something controversial and dividing in a declarative statement that would be nihilistic if it wasn’t so sublimely twenty first century; not caring is caring just like Marge Simpson says. Extraterrestrial sized probing aside, this track rocks. The crescendo is reminiscent of tracks like ‘When You Sleep’ and ‘Only Shallow’ from MBV’s Loveless with thick layers of guitar that ring around your head and glue into your memory but, I’d also argue that the drums are the best part of the track’s climax. I really can’t remember any track from Loveless with drums getting pounded to fuck like that, seriously, listen to the drums at the end they’re like the Ultimate Warrior manifested in percussion.
Beneath tidal distortion, ‘(I Don’t Think That We Should) Take It Slow’ houses a leviathan; a hooky undercover pop leviathan. Probably a backhanded compliment for this track is that it reminds me of bands like Feeder and The Wannadies who through the early 2000s had a bunch of really enjoyable singles but, were pretty damn corny and musically uninspiring. LSD and The Search For God have clearly ventured out and found some of the inspiration bands like that were lacking in this track. It’s a glorious expansion on both shoegaze and pop with beautifully contorted backing vocals reverberating a siren call through the track whilst guitar whirls equally punctuate the catchiness; adding consistency and style to create a tremendously pleasant listen.
‘In Outer Space’, LSD and The Search For God gravitate ‘Heaven Is A Place’ towards their psychedelic influences. Sonically evocative of The Horrors’ work on Skying, the track blends psychedelic and post-punk influences with a textural soundscape descending from shoegaze to create a well of sounds and details exploding with depth. Whirling guitars and broken machines, sedated chaos and blissful noise; a journey to outer space with the commotion and euphoria in tact.
‘Elizabeth’ stands out as a track that heavily leans on the band’s ability to build an atmosphere. Here it seems the vocals become less important battling against smothered drums, bent guitars and a fragile bass-line and my conclusion is that ‘Elizabeth’ is beautiful; she may not have the radio friendly flair of the first three tracks or the zeitgeist straddling allure of the final track but, what ‘Elizabeth’ does have is a unique, idiosyncratic character and a self-less yet, extremely necessary existence within the album. The song is essential in binding the preceding and succeeding track but is also a glue to maintain the connection with the opening tracks. It adds a much needed time to hilight on the instruments whilst not really standing out vocally and yet, this is part of what makes the album so great. It’s tracks like this that have been crucial to classic albums in the past, tracks that won’t go on the radio but, will segue perfectly in the sequencing, that will balance out the elements of the album and maintain its pacing and its narrative. ‘Elizabeth’ tells us that the band have constructed an album and not just waited until they had five songs and vomited out a release. On top of that though, it’s an enjoyable listen, like the rest of the album it’s a great piece of music.
Whilst ‘Outer Space’ is certainly “trippy”, the psychedelic element within the band is probably best exemplified in ‘Without You’, the track is almost like the lovechild of Jefferson Airplane and My Bloody Valentine (on a side note, My Bloody Jefferson would be a great band name even if it does sound like a euphemism for a hacked penis), there are times when it sounds like the traditional shoegaze ploy of layering guitars has evolved into high rise towers of noisy sitar hooks, although the waves of distortion and reverb still crash below, the sitar-like jangle is quite beautiful at the top.
The last time I heard a new shoegaze or “nugaze” if you will (I won’t) release I enjoyed this much it was the debut of The Pains of Being Pure At Heart and weirdly enough LSD and The Search For God actually released their first EP around the same time but, have gestated this release for a number of years in a Kevin Shields-esque deep sleep stasis before awakening like a phoenix shining bright like a forehead into the heavens.
