-=- SHGZ -=-
* Shoegaze * Indie * Post-Rock * Grunge * Dream Pop * Psych-Rock * Ethereal *
ARTIST..: Drop Nineteens
ALBUM...: Hard Light
GENRE...: Indie
STYLE...: Shoegaze, Indie Rock, Dream Pop, Jangle Pop, Ambient Pop
YEAR....: 2023
LABEL...: Wharf Cat
COUNTRY.: USA
PLACE...: Boston, MA
FORMED..: 1991
ENCODER.: LAME 3.100 -V0
BITRATE.: 263 kbps avg
QUALITY.: 44.1kHz / Joint Stereo
SOURCE..: CD
TRACKS..: 11
SIZE....: 78.00 MB
URL..: https://www.dropnineteens.com
https://www.facebook.com/dropnineteens
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Light
https://www.stereogum.com/2231913/drop-nineteens-reunion-new-album-hard-light/music
https://daily.bandcamp.com/album-of-the-day/drop-nineteens-hard-light-review
https://www.undertheradarmag.com/reviews/hard_light_drop_nineteens
https://beatsperminute.com/album-review-drop-nineteens-hard-light
- TRACKLIST
1 Hard Light 3:06
2 Scapa Flow 3:59
3 Gal 4:08
4 Tarantula 3:13
5 The Price Was High 3:34
6 Rose With Smoke 2:31
7 A Hitch 3:28
8 Lookout 2:24
9 Another One Another 4:49
10 Policeman Getting Lost 2:28
11 T 7:26
Total Playtime: 41:06
Following the release of the shoegaze masterpiece Delaware in 1992, and the
intricate experimentations on National Comain 1993, Drop Nineteens disbanded.
They had a great run. Shared stages with Radiohead, Hole, Blur, PJ Harvey.
Went from being teenaged kids in Boston to mid twenty somethings with an MTV
video under their belt. So when Drop Nineteens ceased to be, Greg Ackell felt
content, music was a closed chapter.
Following the release of the shoegaze masterpiece Delaware in 1992, and the
intricate experimentations on National Coma in 1993, Drop Nineteens
disbanded. They had a great run. Shared stages with Radiohead, Hole, Blur, PJ
Harvey. Went from being teenaged kids in Boston to mid twenty somethings with
an MTV video under their belt. So when Drop Nineteens ceased to be, Greg
Ackell felt content, music was a closed chapter.
That was until 2021. For the first time in nearly 30 years, Ackell felt
compelled to pick up a guitar. He immediately called up Steve Zimmeran, the
band's bassist and fellow guitarist, and the two got writing. It felt
effortless for Ackell, like he never stopped writing music. "We were off to
the races," he says. "But also the question came up: what does a Drop
Nineteens song sound like today? Enter Hard Light, the band's stunning third
record. It's the band's proverbial follow up to Delaware, a modern Drop
Nineteens record that is completely singular in its sound and vision.
The first task making Hard Light, was of course, getting the rest of the band
back together. Drop Nineteens is an inherently collaborative project.
Ackell's primarily the lyrics writer, and he collaborates with Zimmerman,
Paula Kelley, Motohiro Yasue, and Peter Koeplin to create the sonic world.
The record came together over the course of a year, recording at a patchwork
of studios all around the country. Making music together felt natural, fluid,
exciting.
The guitar reverb is expansive as ever. Ackell and Kelley's vocals are
crystalline. "Scapa Flow," is triumphant. An excellent example of what a
modern day Drop Nineteens song sounds like. The guitars glide like clouds on
a blue sky day, drums shuffle in the background, searching. Ackell and
Kelley's vocals are cool toned and dreamy, bound up in a haze of reverb. It's
unquestionably lovely. You could say the same for the whole of the record.
Hard Light is so lovely. A portrait of a band 30 years later, as talented and
as dedicated to their craft as ever.
*
- On its first album in 30 years, the Boston shoegaze band looks back with tenderness. -
Drop Nineteens were five private-college kids in Boston, equally enthralled
by arena-scale post-punk and the new sounds of shoegaze. Though surrounded by
a thriving underground scene and no shortage of venues, they were more
interested in recording than gigging. In dorms and basements all over Boston
University, they poured rough dream-pop into a rented eight-track console,
mailing the resulting demo to the only place that made sense: England. The
gambit succeeded. Melody Maker awarded them Single of the Week, and labels
started phoning. By the time 1992's Delaware was released, Drop Nineteens
still hadn't played a hometown show, an order of operations that rankled
their peers. (A contemporary zine featured the band on the cover with the
headline "Sick of Them Yet?")
No matter: The UK music press loved these American kids punching holes in
shoegaze's narcotic cocoon. They opened for Blur. Radiohead opened for them.
But the tour life was rough on a group so young ("We're sort of the Kris
Kross of indie rock," lead singer Greg Ackell quipped at the time), and Drop
Nineteens lost three members before starting work on the next album. Ackell
and bassist Steve Zimmerman found replacements for 1993's shoegaze-free,
crisply acidic National Coma, which had its moments but nothing as autumnally
assured as Delaware's single "Winona." By 1995, the band was done.
Thirty years after their unintended swan song, Drop Nineteens return with
Hard Light. Ackell and Zimmerman are rejoined by founding guitarist/singer
Paula Kelley and lead guitarist Motohiro Yasue; National Coma-era drummer
Pete Koeplin rounds out the quintet. With so much time gone, it would have
been no surprise if Drop Nineteens had rehashed musical glories, or settled
old scores. But when Hard Light does look backwards, it does so without
triumph or disillusion, only tenderness.
Ackell turns a telescope on the distant glow of youth-in all its peacocking,
dumbass splendor-and finds warmth. Everywhere you look, there's an escapade:
driving to a gig in a snowstorm, strutting your new boots into the club,
skidding out on a stick shift. "Stepped into a cage/Woke up in Berlin,"
Ackell marvels on "Gal," as the reverb burns off like fog. The icy,
Kelley-led "The Price Was High" reads like a cryptic retelling of their
transatlantic breakout: "The nights from days/Ferried east and ended with no
one/Getting wise." Guitars howl over a high-stepping rhythm section, like a
blizzard barreling into a Soviet disco.
The germ of this reunion was Ackell's curiosity about what a modern Drop
Nineteens song would sound like. Not an uncommon question for any artist
considering a comeback, but Ackell-the band's primary songwriter-had barely
strummed a guitar in decades. From the beginning, he wanted to "follow the
ethos" of Delaware, which offered the 'Teens any number of paths to wander.
The anguished "Reberrymemberer" sounded like Kevin Shields producing Heroin;
their cover of Madonna's "Angel" had a heady stupor and scalar guitar hook
that anticipated Deftones at their wooziest. Or they could get dreamy: "Kick
the Tragedy"-the epic-length jangle-gaze cut that crests on a spoken-word
meditation from Kelley about being 19-has become a zoomer touchstone and, by
some measures, Drop Nineteens' biggest song.
While Hard Light doesn't copy the structure of "Tragedy," it does tap into
the raw material: gentle glide guitar and an inquest into youthful energy.
Here, that material stays in exquisite tension, as all these memory fragments
threaten to gash Hard Light's dream-pop reverie. "Shallow wreck from the
bottom/Better left than picked up/And remembered," Ackell sings on the
valedictory "Scapa Flow," "but I remember." On Hard Light, time is often a
hydrological function, as looming as the Nowhere wave. "Cut to the chase, my
brother," Ackell cautions, "There's been weather and weather and weather and
weather." The past was "oceans ago" on "A Hitch," which sends a sullen chime
and Koeplin's toms into a psychedelically panned splice of guitar and vocal
from Kelley.
For the third straight album, Drop Nineteens are loath to repeat themselves.
Even on their debut, they opted to record a fresh set of songs rather than
rework any of the demos that brought them so much attention. And though that
set has become a shoegaze landmark (and a coveted shirt drop), the follow-up
offers saxophone rather than screaming; instead of alloying their sound with
a pop icon's, they faithfully and delicately cover a Clientele song
("Policeman Getting Lost"). The urgent, guitar-dense "Tarantula" suggests a
timeline in which the band hung on until the post-punk revival, and its
soaring chorus ("And we feel like we're after school/In the afternoon/In the
afterlife") is the purest pop move they've ever made. While the textures of
shoegaze are everywhere, the closest thing to a shoegaze song is "Rose With
Smoke," a spare, guitar-only instrumental that acts as an intermission.
Everywhere else, the band sounds locked in and linked together-if you want to
catch the sense of play, just focus on Zimmerman's giddy basslines-and the
result is the kind of slow-release euphoria you get from an afternoon
catching up with old friends. On the seven-minute closing ballad "T," Drop
Nineteens settle in after an album spent in constant motion. Ackell sings
about inviting some folks over and putting on a Mickey Rourke movie. (They're
watching on a plasma screen, so God knows what year it is.) Koeplin paddles
at half-speed; guitars scream just outside the window. For the moment,
they're weathering the storm.
*
Three decades after their original run, cult shoegaze band Drop Nineteens
have been rediscovered by a new legion of listeners. Songs from the Boston
group's 1992 debut, Delaware, like their noise-pop tribute to Winona Ryder
and the nearly nine-minute drifter "Kick the Tragedy," now rack up hundreds
of thousands of streams per month. Recorded while Drop Nineteens' members
were still university students, Delaware earned critical acclaim upon its
release, yet the quintet only survived several years before disbanding. This
made the announcement of their original line-up's reunion all the more
surprising, with a comeback album that feels like their Jazzmasters never
left their hands.
Drop Nineteens rarely fit comfortably into the shoegaze mold, with songs like
Delaware's "Reberrymemberer" featuring Unwound-style screams and their 1993
sophomore album National Coma embracing shiny alt-rock hooks. On Hard Light,
the quintet continue to color outside of genre lines, blurring the
distinctions between dream pop and Midwest emo on "Gal," toying with morose
jangle on "Tarantula," and delving into psychedelia with the backmasked
effects of "A Hitch." As the years have passed between releases, Drop
Nineteens have developed a newfound sense of patience, letting songs breathe
with lengthy instrumental passages before vocals appear. While their
shimmering riffs ring out, the drums and bass are kept sparse, maintaining
hypnotic pulses via mid-tempo motorik rhythms.
Dual guitarists/vocalists Greg Ackell and Paula Kelley haven't lost their
chemistry, with his understated delivery perfectly complemented by her
whispery cooing. Kelley takes the lead on "The Price Was High," accenting her
voice with plucked acoustic guitar, and processing it through electronic
effects on the Clientele cover "Policeman Getting Lost." The soaring
harmonies of "Scapa Flow" are reminiscent of Blonde Redhead, while the
melodic minimalism of "Lookout" could be mistaken for an Ira Kaplan song by
Yo La Tengo. Hard Light concludes with "T," this album's answer to Delaware's
"Kick the Tragedy," as a lumbering breakbeat loops through seven minutes of
shoegaze bliss.
Reunion albums can run the gamut from the blazing power of Dinosaur Jr. to
the embarrassment chills of the New York Dolls reworking their songs in a
cod-reggae style. Thankfully, Drop Nineteens have largely stuck to the fluid
formula of their early '90s recordings, amplifying gauzy pop hooks with
feedback-laced guitars while trading off between their two singers. This
sprawling album marks a welcome return from one of America's most undersung
indie bands, giving new generations a chance to bring them to light.
*
- Hard Light is Proof That Drop Nineteens Aren't One-Hit Wonders -
The Boston shoegaze pioneers return nearly 30 years after their initial
dissolution with an album spiritually connected to their beloved debut.
This was never supposed to happen. After a beautiful and sometimes tumultuous
run, Massachussetts quintet Drop Nineteens had completed its brief life cycle
and founding singer Greg Ackell stepped back from music entirely, finding
himself content with what the band had accomplished. And why shouldn't he?
The Boston University students had become rockstars seemingly overnight.
Radiohead opened for them, and their 1992 album Delaware ensconced them in
shoegazing history. But come 2021, Ackell felt a question gnawing at his
mind: "What does a modern Drop Nineteens song sound like?" Ackell, with the
help of co-vocalist Paula Kelley, bassist Steve Zimmerman, guitarist Motohiro
Yasue and drummer Peter Koeplin, embarked on a quest to answer that question.
The resulting album, Hard Light, is elating, exhibiting the same
sensibilities of Delaware with emotional depth and sonic maturation that
makes it feel as if Drop Nineteens never left the scene.
Just as 1992's Delaware casts a long shadow over the fan's memories, the
album cast a long shadow over the composition of Hard Light. The band, just
as collaborative in their songwriting as ever, sought out a sound that acts
as a spiritual sibling to their legendary debut without a simple copy and
paste. Hard Light certainly stands on its own; the songs are meticulous,
dreamy but not lackadaisical, hazy but not occluded. Delaware was a
successful attempt to capture lightning in a bottle through in-the-moment
experiments revealing the band's reverence for all things 4AD. It was
confessional, sometimes even angsty. Hard Light benefits from a version of
Drop Nineteens that can take their time composing just the right rock songs,
even if that means the album lacks certain spikes that were once immense on
their debut. That said, it's hard to miss those spikes when the Hard Light
sound is so arresting.
The album has plenty of guitar. While Ackell and Kelley's vocals, from their
lyrics to their interplay, are a world unto themselves, it's hard to look
away from the gnarly chord formations that swell and swirl. The title
track-which also serves as the opener-offers a sonorous canon of guitars
flashing above like celestial bodies before Ackell and Kelley enter in hushed
repetition: "Time, it's of the essence." Lead single "Scapa Flow" enters with
a slacker riff that feels lifted from Lush-era Snail Mail before erupting
into syncopated conflagration. "Rose With Smoke" is all about the processed
guitar, plodding its way through in a psychedelic march. Then there are more
closely held lines, like those that open "T," the seven-and-a-half-minute
closer and one of two love songs dedicated to Ackell's girlfriend. The other,
"Tarantula," is on the uptempo side, brushing against post-punk, with a
gorgeous optimism heard in the voice, the guitars and the drums.
One of the best parts of the Drop Nineteens experience is the warmth shared
between Ackell and Kelley's vocals, which could not sound more different but,
still, arrive immensely in sync. Kelley's voice is front and center on "The
Price Was High," sounding even more ethereal than it previously did on
Delaware: "In a roundabout sway / Not a word / Not a sound / All's forgiven
anyway." She's even more hypnotic on their cover of The Clientele's
"Policeman Getting Lost." It's one of the most true-to-original covers out
there, and it suits Kelley's voice especially well. It also stands out
starkly from the rest of the album without sounding too far off-base,
offering a dose of a totally different sound before Drop Nineteens return to
their romantic shoegaze trademark. The interplay and harmony between Ackell
and Kelley on "T" grants it the emotional depth it seeks. When Ackell's voice
stands alone, as it does on "Lookout," he has the same soft sincerity of
Trevor Powers with just as much guile.
So, what does a modern Drop Nineteens song sound like? If their Delaware
follow-up National Coma is to be believed, a modern Drop Nineteens song can
sound like, well, anything. Hard Light's answer to the initial question
should elicit a sigh of relief: A modern Drop Nineteens song sounds like a
grown-up Delaware track. The album's 11 tracks play to the band's strong
suits as they return from an extended hiatus, dwelling in shoegaze territory
while adding a handful of excursions into baroque pop and post-punk that
prove the band has a strong compositional foundation. It's a smoother ride
than Delaware, for better or for worse, but not without edges. Drop Nineteens
have not lost all of their style; if anything, they've gained some finesse.
It was never supposed to happen, but we should be glad that it has.
-=- SHGZ -=-
-=-=-==-=-=-
Shoegaze
is a genre of alternative rock that
originated in the late 80s. The genre is very
difficult to define, and it is even more difficult to evaluate music
within it. Generally, the genre is characterized by its
shimmering vocals, reverberating guitars, and
textural distortion that create
a tranquil, opaque
feeling.
---==--==---