Hard Light

Album review

It's somehow appropriate that collectively, the memories people have of the shoegaze era are somewhat hazy. For a musical style that was vague and occasionally evocative of dream states, it makes sense that recollections of the time are less precise and more informed by emotion and nostalgia. Case in point: Drop Nineteens. The Boston band formed in 1990—just as London bands like Lush, Chapterhouse, and others were dubbed "the scene that celebrates itself"—and, by the time they released their debut album Delaware in 1992, Loveless had already unleashed a wave of imitators both sincere and craven. Delaware seemed to fall somewhere in between those two poles. Its sound was unabashedly—shamelessly, even—indebted to My Bloody Valentine and other U.K. shoegaze acts, so much so that the drum-machine-and-tremolo-guitar instrumental "Kick the Tragedy" was basically a cut-rate version of MBV's "Glider." However, the band also brought a distinctly American flair to their music, combining irony (a cover of Madonna's "Angel") and suburban malaise ("Ease It Halen") that kept Delaware at least marginally interesting, if not still slightly embarrassing. A major lineup shift and a new focus on grungy modern rock sounds made Delaware's follow-up, National Coma, even less interesting, and soon after its release, the band officially broke up. Thus, it should have been that, like so many other third-tier indie rock bands of the era, Drop Nineteens would have been memorialized only by a small clutch of nostalgic Gen X-ers and a footnote to everyone else. But a funny thing happened on the way to oblivion, and over the years, Delaware's reputation has been rescued by newer listeners; thanks both to the accessibility of the music and the rarity of its original vinyl edition, the album had become something of a grail for new collectors and fans of second-wave shoegaze. Thus, here we are in 2023 with a reunion of the full, Delaware-era lineup of Drop Nineteens and a new album to go along with it. Unsurprisingly, it sounds like Drop Nineteens have also chosen to forget that National Coma ever happened, and instead have positioned Hard Light as the proper follow-up to Delaware. Just in the opening few minutes, the title track explicitly evokes the psychedelic crosstalk of "Ease it Halen," and the melody line at the foundation of "Scapa Flow" sounds just like "My Aquarium." Likewise, the full-bodied guitar work and laconic vocal delivery on cuts like "A Hitch," "Another One Another," and "Tarantula" provide plenty of old-school shoegaze vibes. There are also some interesting new takes on the approach, such as the gentle melodies on the instrumental "Rose With Smoke" that sound like they were written (and perhaps even performed) on an acoustic guitar, and the warm, expansive elegance of "T" that closes out the album on a note that's as dramatic as it is sonically engaging. © Jason Ferguson/Qobuz