If the shadow of any singular decade looms over rock’s current condition, it would have to be the 90s.
During the aughts, our ever-continuous musical retromania resurrected, refashioned, and, for some, reinvigorated post-punk — an unfinished and scattered project, to be sure, still being newly spun in recent years by adherents of the UK’s Windmill Scene, among others. It would be too linear and simplistic to assert that the 90 were simply next in line for impressionable young fans who gobble up watered-down do-overs without a sense of the past; that sort of cynicism borders on conspiracy anyways, and the decade’s constitutive rock genres never truly disappeared. With the recent ascendancy of shoegaze and alt-country bands, however, some torchbearers of 2020s independent rock carry a clear indebtedness to the past, deserving of closer examination.
Shallowater could easily get described as synergizing these tendencies, a crossover sound self-dubbed as dirtgaze. A writer might opine: “It’s like if you crossed [insert ’90s slowcore band] with [introspective country folksy singer-songwriter hero] but gave it [x post-rock song structures or y guitar parts, take your pick].” This leaves some questions: Is the band’s style merely a form of recycling through recombination, or is the sum greater than its parts? Someone inclined towards the former might ask: “Didn’t Lift to Experience already sort of do this? Aren’t Wednesday currently doing that?”
It is necessary to address this referentiality with Shallowater and wield it in discussion. They are wrapped up in our moment, to be sure, but there is a catch: Like their debut LP There Is A Well, the band manage to move thoroughly beyond it.
Moments and instants on God’s Gonna Give You A Million Dollars lend themselves to those rehashed descriptions, and only someone dishonest or unaware would fail to raise them as points of vivid detail. Produced by Asheville-based producer Alex Farrar — who has worked with Wednesday, MJ Lenderman, Indigo De Souza, Waxahatchee, and Hotline TNT — and featuring American primitivist guitar player Hayden Pedigo on “All My Love,” God’s Gonna Give You A Million Dollars’ inception and branding only further the need for address.
Still, playing a game of identificatory whack-a-mole says little about how, in their schematic, musical whole, these somewhat familiar particularities play distinct, refreshing roles. In another sense, Shallowater’s building blocks seem obvious until you carefully trace their roadmaps. The jutting, meandering strolls taken by the group have produced some of this era’s most enticing guitar-based music.
On the opener/title track, the group’s high, lonesome West Texan sound is immediately apparent, bearing a melancholic warmth recalling Acetone. The sense of intimacy conveyed is a variety found only when surrounded by vast, arid, windswept terrain: stark and open, yet prone to produce a sense of inward shrunkness. It is a stunning vista. As strongly executed and emotionally evocative as this is, though, the true highlight emerges just before the halfway point of the song. Bass and cymbals sigh and crash calmly before the entire unit remerges again. The pace retains unhurried continuity before, out of thin-air, a drum-led transition pushes the band into a spirited shuffle. As rhythmic, percussive subdivisions shift underneath the vocals while circular guitar/bass pairings turn over continuously, four understated solo snare hits deliver a distorted, scratchy slab of noise. Brief silence, feedback, boisterous bending pained guitar solo, quiet outro: “Fireworks drift away / From the cemetery / On New Year’s Eve / Crushing me between the glow and the concrete.”
The whole process evolves for much longer than this description lets on, but the naturality of these bold movements is at the heart of God’s Gonna Give You A Million Dollars’ core success. If you can buy into their approach, countless otherwise transitions and surprises on the ensuing record will sweep you away.
“Sadie” is another standout, with intermingled mention of angels (recalling their previous album) and tornadoes. From the rich bass intro to its ripping, sudden riffage, the song manages to open up a storm unmatched in Shallowater’s discography thus far, like Rust Never Sleeps-era Neil Young raised on post-hardcore splendor. Even as “Highway” leans into a similar quiet-loud burst, the trick of their trade is structurally served up in subtle, surprising blows, most often paired with a hushed, twangy plea. The result is stylistically confident and refined rather than repetitive in its inspirations.
Towards the back end, “Ativan” fittingly and faintly wades through a drowsy, Red House Painters-inspired landscape. Every motion — from the bass crawling between notes to the guitar string’s timbre — is felt, eventually developing into a rollicking number that pounds away any thought the listener previously lingered on between solitary notes.
Although the sequencing leaves something slightly desired — “(Untitled) Cowboy” reads like a breakup song that walks itself into the sunset, better suited as an outro than the commendable, country-heavy comedown of “All My Love” — the twists and turns of Shallowater’s songwriting are especially deft for a sophomore outing, full of crevices lined with quietly explosive techniques and deafening delivery alike.
It is critically evasive to suggest a record is so good that words do it little justice, but excessively mapping those points of inflection and emphasis throughout the album grows tedious and belabored in print form. God’s Gonna Give You A Million Dollars is among the best releases of this year, and one should do it justice by letting themselves be personally carried through its dusty, panoramic views. Discard all prior advice: Abandoning the trail is way better than having a plan.
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