It is somewhat mystifying that the Philadelphia shoegaze scene has not found its way into a wider discourse beyond its home town. Part of that is due to the music industry still attempting to cultivate a monoculture, impacting the reach of publications and streaming algorithms. But some of the scene also seems to thrive off the perceived obscurity, providing a counter cultural mystique that would be lost if dragged into the spotlight. Just as an example, take the unique retro-futurism of Full Body 2 and imagine it scoring an evening at H&M – the gravitas of their aesthetics would immediately be reduced to corporate classification and consumer appeal. Part of the scene’s charm is that you can still find the odd, anarchic Gen X mindset infuse the life and music of its protagonists. It’s not just charming – it’s exciting.
They Are Gutting a Body of Water (TAGABOW) are, together with the aforementioned Full Body 2, likely the most idiosyncratic of the bunch. In delivering a host of albums that in length could fit one one side of a vinyl record, the group has embraced toy-keyboard experiments and alt-rock sounds, crossing boundaries of taste and style in the process. Their releases – anywhere between four to nine depending on what you consider canon – often feel like hidden artefacts from the first half of the 90s, which popped up somewhere in a garage sale of dusty tapes.
LOTTO, the band’s new album, takes it a step further though: this time, the group dives headfirst into the progressive leanings of Slint, The Smashing Pumpkins, Swirlies and Lilys. Still coming in at under half an hour, they’ve made an album that seems like a lost shoegaze classic of the grunge era.
The powerful burst of “the chase”, a sludgy spoken-word rocker that concerns itself with the parallels between addiction and being in live, opens LOTTO with immense ferocity and attitude. Like a lost Slint song off their debut, “the chase” immediately sets a sinister, brutal tone. The dry Grunge of “rl stine” contrasts perfectly with the fragile vocals of vocalist Doug Dulgarian, here vaguely reminiscent of a young, mellow Kurt Cobain. The gorgeous “trainers” dials his voice back even further, almost calling from a place beyond, to dance over a gorgeous, jangly guitar line, which explodes into full on distortion during the chorus – there’s a hint of Billy Corgan’s ADore-era compositions in its autumnal atmosphere and brittle, icy melancholia.
But LOTTO shines the most when TAGABOW dare to plunge themselves into a somewhat psychedelic lo-fi pop that is all their own. “sour diesel” uses a chiming guitar tone to great effect, layering vocal lines and guitars on top of each other for a complex and heady composition. “violence III” (the third in an ongoing series of tracks) is possibly the most memorable track on the album, with a great central riff, a Brian Wilson-esque vocal melody and gorgeous layers of distinct guitar tones, all building towards a noisy guitar climax – a perfect pop song in the dress of garage-rock. “american food” uses processed drums, record scratching and vocoder effects for a strange crossover that would make Swirlies proud, while closer “herpim” is a clever exploration of the push-and-pull dynamics My Bloody Valentine toyed with on Loveless.
This is strange, freaky stuff; pop music through the lens of people who live, and breathe, the past: lurid, brave and non-confirmist. Dulgarian has openly spoken online of his struggle with addiction. Beyond judgement, drugs symbolise a cornerstone of the human experience though: can we live in the bliss of ecstasy? Is the substance worth what it eats away from us? A lot of the 90s was a generation that followed the boomer experimentation with psychedelics into a territory that mourned the decline of systematic humanism and rise of corporate industrialisation. Rock stars did not exist in the same mythological field as in the 60s or 70s – they were now deeply conflicted and traumatised outsiders. Back in the 90s, this was still marketable as a product, further leading into the decline of the alternative movement.
Dulgarian is, in a way, lucky that he is able to reflect on that era, gifting him the liberty of self-determination and lack of a machine that could crush him in its gears. With LOTTO, he and his band achieve a perfect fusion between the transcendental sound of a high’s washed out warm embrace and geometric clarity that marked grunge cornerstones. It’s an album brimming with vitality and passion – but also the melancholia of feeling unfit to pass through time in the same bold step as anyone society declares ‘normal’. In the 90s, these bands were often immediately eulogised, as if their artistic virtues were a funeral tango: Eric’s Trip, Slint, Swirlies – they all existed on the margins, while MTV concentrated on their louder cousins. TAGABOW are far from this motion towards decline – quite the contrary: this, their most fully formed and digestible album to date, might well mark their breaking point to larger audiences and wider acclaim. The future is bright and these guys deserve it.
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