Review Summary: Vancouver dream-pop outfit 24 Gone's debut was an excellent start to a band that, sadly, has been all-too forgotten to history. It shouldn't have been that way.
My sleep schedule’s been f'ed up lately. Being depressed and isolated has taken its toll, and I’ve been up at 4 AM, lonely, the world pretty much frozen in darkness around me. No one’s around outside, of course, and it feels like… well, at least where I’ve lived for the past four years, this city of 75,000 quickly becomes a ghost town. There’s nobody, not on the internet, not in real life that wants to talk to me, and boredom begins to settle in. Soon enough, I’ve found myself on Wikipedia for some reason, reading an article on a pickup truck or a building in New York City or whatever weird thing I’d managed to find somehow. Sometimes, there’s been so much of nothing that I could do that I’ve started to repeatedly click that “random article” button that’s conveniently located on Wikipedia’s sidebar, now finding out about things that I would have never even dreamed of looking up by themselves. I’m tired, but just looking through random articles somewhat fascinates me. I’d never really cared too much about a rare species of snail that exists only in Spain or whatever, but just discovering all of this is oddly fascinating, this… weird information that you never thought to even discover before. As the clock struck 4:30, the lights dim in my room as I laid back in my leather chair, I hit the “random page” button on Wikipedia yet again, and I came across the article on this dream pop band I’d never heard of. A band called 24 Gone.
According to their (quite miniscule) Wikipedia page, 24 Gone was formed in 1989, breaking up only a few years later. However, looking at concert posters that were posted on their official Facebook page, they were around as early as 1985, playing show after show in their native Vancouver, British Columbia for years. 24 Gone became quite a large draw, initially headlining clubs such as The Town Pump; and as their popularity grew, they began touring around Canada. By the time their debut and only record was released in 1990, they had somewhat of a considerably large fanbase: one that was able to reach into the United States by way of the Windsor, Ontario alternative radio station 89X playing cuts from
The Spin constantly, the signals reaching American soil. However, after their record label went bankrupt, 24 Gone soon folded, their members parting ways as their music was lost to history.
And really, it shouldn’t have been that way.
The Spin is a complex, addictive album that begs to be played over and over again, day after day, its heavier moments perfectly contrasting with 24 Gone’s pop influences. “In Her Heart” is absolute perfection, an incredible bit of guitar pop that should’ve been a huge hit in a perfect universe, a universe that I honestly hope exists out there. "Islands" is wide and expansive, the track creating a gorgeous soundscape with hard-hitting percussion and incisive guitar work. Both “Trust” and “In and Out of Nowhere” begin with nice, airy instrumentation as they slowly build to inescapable and huge climaxes that surprised and took me aback the first time I heard them, and are sure to do the same each and every time they’re played. “Girl of Colours” was probably 24 Gone’s biggest hit, and deservedly so. “Miss You” is atmospheric pop at its finest, something that should’ve and could’ve filled an arena full of screaming fans. The finale off
The Spin, “Blue Skies, Noise”, begins as just another, more fast-paced track which starts to build up in tempo and become an absolute monster with a mind of its own.
The Spin works well because of 24 Gone’s wonderfully complex musicianship, with guitarist Zeljko Karlica providing quite excellent guitar work and drummer Brad MacGiveron lending
The Spin a lush, atmospheric feel, the production working hand in hand with these elements to create something vast and spacious. This is an album that feels as if it takes you to another world entirely, a more… perfect and yet stranger, more off-putting one. There may be moments where the sound feels a bit
too thin, but they’re easily countered by just how simply great the songs are on here.
However, there’s an obvious flaw that must be noted here, a major one doesn’t even have to do with the album as it was released in 1990. As the years passed, copies of
The Spin (which was long out of print) commanded insanely high prices, some even reaching upwards of $100 on sites such as eBay. So, the obvious choice was to reissue the album, a new version of
The Spin having been released in 2003 with new cover art and a different tracklisting. This edition featured new tracks and alternate versions of previously released songs such as “Trust” and “Mary Goes Round”. Sadly, they decided to actually
replace album tracks with these new versions and insert the new tracks into the album’s tracklisting itself, as well as altering the tracklisting even further by shifting the positions of some of the songs on the record. Adding more insult to injury, they removed the absolutely stunning “In Her Heart”, which is, in my opinion, the absolute best off the album. Thankfully, for the 2015 vinyl release, they restored the original tracklisting and cover art, but the 2003 release is by far the most common you’ll be able to find anywhere.
While
The Spin obviously isn’t the best shoegaze/dream-pop album ever made, it’s definitely not worth being as obscure as it was, the record sadly being mostly left forgotten by history. All I could dream of, if I’m able to get to bed earlier tonight, is an alternate universe somewhere out there, an alternate universe where 24 Gone went on to make many more great albums and where
The Spin got the respect that it deserved – as a wonderful start to a band that could have been able to do so much more.
