Review Summary: Endless wintering
Dear Eloise’s brand of lo-fi shoegaze has always felt a bit childlike in how it tackles typically
adult things. The Beijing, China-based husband-wife duo have a meek disposition, recording independently and releasing music in a discreet way. Matching this is a sense of guardedness permeating the tones on
Uncontrollable, Ice Age Stories, generated by - and inflicted on - the speaker. There’s a sort of directionless give and take, resulting in no one being truly hurt, but, still, a complete lack of closure and vague reciprocity - like a child who’s seen promises lose meaning, but is still naive enough not to feel cynical. The actual subject matter covers bases such as transient romance, lack of stability, and embittered wisdom, all blanketed with a mellow candour. Their previous release,
Farewell to the Summer, was sort of a seasonal leap into
Uncontrollable, Ice Age Stories (referred to as their “winter album”), but felt like a series of accidents coalescing into a sloppy shade of grey with patches of noisy experimentation.
U,IAS is more in touch in its greyness: a sort of cohesive limbo between brightness and gloom.
Musically, Dear Eloise employ soothing-yet-erratic noise feedback, ambling guitar lines, soft vocals, catchy bass work, and drums, divvied between Yang Haisong and Sun Xia. As shoegaze tends, the draw is the aesthetic, but much of
U,IAS is stripped down. The lazy, slow-surf guitar melodies on tracks like “Brand New World” are accompanied by rudimentary drumming and wooden singing. While the apathetic vocal delivery
works at moments, staging a convincing facade, it’s a bit too persuasive. You go from believing Dear Eloise are masterfully covering up emotions to doubting they have many in the first place (for some, the language barrier won’t help matters).
U,IAS needs more slip-ups and character breaks. It has
some. “Something Beautiful to Share” seeps adrenaline, despite its slow, metronomic shuffle, and its 5-ish-minute length showcases the duo’s ability to be repetitious and steadfast, yet engaging. “Man Without a Heart” is the most intense display, with invigorating strumming and a catchy, patient, potent build.
There isn’t much variety between tracks, and the album could’ve afforded to chop off fifteen minutes of material, sacrificing little. Some of their prior work had the opposite problem: too many stray ideas executed questionably. They’ve found an enjoyable sound, but there’s clear highlights to be found and the stragglers are, at best,
pretty nice. Dear Eloise don’t sound too ambitious here, but it comes with the territory. There’s a particular period in the year, probably within the first couple weeks of winter, that seems to encompass apathy; the previous summer is still fresh recollectively so as to remind us what we’re missing, but the summer to come is beyond reach.
Uncontrollable, Ice Age Stories succeeds in that it takes various (possibly unrelated) personal accounts and channels them through a similar lens - blanketed in white and worn down by the cold.
