Review Summary: To think eleven years could be disregarded so.
Sweet Trip is a shoegaze band that balances the slow pacing of their songs with unpredictable patterns of electronic glitch, delving severely into the varying genres of electronica in the process, thus the listening experience with each song cannot be predicted, adding a layer of attention-grabbing action to the usually dreamy processes of the now-30-years-old genre.
A Tiny House, In Secret Speeches, Polar Equals is an album that comes eleven years after the previous release, which succeeded their most renowned release; Velocity : Design : Comfort.
The album follows very closely to the original formula, sprinkling shoegaze bits on an otherwise fully electronic glitch ambient album. There is deviation from the formula too, the song 'Surviving A Smile' is much more comfortable with nu-disco and offers a very safe listening experience, surely for the sake of a commercially accessible single. Otherwise, the songs are instantly transporting you from a flexing shoegaze scene with a divine soundscape to a minimalistic drone, to an acoustic piece. The synths employed on the album feel aged, to match the exact technology available in 2003.
Indeed, it is impossible to describe how mindblowing it is to not compromise a single bit from the original formula, even in terms of sound design. Certainly, production technology has improved but how the vocals of Roberto Burgos and Valerie Cooper carry the album like it's just a day in 2004, when this album actually dropped if we were to impress one and ask them to place it inside a frame in time, astonishes me. It's like I was in a bad dream for eleven years..
So how can an album that describes the past so well help us today? Well, it reminds me certainly of what was right and could be again in terms of creativity. The absurdity of how nothing has aged yet I could put this to the present moment showcases how good it is to have Sweet Trip back. This album is one of the greatest comebacks I have ever heard. To think anyone would want to lose a band solely focused on their mission to not only make shoegaze but to deliver it to the listener with complete trust that they will understand what they're hearing.
So to approach this album, come from their catalogue to this and feel the absent difference. The ingenious nature hits back with wispy vocals, sharp, jagged glitches, rusting synthesizers and stereo mastering that has every right to your headphones. Dreamer music for those who wished to lay on the bed while watching the iMac G3 screensaver dance on the orange-tinted CRT monitor on the first hours after coming home from the busy suburbs.
