Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Exit Calmly


Remember when Verve issued their debut album, Storm In Heaven? Ok, you were probably too young, but that album is so reminiscent of what Exit Calm's self titled debut album wants to sound like you'd swear these guys were all related to Mad Richard Ashcroft himself. Exit Calm are a band so rooted in the 90's shoegazing movement that it's almost impossible to believe that this band is actually from this decade and not the one twenty years earlier. With all the characteristics of their fellow Northerners in hand and a somewhat more polished sound Exit Calm is here to remind you that the shoegazing revival is full on and it's being broadcast...from space.

So sprawling, ethereal, and swirling is Exit Calm that one wonders if the guys who make up this band are truly human and if they are what kinds of medication did they take while making this record? One can't help but consider these things, because so much of their debut is lost in a dry ice fog of reverb, distortion, strung out vocals, and an overwhelming feeling of just coming out of a coma. This is heady stuff that washes over you with sheet after sheet of guitar chaos. Armed with banks of pedals, effects, noise, and guitars on the verge of the death, Exit Calm are able to weave their drugged out brew of songs with such ease that it's stunning.

Exit Calm is a fantastic record of revivalist gazing glory. Sounding as if they walked off the cover of a 1991 issue of Melody Maker, Exit Calm are an exciting band that are lost somewhere in a dream and/or a nightmare and refuse to come out. Their songs are rich, textural, and sound like sonic cathedrals crashing to the ground. If shoegazing was killed by grunge, someone clearly forgot to tell Exit Calm and it should stay that way.

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