Excellent Roanoke trio Eternal Summers impressed us enough with their previous album, 2012’s Correct Behavior, to include them in issue #11 of our print magazine. But clearly, they were just getting warmed up, as The Drop Beneath, the album they’re preparing to release next month, sounds even better so far.
Excellent Roanoke trio Eternal Summers impressed us enough with their previous album, 2012’s Correct Behavior, to include them in issue #11 of our print magazine. But clearly, they were just getting warmed up, as The Drop Beneath, the album they’re preparing to release next month, sounds even better so far. “Gouge” is its first single, and the shoegaze/dream-pop gorgeousness of its shimmering guitar lines and soaring vocals is entirely irresistible. All of the immediate reference points bring us back to the early 90s golden age of Anglophile guitar pop–Lush, The Jesus And Mary Chain, Cocteau Twins, Ride, etc. Nicole Yun’s incredible falsetto on the choruses is particularly stunning, and we kind of want to listen to this song all day. The hallucinatory video, in which close-ups of Yun’s singing mouth are sometimes replaced by those of her hirsute male bandmates, and strange images from natural settings are shifted between without any clear purpose, makes up what it lacks in linear narrative with an evocative visual presence. The whole thing looks and sounds like something we’d have caught on MTV’s 120 Minutes back in the early 90s, and if that isn’t a symbol of quality, we don’t know what is. Check out other tracks from The Drop Beneath that have recently premiered on NYLON, Refinery 29, and Pitchfork, and preorder the album from Kanine Records HERE. The Drop Beneath comes out March 4–we can’t wait. You can also catch Eternal Summers live when they open for The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart at Charlottesville’s The Southern on March 8. More info on that show can be found HERE.
By Andrew Necci