"Shoegaze is back! Run for the hills!" has been the cry from some naysayers over the past few years, but I'm not one of them. Tamaryn and Rex John Shelverton are a two-piece specialising in reverb-heavy guitar and low, sometimes ominous, vocals. While there's a lovely bass throb to the slower songs, it's when Tamaryn pick up the pace that things become really interesting. There's a terrific drive to songs like 'Sandstone' and 'Love Fade', and the femininity in Tamaryn's vocals add an ethereal touch that doesn't feel affected or out of place.
A more direct and shorter shoegaze hit than is traditional in the genre, let yourself be attracted to the darkness in Tamaryn's music.
26. Wild Nothing - Gemini.
This is the sort of album that John Hughes might have used to soundtrack Kevin Bacon's Jake Briggs meeting his fantasy woman in She's Having a Baby.
Wild Nothing specialise in 1980s dreamy fuzz-pop, not too dissimilar from the music being produced by The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Radio Dept. or the sadly-missed Dirty on Purpose. You can also hear the 4AD sound in the songs on Gemini, but this isn't a trite genre exercise. Just listen to the bursts of sunlight on 'Summer Holidays' and pop thrills of 'Chinatown' and you realise that while leading man Jack Tatum might glance back for inspiration, he's always looking ahead in the search for pure pop melody.
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