Top 33 of the Year.....Numbers 27 - 26

27. Tamaryn - The Waves.

"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.

Album Review - Tamaryn: The Waves

Is it dream-pop now rather than shoegaze?

For a long time shoegazers were looked on as the scum of the earth. To quote Nicky Wire of Manic Street Preachers “we’ll always hate Slowdive more than Adolf Hitler”. If that’s not enough proof of shoegaze’s evil, pernicious influence, Nicky continues: “Boys and girls, mums and dads, I think you're at the wrong night. This isn't Slowdive or Chapterhouse or another one of those nothing bands, you lazy lazy people.”

I think old Nicky has a point, but only up to a point. It was all going so well when it was just My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive and Ride, but once Chapterhouse, Moose (Moose! For crying out loud...) and Adorable (is there a more twee name this side of Belle and Sebastian?) jumped on the bandwagon it became a case of “more for less”, and then the mid-1990s brought the Britpop years and shoegaze was forgotten.

The rehabilitation started slowly, but around 2004 it picked up largely in no small part to the success of the Sonic Cathedral club night and subsequent record label. What followed was a raft of shoegaze-y bands like The Radio Dept, Asobi Seksu, M83, Team Ghost, School of Seven Bells and many more. The difference this time appeared to be a more joyous, pop rush attached to the overuse of the effects pedal, general drone and guitar overdubs. Hence, “dream-pop”.

The term seems to have captured disparate artists such as Best Coast, Beach House, Grizzly Bear and High Places. None of these bands could be said to be particularly similar in style, other than sharing an ear for a cracking melody. There’s also the noisier end of the spectrum inhabited by A Place to Bury Strangers and the sadly-missed Dirty on Purpose.

All this is a rather long-winded intro to a review of one of the most vibrant albums of the year so far, Tamaryn’s The Waves.

Formed by New Zealander Tamaryn (voice, one name will do) and former Vue member Rex John Shelverton (instrumentation, three names), The Waves is a dusty, atmospheric experience, full of layers of fuzzed-out guitars and drawl-y vocals reminiscent of Hope Sandovaal and even, at times, Siouxsie Sioux.

Tamaryn describes the band as “...atmospheric, emotional and deliberate. It has a big range. But if you're talking more genre-specific, I think that's a little harder because there are a lot of different things involved. A lot of people say shoegaze, a lot of people say death rock with gothic overtones. I also hear dreampop. I think it's a mix of a lot of things. It's taking a lot of things I love and fusing it through my own interpretation.”

While a lot of music in this genre seems on the verge of floating away into the air, much of The Waves is given a dynamic, solid body by the low-end sounds of the bass and, possibly, programmed drums. There’s the guitar-laden pop rush of “Love Fade”, and the more sedate and ethereal “Choirs of Winter”, and Tamaryn sound like a band confident in turning their hand to whatever mood fits.

Could be best as a headphones record, but play the album as night falls and you might experience the gothic world that Tamaryn and The Waves inhabits.