Mahogany...

Perhaps, as a lad or lass, you were one of those folks who ate, slept and breathed shoegazer dream rock. You worshipped Kevin Shields and believed that My Bloddy Valentine was the logical culmination of hundreds of years of music refinement. I was not one of those people. I had an appreciation for the shoegaze but never dove in quite as deep as some of my friends. There are of course many descendants of the shoegaze empire currently playing out, including but not limited to Daysleeper, Ester Drang, Amusement Parks on Fire, Bethany Curve. For whatever reasons (I imagine a love for the sound is high on the list) Darla Records seems to be a home to whatever remnants of the glory days of shoegaze remain. In particular Darla is home to Robin Guthrie guitarist and producer for showgaze pioneers Cocteau Twins and arguably the man that helped to launch MBV, Slowdive, Ride. Guthrie's currently working on the instrumental tip but you can still hear the chiming looped guitar chords and atmospheric keyboards that defined the Cocteau Twins.

But what's got my attention today is the new disc that arrived in the mail from Darla Record's Mahogany called Connectivity!. Is it shoegaze? I guess. That's certainly the direction the press wants to push you. There are many aspects of the record that fit the profile from the looped guitars, steady almost New Order like percussion and beat, drum machines, keyboard washes, breathy vocals, swirling panache of melody and drone, lots of layers of fuzz and cream, it's all there. But Mahogany is also just rock and roll, plain old music made to make you nod your head. While I'm always trying to shed the labels that bands (more often record labels) feel the need to apply it is sometimes necessary to simply acknowledge that a band can work so deeply within the confines of their influences that they come to embody the sound completely. Such is Mahogany. If you like shoegazer rock, you like Mahogany.

1 song from disc 2 of Connectivity:

Supervitesse (extended mix)