Experimental, strange, shoegazey, disturbingly dark, atmospheric post-rock from the Philadelphia fronted by songwriter and guitarist Douglas Dulgarian, with some echoes of My Bloody Valentine, also with vivid spoken word and evocative, and differently visceral, haunting, heavy guitar-textures. TAGABOW offer a challenging listen to anyone not regularly immersed in the experimental, post-rock shoegaze oeuvre, and this album, short as it is at under 28 minutes might appear as a dark musical fog, but then also yields some rewarding experiences as your ears adjust to the urban mist and scratch below the surface of these musical LOTTO cards. Opener The Chase is dominated by the noise-textured guitars, until striking spoken lines capture a visceral underworld of drug dependence: “A substance, that will make me sob pathetic to my girlfriend up high in miracle's castle / The dark disease lined across my sweaty forehead a dead giveaway, my halo / In three days it will sink down to my neck and choke me out, but she kisses mе tonight.” Trainers will also transfer anyone’s head elsewhere: “Mouth wet at the Disney bread/ Crack dream on the floor / Bird chest in a well-built nest / Sticks, plastic, and chore / Treat death like a teacher's pet/ Walk down to the store / Dawn spreads over dead sunsets / Glance back at the door.” This is dense, vivid material, a fuzzy world come half into focus. American Food also stands out with the communication of multiple sensations and images across a recorded message: “The sound of that car going by / Captured forever in your voicemail / A thought comes to fruition / Ripens / And hits the ground rotten/ Is that rain or distant applause? / I wonder as I hang up / And say out loud/ Your luck could be my luck.” RL Stine, Slo Acrostic (compare this to MBV’s Who Sees You) and final track Herpim are also disturbingly powerful. Out on ATO Records.
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