Grandfeathered

Russian shoegaze band Pinkshinyultrablast didn't waste time working on their second album, Grandfeathered, which arrived a year after their 2015 debut, Everything Else Matters. Within that brief time period, the group already seems to have absorbed new influences and tried out different approaches to composition. One of the album's songs is titled "Glow Vastly," but it might as well be called "Grow Vastly." While Everything Else Matters proved that Pinkshinyultrablast were adept at creating dreamy, overdriven shoegaze with nods to 2010s-era indie electronic pop, on Grandfeathered they add an intriguing prog rock element to their sound, twisting and contorting time signatures and typically building tracks out to epic six-minute lengths. Instead of sounding bombastic and overblown, the songs build and become more exciting. In some places, when they get a bit more aggressive, they almost resemble Deafheaven minus any trace of metal influences. The group hasn't lost a drop of its dreaminess, however, with the group's complex guitar lines and singer Lyubov's angelic vocals still bathed in the requisite amounts of reverb effects. "Kiddy Pool Dreams" balances spiraling Rephlex/Skam-like synth melodies with a few bars of a sped-up disco shuffle rhythm before drifting off into the bliss realm, only to stomp back on the pedals harder than ever. A few tracks even slip into a relaxed, sunny Afro-pop-influenced groove, especially the album's closing title track, but somehow it still makes sense combined with the heavy guitar crunch and ethereal vocals. Most ecstatic of all is "The Cherry Pit," which begins with thundering drums before launching into the album's most gorgeous, heartfelt melody. As with before, it seems to get lost in a joyous haze for a few minutes before rushing to a furious burst at the end. There's no mistaking Pinkshinyultrablast's commitment to shoegaze; they seem to know it inside out, and they even named themselves after an album by Astrobrite, a side project of Lovesliescrushing, a long-running band that has produced some of the genre's most experimental music. But like that under-the-radar group, Pinkshinyultrablast don't play by the numbers, and Grandfeathered shows them looking outward while successfully building upon their already impressive sound. ~ Paul Simpson