Tag: California shoegaze bands

Rewind Review: Cosmonauts – Lazerbeam (2012)

The EP Lazerbeam from Los Angeles, California shoegaze rockers Cosmonauts is a great introduction to their forceful and hypnotizing sound if you haven’t heard it before now.

The title track opens the EP, sounding a bit like a Hanni El Khatib track at first with its echoing vocals and early 1960’s garage rock beats, but then that fuzz comes in and takes you to another dimension. The song’s about realizing a relationship is coming to an end and not being able to do much about it (“Please don’t leave me, man. You’re the only one I can stand. Begging you not to leave me, babe. You’re the only thing that is sane…”).

“Cut Your Hair” gets off to a heavy start with guitars set to maximum growl and the dual vocals about embracing “the dark side of pain” set to heavy reverb. “Crocodile Teeth” keeps the fuzzed-out shoegaze sound going as the dual vocals of Alexander Ahmadi and Derek Cowart bounce off each other so much (and so well) that you’re not sure where one ends and the other begins. Oh yeah, their dual guitar work does the same thing, producing a mind-altering effect that’s hard to describe.

You might think a song called “Slower” would be a mellow way to end an EP, but Cosmonauts flip the script a bit and end the album with a rocker instead. The drums are like a chugging freight train while Ahmadi and Cowart’s vocals boom off the back walls of your house and the guitar riffs hit you in brisk waves.

Lazerbeam is short, but loud and bold. It takes you by surprise and immediately makes you wonder what else these cats can do. Check out any of their full albums for more great shoegaze.

Keep your mind open.

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Rewind Review: Cosmonauts – Persona Non Grata (2013)

The title of Cosmonauts‘ 2013 album Persona Non Grata is Latin for “Person Not Appreciated.” In the world of politics it refers to someone prohibited from entering or staying in a country. Cosmonauts are known for wall-to-wall shoegaze riffs that highlight lyrics of alienation and dissatisfaction (from the world in general to something as simple as the effort it takes to go to a party), so it’s a perfect title for an album reflecting themes of not fitting in anywhere.

The album starts with “Shaker” (which does indeed have a shaker prominent in its sound), in which the band sings about uncertainty and being dumbfounded by one’s own willful ignorance (“I can’t believe that I can’t believe that I can’t believe.”). “Sweet Talk” brings in psychedelic reverb to the rolling riffs and a solid rock groove in a song about murder.

“Wear Your Hair Like a Weapon” was the first single from Persona Non Grata. It’s a crunchy, echoing blast that tells the tale of a dangerous woman. The drum beat on it is wicked and the way it drifts into a trippy section near the end is great. The guitars on “My Alba” have a Middle Eastern sound that I love and might make a lava lamp materialize in your office or bedroom while you’re not looking.

“What Me Worry” was the slogan of Mad Magazine‘s Alfred E. Newman whenever confronted with something out of his control – particularly in the world of politics. The song keeps this attitude throughout it, but focuses it toward a relationship coming to an end (and the killer bass line and shredding guitar solos only make it better).

“I don’t worry about the other guys, ’cause they know me well and I’m cold as ice,” they sing at the beginning of “Pure Posture” – a song about posturing masculinity to hide insecurity. The opening guitars on “I’m So Bored with You” sound like saw mills in full operation. “Vanilla” is the song that follows. “Vanilla” is another term for “boring” or “plain,” especially in the bedroom. The song bounces along like a groovy dream and is hardly boring. The wink of it following “I’m So Bored with You” is inescapable as it tells the tale of girls coming to Los Angeles (the band’s hometown) and them pleading for her to go home and avoid the pitfalls of the city and new relationships there

“Dirty Harry” moves along as fast as an action film and almost dares you to keep up with it. The closer, “Summertime Blue,” ends the album with southern California shine that turns into prismatic colors swirling around you, even as the band sings, “Nothing ever seems to turn out right, and I’m staring at the sky…”

It’s more disconnection. Cosmonauts knew in 2013 that we were all racing down a road of distancing ourselves from others because we were too afraid to embrace the present and the light within us and everyone else. We made ourselves into persona non grata, never at home anywhere because we were too busy being elsewhere with our phones and computers. They, in the meantime, were using rock to propel into orbit and encourage us to kick down the barriers we’d created.

Keep your mind open.

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Rewind Review: The Donkeys – Sun Damaged Youth (2018)

“It’s the year 2025, California has been banished from the United States for water theft.” That’s the first line of The Donkeys‘ futuristic surf-psych concept album Sun Damaged Youth. It’s about a “pack of teenaged misfits armed with skateboards” doing what they can to survive in a radioactive, yet still lovely, desolate landscape. Not only has California been abandoned, but so has most of Earth. The elite have fled to Mars and left the rest of us amid the toxic slime and tortuous heat they helped create.

The opening cut, “S.D.Y.,” is full of lovely Beach Boys melodies mixed with shoegaze surf guitars. 60’s retro organ sounds dominate “Radiation,” as they sing, “On the beach, you’re never out of reach.” Part of the story of this concept album is that the teenage wastelanders are kept sane by radio transmissions from a DJ known as “Cherry Cheetah” on KTOX Radio broadcast from somewhere deep underground. She presents songs like the dream-poppy “Candy Foam” and fictional bands like the Coffin Nails doing a surf instrumental called “Space Slip,” the Savage Detectives performing “Pier Rat” (a bit of a spooky tune with that vintage organ in it), the Santa Anas playing “Pink Seaweed” (an early 1960’s soul instrumental), and The Divine Invasions playing a dreamwave tune called “Weed Wacker.”

“Kool Kids” is shoegaze bliss with bright vocals that still have that distant sound that only shoegaze bands seem to know how to create. “We Are All So Young” is a salute to the point in life where one realizes youth is ending and adulthood is looming. “It’s time to leave the streets behind. I hear the mountains are doing fine,” they say. “Summer’s Dream” is like a long lost Beck cut with its languid beats and vocals as the SDY remember when summer days were spent playing games and surfing instead of scrounging for food and dealing with, as evidenced in the next track, “Green Gunk” that ruins everything it touches. “Unusual” is a short track that floats by you like a feather on the wind. “Sticky Sand” is an upbeat surf rocker that hides a warning about ocean pollution.

“All In the Eyes” brings in Eastern rhythms and guitar sounds (as well as chirping birds, perhaps the first ones seen by the SDY in years) as they sing about idyllic fields and how there’s “no need for disguise when everything’s real.” This is true. When “all the worth is gone, nothing is real,” as they say. This world is illusion. The world of the SDY is illusion, yet its lessons are important. The characters in the Donkeys’ fiction learn that what others see as a wasteland is truly a beautiful, present reality. We’d all be better off if we could see this.

Keep your mind open.

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