The great thing about the new one from Archways, “Victoria,” is that it is a brilliant sonic balancing act. If dream-pop/shoegaze often loses its sense of form and function under billowing walls of sonics or clouds of floating, ambient shimmer, and today’s indie music is, more often than not, just reliant on thrashy guitars, a rock sound disguised under designer labels and complicated haircuts, here we have a band that has found the sweet spot between those worlds.
Confident and recognizable riffs and shuffling beats build a sonic spine which is then used to gather shimmering sonics and walls of sound opaque enough that they don’t smother everything.
It’s a great place to make music, a place where you can have your cake and eat it, appealing to the indie mainstream as readily as you catch the ear of more discerning music fans. A place where artistry and accessibility, cultishness and commerciality, poise and popularity are all given equal billing.
And it isn’t just a musically brilliant song; it is also lyrically clever. Seen through a Victorian woman’s eyes, sacrifice and polarisation become less ideological notions and more pure reality. History repeats, hearts break, power corrupts, but this sound acts as the perfect rallying cry, raw and urgent, a soundtrack for our times.
