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If dreampop is the sound of one’s subconscious hallucinations during sleep, then lovelisecrushing is the ambient wash of those phantasms filtered through the waking light of day, the specific images slipping away, leaving only the vaguest of feelings. Scott Cortez‘s guitar shimmers pick up where most shoegaze axes leave off, shaping wispy cathedrals of chords and drones out of the echoing reverb of feedback, distortion and tone. Melissa Arpin-Duimstra‘s ethereal voice is part of the landscape, the sunlight reflecting off of random pools of rain. The duo paints abstract pictures of electric sound that seem defiantly amorphous at first blush, but eventually draw you in like a siren lazily summoning her latest lover.
Girl Echo Suns Veils collects unreleased recordings – accurately labeled “ephemera” – from 1990-1992, the band’s first three years of existence (plus one song recorded in 2000). Mostly instrumental, the music is even less structured or melodic than on the band’s more formal recordings. But the lack of obvious drive works to the band’s advantage, disallowing easy identification of verbal images and artistic intent. Instead the listener has to discover his/her own poetry inside the undulating drift of the music, create his/her own dream from the wafting fragments of emotion. Music that both challenges and envelopes its audience is a rare thing, and that loveliescrushing hits that mark with outtakes is a pretty remarkable achievement.
