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While they might seem pretty specific, terms such as shoegaze and dream pop seek to describe a broad range of music, everything from cavernous, post-rock soundscaping to minimalist, ambient understatements. Saline in general, and “Restless” in particular, fall towards the former of that range, a place where musical landscapes are carved out of the air by searing guitar crescendos, where drums drive and thunder relentlessly towards unseen horizons, where the basslines add muscle as well as melody and where the vocals are dragged under the sonic swell, more a dream-state musical texture rather than a means of direct communication.
It is a place where the likes of My Bloody Valentine and, more latterly, underrated bands such as Tombstones in Their Eyes would not only recognise but be be right at home.
There is an art to noise; such songs are built not only from volume and velocity but more importantly from delicate balances of grit and groove and grandeur and grind, from pace and passion and power and poignancy. There might be those out there, yes metallers and avant-garde noiseniks I’m looking at you, that think it is enough to fill up the sonic space with overdrive and energy, but, as always, the adage holds – it ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it. And “Restless” is the perfect example of doing it with finesse.
