It seems that shoegaze has been undergoing a quiet revival in recent years as music fans, tired of relentless posturing being used as a cover for poor musicianship, have started to embrace a more eclectic and interesting crop of musicians. Drawing influences from the likes of the Cure, Mogwai, Ride and their ilk, Victories at sea are a crucial example as they combine chiming, post-punk guitars with taut, driven beats and soundscape elements to create something that can truly immerse the listener.
My first thought when listening to ‘bloom’, the svelte opening track of ‘everything forever’, is of Toro Y Moi covering the Cure as a synth beat underpins gauzy guitars. There are also elements of Hot Chip and even Nordic giants swirling around in the band’s DNA, but ultimately it’s music that intelligently draws a line between the dance floor and the heart as danceable beats and swirling, emotive guitars combine in kaleidoscopic bursts of light. Better still is anthem-in-the-making ‘Florentine’ which combines a love of 90s indie with genuinely forward thinking elements, the beats and guitars coalescing perfectly to represent, not only the band’s dark quarters tucked away in Digbeth (Birmingham), but also the escapism that is fostered in such an environment. An early album highlight, ‘Up’ cleverly takes an industrial-strength beat (which, in and of itself, wouldn’t sound out of place on NIN’s ‘with teeth’) and uses it to underpin an indie anthem which, without the taut beat, would pack none of the impressive punch which it eventually unleashes. Hints of The Cure’s ‘wrong number’ are to be found here in the driving beat and post-punk guitars, but ultimately this is Victories at sea doing things their way and the result is a work that both challenges the senses and threatens to trigger a rush to the dancefloor. In contrast, ‘On your own’ is possibly one of the album’s most traditional cuts as it harks firmly back to the days when Pink Floyd tried to out-U2 U2 on ‘Momentary lapse of reason’ right down to the rippling guitar line and heaven-searching vocal line. Moving along similar lines to Losers and Mogwai’s excellent remix album ‘kicking a dead pig’, ‘DMC’ is an industrial-strength, post-rock belter complete with weirdly psychedelic outro, whilst ‘poles apart’ is liable to set festivals ablaze in 2016.
With the album rattling past at a relentless pace, ‘swim’ is pop music gold, drawing on early U2, the Cure and Slowdive with hallucinatory guitars colliding over an insistent beat. As with many of the tracks on offer here, the emphasis here is purely on delivering a concise, anthemic piece and whilst there is frequent opportunity for the music to devolve into squally chaos, the band only indulge this instinct in minute blasts – enough to make the point that there’s a real, rock ‘n’ roll heart beating at the centre of the music, but not enough to send the audience into a catatonic tail-spin into a psychedelic funk. ‘Future gold’ has a wordless chorus that is liable to be picked up by audiences everywhere whilst ‘into the fire’ has a dark, thudding beat and shimmering guitars that recalls the epic conclusion to Arab Straps ‘girls of summer’, not to mention a sublime instrumental conclusion that sets the senses soaring. The album concludes with ‘sirens’, a gentle, yet distorted piece that drifts gently into Mogwai territory via the emotive soundtrack work of Clint Mansell. It’s a perfectly dreamy conclusion to a perfectly dreamy album and it brings the veil down neatly on proceedings.
Victories at sea could so easily falter, either succumbing to the temptation to indulge in musical chaos or taking the equally tempting course of filing away the artier edges of their work to craft something blandly accessible. Yet here they do neither. There is so much potential in these songs for the band to go stratospheric and yet, should they do so, it will be without compromise. The music is beautiful, trippy, atmospheric and the vibe gently melancholic without once being depressing or downcast. Live there is great scope for the band to expand upon the palette they explore here, but on record they are beautifully concise. However you look at it ‘everything forever’ is a stunning album that will provide the perfect soundtrack to the fading light of Autumn and which will, undoubtedly, continue to provide the music as spring slowly merges into summer. The victories may be at sea, but this album sounds triumphant wherever you are.
