“Do you think the stars care?”
Blackened shoegaze is a mature genre with many all-star acts. When you pool its characteristics, its appeal for songwriters becomes clear as it sets so many dials to maximum. It can be heavy in a gritty, riffy way, simply deliver a wall-of-sound, or even be as quiet as the night sky. Indulgent track lengths are encouraged, prog influence is not frowned upon and effect-solos are a viable option. Listeners are expecting an enthralling sound but might well embrace a more rudimentary setup. And that’s not to mention the emotive potential of the genre, offering a space for anguish, stillness, solace, and personal reflection. Soaring is a new project out of Toulouse, France, and their debut EP dives unapologetically and successfully into the blackgaze sound, pondering the universal and existential.
“A Blurred Contour of Everything” swoops in with classic shoegaze chords and steady grooving bass following a post punk vein. The instrumental switches beats until vocals are ready to roost, blending both clean and foul, souped up with reverb and a dejected delivery. Synths far too cute to coexist with the glum nostalgia of the track are the remaining melodic element, but as artists like Sadness and Unreqvited have shown, such juxtapositions only endear us further. The second half of the track dials back the tempo, repeating the track’s themes in tragic slow motion. A delayed lead punches in on cue for the double-kicking finish. This track is the ideal opener and should be the single that convinces you to take Soaring seriously.
With the first heartbreaker out of the way, “Sun” follows and uses the same elements to craft a different atmosphere – something more uncertain, and perhaps more ambitious than the opener. It’s easy for a blackgaze project to serve up oodles of misery once they’ve dialled in the sad chords, so a conscious effort should be made to switch things up. The closing passages of “Sun” focus on an Alcest-style clean guitar lead, but happy to divert into a different moods for essential ambiguity.
With “A Blurred Contour of Everything” and “Sun” starting Soaring off in a heavy stride, it’s the job of side B to show a different side of the project. “The Great Lines” is a vocal post rock track replete with shakers for percussion. It’s very much not an ‘unplugged’, track, yet it declines to use harsh vocals, and in fact, falls to a whisper for the “drop” where we might have expected them. “Starflowers” has an epic ten minute runtime and returns to those heights of heaviness once again, but its lasting impression will be its slow-dance pace, especially the pirouetting synth leads that link us back to the opener’s sound.
Soaring is a project that isn’t hiding its influences (I’ll leave most of the comparisons as an exercise for the reader), but that doesn’t make it superfluous. The blackened shoegaze heavyweights of the world have all worked hard on their discographies over at least ten years, and all started from humble beginnings. This debut EP is a very promising start for Soaring, with a focused runtime and a great execution of the sound.
7/10
Soaring releases through Stellar Frequencies on the 24th January and can be pre-ordered here.