Strange Weather

2016 release from the post-rock/shoe gaze outfit. It opens slowly, the sound of freezing wind seeping through your window, 45 seconds to contemplate existence will spring ever arrive and when it does will we still be here to see it. Deardarkhead started all the way back in 1988, progenitors and pioneers, inventors and inheritors. Captured Tracks put out a retrospective of their early work in 2012, and the band's still going strong today, making dreamy melodic music that fills the spaces in your head, what The Big Takeover last year called a beautiful bloom of kaleidoscopic sound. 2016 sees the release of Strange Weather, the band's most intriguing offering yet. When their longtime singer left in 2009 they decided to continue as an instrumental act, but Deardarkhead isn't a postpunk Ventures, or a shoegaze Lightning Bolt. Instead, these New Jersey shoegazers practice a kind of sonic ju-jitsu, turning their perceived weakness into a strength. With only the titles to guide us, an incomplete road map, there's more room here for the listener to get lost in what's happening, to create their own meaning. Deardarkhead make cinematic music, and in this movie the listener is the star.