CITRUS CLOUDS, the excellent Arizonan shoegaze trio who are inspired by those big, big skies above their home city of Phoenix, have just released a second single from their forthcoming second album, Collider.
We were delighted to premiere the first single from the sessions for the new album, “A Pastel Sky”, back in July. We found it a marvellous shoegaze rush, with those guitars having just the correct blend of evocative ring you got from Slowdive’s debut trio of EPs for Creation.
We said: “Guitars shimmer and feedback, bend microtonally. Stacie’s voice is deeply swathed and embedded in the ecstatic six-string rush … that joy and wonderment in sound, the harmony, the overtonal high. Think also, if you knew them, turn-of-the-century Canadians Southpacific. (Get to know them if you don’t).”
The new single is poppier, and that ain’t a dirty word, no sir; it’s got that Pixiesish spatial dynamic in which a simple-yet-great bass line runs the show, then the guitars come a-rollin’ in and seize your heart. And it’s all deliciously shoegazey. We’ve embedded the new video, below. Dive in. One hundred and fifty seconds of magic.
Bassist-singer Stacie Huttleston drapes the vocal grace over a beautiful slice of ‘gaze with a little bite in that riffing refrain. It perfectly follows Oscar Wilde’s maxim about pleasure: it leaves you wanting more.
Collider is in the can; the band, who also number singer-guitarist Erick Pineda and drummer Angelica Pedrego among their ranks, are looking for a label to work with to make sure their new album gets the audience we and they think it deserves.
The band will also be appearing as part of the streamed Latin American music fest Independencia Sonica on September 26th. Independencia Sonica is a celebration of leftfield Hispanophone rock, and Citrus Clouds will be lining up alongside Anajunno, Sea Temples, Resplendor and others for a dive into psych, dream pop, post-punk and more from Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador and elsewhere. The link above will take you to the festival’s Facebook page to find out more.
You can find Citrus Clouds over at Bandcamp, natch, where they’ve got other goodies on offer, such as previous delightful seven-tracker Ultra Sound. You can also find them on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. We’ve said it before, we’ll said it again: Record labels, you know what to do.
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