Common Era
Album | Belong (band)
New Orleans duo's beautiful noise.
On their third proper release, New Orleans' Belong finally strike the perfect balance between the hazy instrumentals of previous albums and the pop band they've always seemingly aspired to be. The finest moments on Common Era are the most traditionally song-based: "Perfect Life" is the album highlight, a washed-out new wave track with a drum machine backbeat that would have made New Order happy back in 1982. At times the record comes dangerously close to collapsing under the weight of so much sonic fuzz-walls of gauzy guitar sounds and feedback that sound as if they were beamed in from some parallel universe-but the record pays obvious homage to krautrock and early '90s shoegaze while still managing to sound fresh. What Common Era lacks in hooks and discernible lyrics, it more than makes up for with a gazillion layers of beautifully-shaped noise.
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| Belong: Critical Connections | |
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