Record Review // L.A. Dies "Drifting Still" (Harding Street Assembly Lab)

$18 //
https://la-dies.bandcamp.com/album/hsal-49-drifting-still //

L.A. Dies is not a band to be taken lightly.   You could think that maybe you'll go for a run around your neighborhood and put this on digital or put the record on while you clean up around your house, but the truth is that these songs will consume all of your attention as soon as you press play, as they should.    At the heart of all of the sounds within these songs, you must remember more than anything else how powerful they truly are.   This makes them perhaps more engaging than any other album I have ever heard and rightfully so.

"Once It All Settles" is the opening track on this record and while it builds it also has this dreamy quality to it.   One of the strongest components to this music which you will hopefully retain throughout the entire album is that drumming.    This could easily be in a genre of -gaze, shoegaze even and if you look into something like The Blog That Celebrates Itself you'll find a number of artists with which L.A. Dies could be friends with (particularly, they did this covers album of "Nevermind" and I hear some hints of Nirvana in the songwriting styles of L.A. Dies)

"Tend To Do" has these ah's behind it like bubbles but it has a slow dance synthwave feel overall.    These songs have somewhat of that Anna Nalick radio way about them and, no, I will never stop loving or name dropping Anna Nalick.    How this can be so intense and yet so sad at the same time is something I feel like only L.A. Dies knows.   "New" comes on with a nice drive and I can only compare the guitar riffs with The Cure though I know it is something else.

Lyrically, the way "Feels Really Small" sounds make me think of Polly Scattergood but once that song opens up that comparison for me it sticks and I can hear pieces of Polly Scattergood in all of these songs (which is definitely not a band thing at all)   "Even Now" opens up with that post-something sound which I believe brought the magic to a band such as Thursday.   "Azalea" somehow dives into this big FNL build before "Fathoms" takes us into a darker build and at the end of the song you can hear water.

Strings now open up the final song, "Circle", and this is really one of those albums within an album as "Circle" itself is just such a huge song and after you hear it you will not only come to the end of "Drifting Still" but your life will be forever changed.