Nowhere Forever
Love Of Diagrams
Unstable Ape, 2009
3.5 stars
Love Of Diagrams have always had a knack for making the complicated sound simple. Their sound has been a mathy, ordered-mess of guitar patterns, repeated vocal chants and tight, taut drumming, but with Nowhere Forever they’ve succumbed to the late-noughties shoegaze bent and ramped-up the fuzz. The album’s title is a more-than-obvious (perhaps too obvious to be intentional) reference to Ride’s wonderful 1990 excursion into noisy pop Nowhere, and they’ve done the reference justice – the squalling guitars on Forever sound like gurgling sand, and blended with washy, muted walls of noise and some seriously catchy pop tunes these guys have nailed it. The beauty of this record however, is that they’ve managed it without losing any of the qualities that have endeared them to so many, both here and abroad. Tracks like Lookout and A Part Of You are up there with the nicest – I’d even go as far as to say ‘sweetest’ – they’ve ever laid down. Whether this is true shoegaze is up for debate, bit I personally think we’re going to need to come up with another name for it, because these guys aren’t wasting time looking at their feet.
Published in mX, Thursday August 20, 2009.
