Tamaryn - The Waves

One of these days, the ongoing shoegaze revival is going to throw up its very own ready-made answer to Spinal Tap: a band, in other words, so deeply indebted to the whole My-Bloody-Mary-Chain-Twins aesthetic that they end up a dry ice-shrouded, reverb-drenched parody of themselves.
 
It must be said that Tamaryn come pretty close to being this band on debut album The Waves. Before you’ve even pressed play, the song titles (‘Haze Interior’, ‘Cascades’, Love Fade’ – I could go on) read like they’ve been created by some sort of shoegaze name generator. “Come down to the surface / The surface reflects the light” sighs charcoal-fringed frontwoman Tamaryn (yes, that’s her actual name) on the opening title track, and we’re left in no doubt whatsoever as to what sort of record collection this California-via-New York duo have at home.
 
Not that there's anything wrong with tipping ones hat towards musical progenitors – Kevin Shields proudly professed his Velvet Underground obsession after all. Besides, Tamaryn are nothing if not self-aware, claiming in interviews to simply want to “add to the conversation” already started by their forebears. On this evidence, that conversation revolves around layered guitarscapes and liberal doses of tremolo, all set against far-away drumbeats and shimmering vocals that ooze from the speakers. As we’ve seen in recent years, this sort of thing can produce results ranging from the bland (Asobi Seksu) to the blistering (A Place To Bury Strangers), but the quality control in place across these nine tracks stands Tamaryn in excellent stead.
 
It's a pretty solid debut, all told. ‘Love Fade’ bobs along nicely atop a sturdy bassline and swirling delay effects, Tamaryn’s head-down vocals sounding at once blissful and bloodshot. Elsewhere, ‘Sandstone’ rides in on what sounds like a discarded entrail from Geoff Barrow’s sessions for The Horrors’ Primary Colours (never a bad thing), before giving way to a starburst middle-eight and the sort of burnt-edge coda that’ll have you double-checking the calendar to make sure it’s not still 1992. ‘Dawning’’s wash of twisted riffage could bolster any comedown playlist, while ‘Mild Confusion’ is as feverish as its lyrics, sounding not unlike The Big Pink if they didn't try so hard, and bringing The Waves to a suitably rolling close.
 
Curiously enough, the album’s cover art blurs the line between homage and coincidence: Tamaryn strides across a vast desert landscape, looking for all the world as though she’s just crawled out of the cave pictured on the cover of The Verve’s titanic 1993 A Storm In Heaven LP.
 
More than simply wearing their influences well, then, Tamaryn have the dynamics and textures of shoegaze down to a tee. It's a feat made all the more impressive by the fact that everything here was committed to tape in a relatively primitive San Fran recording space - without any synths or effects pedals, remarkably. For anyone who’s yet to hear Mr. Ashcroft’s aforementioned magnum opus, or have their mind melted by Slowdive’s cocoon-like sound, The Waves is a near-perfect point of entry to The Scene That Celebrates Itself. Dive in and start swimming backwards.