Dead Leaf Echo on Custom Made Music

Dead Leaf Echo, out of Brooklyn, contacted me about their latest single on Custom Made Music...now what's sadder than a a dead old leaf on the ground? Well, maybe the fact that it's probably autumn which could be even more depressing than winter because the long, dark, cold end is coming. You aren't in the middle of it yet, but there's no stopping the end. Not to get too sad bastard on you, Dead Leaf Echo are self proclaimed 'nouveau romantics' which I take to have all the goth leanings of the Victorian, Oscar Wilde era and not the nearly satanic, eyeliner Bauhaus goth. Just like the 7" sleeve, you can't really see that object clearly, you're not even sure what you're looking at, it's out of focus, monochromatic. Didn't Oscar Wilde have an opium problem...or was that Baudelaire? Probably both.

'Half Truth' the A-Side track is a part of that ultra dreamy shoegaze sound, a huge sweeping layered melody with airy synth that gets right to the place 'Sometimes' from My Bloody Valentine does. Dead Leaf layers in the echo vocals while the guitar drowns in choruses and phasers, LG sings breathy and close to the mic over infinitely sustained guitars and they work combining equal elements of psyche and shoegaze ...really both of those genres were trying to achieve an altered mindstate.
It's a plodding, shoegaze drone....a rolling epic number with heavy studio work...it could take days to create the perfect atmospheric sample for any particular section. Waves rolling in... the inspiration for the rocking, back and forth basslines. You could imagine if the Crystal Stilts fast forwarded into the '90s from that '60s psyche point, how the this layered shoegaze would be a natural fit for the (now) old dudes. I'm working on that fan fiction.

'Babyeyes', an exclusive B-Side to this single is decidedly more uptempo then the previous side and I like when this sound takes the make you shake route, the vocals, so stylized, remain almost unrecognizable with layers of Ana's backup vocalizations alongside this instrumentation. Breathy ahh's, adding to the swirl late '90s shoegaze spiral sound of the track. This is an authentic composite of dancy uptempo shoegaze pop, they stay optimistic and drive out the gloom with their shimmery choruses all over everything.

Get this one from Custom Made Music.