Circuit

With the blurred, aggressively messy feedback squall starting "White Walls" to kick things off, tinged shortly afterward by a steadier, dreamier pace that's pure evocative bliss, Landing on Circuit demonstrate just how outrageously good the band is throughout. The group's well-deserved reputation as one of the saviors of shoegaze for the new millennium rests on such releases as these. The Snow vocal team, when working together, invoke the Slowdive comparisons as much as the music, but crucially Landing is its own group, thanks in large part to Adrienne Snow's wonderful work on synthesizer. Whether it's the dive bomb swirls on "White Walls" or the initial lead tones on the lengthy "Across the Sky," intertwined with Baldwin's bass in a lovely combination before the song fully takes off to its own extended rapture, she adds just the right sonic glaze to the proceedings. As she takes the sole vocal lead at a number of times, she gets to showcase her contributions even more. Throughout the album Landing demonstrate the difference between merely copying and finding newer approaches that build on the past. Consider the descending chords on "Convergence," which initially sound like dream pop by numbers but then suddenly shift into a quietly rising improv, with Adrienne Snow's synth once again the killer touch. Meanwhile, "Coming Down" invokes older strains of psych drift just enough, somewhere between early Pink Floyd and the Doors crossed with Spacemen 3, all resulting in another lovely float through billowing clouds of music. Gardner acquits himself on drums well on this track, as well as the others, the end result a fine demonstration of Landing's excellent ensemble strength. The murky but attractive cover of a shadowy green forest perfectly suits the involving contents of Circuit.