Today Is All We Have

In 2008, Lower Heaven released the beautiful and criminally ignored album Ashes. Fans of that record feared the quiet that followed, but in early 2011 the L.A. band reappeared with Today Is All We Have, a tightly constructed collection of neo-psychedelia propelled by shimmering guitars and swirling vortexes of delay and darkly seductive rhythms. The quartet blends a few genres with gusto—shoegaze, paisley-patterned psych-pop, and ‘80s British post-punk à la The Cure or Echo & The Bunnymen. One listen to the gorgeous, multiflavored title track should have fans of all the above fully hooked. “Before You Turn to Dust” sparkles, with the band’s crystalline guitars eschewing effects in favor of hypnotic kaleidoscopes. “Firearms” brandishes a more sinister tone in the sustained washes of guitar and bleakly ominous percussive assault. That this tune gives way to a track like “Wilderness” (where Byrds-ish vocals soar over a bed of keyboards and crisp autoharp) is but one reason to love Today Is All We Have. There are at least seven others.