Cassette Review: Honeyslide-S/T EP

It's both fitting and unfitting that Honeyslide label their music under "noise" rather than any other genre. At the core of every song on this beyond excellent debut EP is the way the band twists and turns sound. More so though, is that Honeyslide have produced possibly my favorite shoegaze releases of the year. It is unbelievable how these kids from London managed to produce such great music on their first release.

I think it might have to do with Honeyslide being one of the few bands to properly channel a '90s indie rock influence correctly. This is not meant to be dismissive in anyway. Take "Made for You" which lulls you in with gentle bass lines, a memorizing guitar riff, and sleepy vocals before pulling a Pixies and just engulfing you in utterly beautiful distortion before dropping back again. "Dripping", possibly the best track on the EP, opens in a similar way before morphing into a stoner shoegaze like take on Pavement's "Fillmore Jive", which is just as great as it sounds. "I Do" is as close as the band gets to their countrymen Yuck, but are still clearly in their own world with vocals so drenched in distortion they blur when the Moses Whitley's vocals end and Meytal Ben's begin. Closer "Sickly" is the closest the band comes to being pure shoegaze, dialing back the noise a tad to make clear the beautiful melodies the band uses to meld these songs together. It also serves as the perfect counter point to "Walter Steiner", the cassette's actual closer, which demonstrates the band can create near pure noise as well to the point of almost desolating the hooks contained within them.

It's a bit tricky to say what exactly propels Honeyslide's debut above the mountains of other shoegaze/indie rock/what have you bands out in this scene. What I do know is that that Honeyslide not only stand out, but tower over most of these other bands, and this EP is proof of even better things to come.



Links:

Honeyslide's Website
Buy the cassette EP here, from the band