Whirr-Heavy

Whirr have gone through many different forms since their initial inception. There was the strict shoegaze sound of their Distressor EP, the more '90s fuzz rock sound of their debut album Pipe Dreams, and then finally the sprawling/cascading sound that emerged on their Around EP last year. With each release, the band ventured into a new area of the shoegaze sound, exploring all the possibilities that the genre tag would allow in conjunction with the ever changing shape their band existed in at the time.

Now though, Whirr may have finally found their sound with their new album Sway. The band has seemed to have refined the more crushing aspects that they made on Around, focusing their sound to less of a build/climax style than to a more everlasting sludging through brightness quality. A taste of this was heard in the album's first single "Mumble", but the full effect of this is more present on "Heavy". Opening with thunderous drums and a wall of static fuzz, the track quickly gives way to a beautiful gliding guitar that sets the tone of the song. The production is what makes "Heavy" work so well. Every instrument shines through instead of colliding with one another like on previous Whirr albums. The thick thumps of the rhythm section are always ever present even as the noise swells more and more as the song progresses. The utterly beautiful guitar work is layered, the perfected melding of distorted riffing and noisy soundscape. Even the lose of the key balancing component of female vocals has been worked out with an ever so added presence of  Loren Rivera's vocals, which in turn give the track a lovely distant quality to it. With "Heavy" Whirr have finally whittled their sound to its core, and have crafted a pitch perfect piece of shoegaze around it.



Links:

Whirr's Facebook
Pre-order Sway here from Graveface Records