Magic America - Texting With the Dead b/w Andie

The fog is clearing, the sun is shining, and some cracks in the impenetrable nugaze facade have finally started to appear. For nearly ten years it felt as if nothing else could come out of the shoegaze scenes. Mopey half-waves to the likes of Nothing and Whirr abounded, while many had only the most rudimentary understanding of the scene as a whole that ultimately culminated in “shoegaze = fuzz pedals”. As with all other trends, however, shoegaze inevitably looped back in on itself to rediscover the diversity that flourished within those malleable days of the late 80s and early 90s.

Magic America has no easy parallels to the bands from that time yet effortlessly embody their inquisitive spirit. From blending shoegaze with brit pop (Ride), to goth and twee (Pale Saints), to world music (The Boo Radleys), the genre’s earliest adopters were an eclectic blend reflective of an increasingly diverse music scene. Much the same, Texting the Dead b/w Andie shows a band keenly aware of the zeitgeist, adopting the finely tuned processing of hyper pop and hyper rock before burying it under a dream pop sheen. The result is sure to satisfy those Philly nugaze fanatics that can’t get enough of the tweaked out gaze-tronica of Full Body 2 while still hungering for the stripped back slacker-core of Alex G. 
The best recommendation I can make is to get this on your warm weather playlists now and pair it up with last week’s Orchids recommendations. “Texting the Dead” makes an excellent one-two punch with “What About It”.