Ok so I guess the only mystery bigger than why a band from Texas would relentlessly pursue a more pop-oriented less experimental shoegaze in 2020 is why the fuck would a shoegaze band from Texas send their demo to an online publication that’s more than 50 feet underground in upstate New York?!

Theory #1; they think that ‘New York’ is ‘NEW YORK!’ i.e. Manhattan/Brooklyn. It’s not. We know nothing about the shoegaze scene in Manhattan or Green Point or wherever it’s centered in the City other than a Place to Bury Strangers had an interesting take on it around 10 years ago (which more importantly was good news because when we reviewed albums for another publication 10 years ago we got a free copy of a pink vinyl by the previous band some of their members were in called Skywave that made me $25 at my local record store).

Theory #2; they’re getting ‘New York’ confused with international American Heime Ville/Hollywood and think I can get someone’s ‘attention’ for them. In which case, you get points for trying since my Uncle was in a band with Harvey Weinstein, however, I highly doubt anyone wants to be ‘discovered’ by him or anyone like him right now if ever again. Also, if this is true (which I’m sure it’s not I’m just trying to be slightly offensively funny), bad EEP! Assuming that semites ‘know people’ in the show business is sort of anti-semitic. Shame on you.

Seriously though the serious mystery here; why would a self labelled shoegaze band from El Paso Texas be sending their demo out for review in 2020? I could understand if shoegaze was one of their influences (since recycling it does seem to be proving to be a shortcut to hipsterdom far longer than any other early nineties genre including any of the many that the (now) super beyond superhip Melvins invented) or if they were taking shoegaze to the next, or at least a new, level. Perhaps recycling some of the proto-shoegazers like Spacemen 3, Loop, or Jesus and Mary Chain to create a new interesting really genre bending electronic noise/noisecore/noise rock element which actually would explain why they sent it here too — we actually do get press releases from Whores. ever since we wrote a fake local music news story involving them so perhaps if you google some weird combination of ‘underground noise rock review blog’ Times Boredom comes up.

I guess the point is that I feel like I can write a bunch of bullshit to try to either make you laugh or roll your eyes because honestly there’s nothing worth writing about this band. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with them. Their songs would be pretty decent throwaway tracks on, say, Souvlaki or Glider. But they are just purely recycling every shoegaze trope, and worse yet they’re doing it in a disturbingly clean and almost anti-experimental way. There are no really strange production techniques, surprising druggy interludes that either disturb or pull you in or spit you back out, or long indeterminably noise passages… Their bandcamp name isn’t EEP.bandcamp.com, it’s ‘eepshoegaze.bandcamp.com’. And as much as their short description advertises their ‘eclectic’ shoegaze, the only real diversity of influences here is that they range from Ride to Chapterhouse. Unlike most groups that take Jesus and Mary Chain or MBV/Kevin Shields as a starting point and experiment from there, EEP seems to start from there, remove as much of the innovation and bizarre aspects that make it most interesting, summarize and homogenize the genre split it into easily digestable 4 minute chunks and, well, even then make pretty boring stuff.

Of course I could have been much nicer about this all and started from the assuming point that the group makes the music they do because they simply have a deep love and endless respect for the shoegaze genre and don’t think anything should be done to change that perfect sound regardless of what critics or fans think… but then I’d still have to ask why they didn’t just start a cover band or make their music, put it up on bandcamp like everyone else and NOT take the pretentious step of thinking their band is so good or interesting that they’d carpet bomb online review sites so much so that they’d hit a tiny bomb shelter in upstate New York.

If you want our advice (and we recognize that no one does nor should as really deep underground critics obviously can’t do to say the least), we suggest you branch out quite a bit… maybe become the actually eclectic shoegaze band you say you are. Or better yet take an aspect of shoegaze that really defined and was great about the genre, like the electronics and production experimentation or signal to noise ratio and how long you can hold it before it becomes anti-commercial… etc.

Thanks for your submission. Good luck to you.