SRSQ – Ever Crashing

While the sonic touchstones remain the same as her solo debut, namely the most emotive edges of late 80s post-punk and the immediate shoegaze progenitors, the scale of SRSQ’s second solo LP has been sent skyward. It’s a record that every aspect strains to make the songs as huge as possible, be it the titanic synth chords or the blown out guitar lines that sound like diving biplanes. When the album hits its stride and indulges in its poppier inclinations it really works. The swooping choruses at the end of Dead Loss sound like they’re being sung from the centre of a hurricane, and Ever Crashing grows into an absolute behemoth that has no right to not feel faintly ludicrous, but the quality of her songwriting and voice carries it all – always powerful, it never for a second feels disingenuous. 

However, the rest of the album operates at this same scale, but wrapped around songs that don’t carry it as well. It makes the record feel a touch uniform. Even the slight deviations, like Abyss which is shot through with the influence of Julee Cruise, are scaled up, operating at such a grand scale that by the album's latter stages it begins to have little impact. Once you’re no longer being swept along by the songwriting, flaws begin to present themselves, mainly that a good few of the songs feel overlong. There also comes a point where lyrically, the repeated seasonal imagery begins to feel less like a thematic core and more like a paucity of imagination.

It’s a record that at its best is truly superb but that can’t help but tire as the record goes on.

Listen to: Dead Loss, Used to Love, Ever Crashing