19. The Golden Awesome - Autumn

M'Lady's Records. 2011. 9 songs, 37 minutes.

Writing this under a blanket on a couch next to a fireplace, by a window that looks at a nature scene. My friends and I rented a cabin in upstate New York to hang out while we work on our academic projects. We are calling it a “writer’s retreat.” I take my brain away from the things I should be writing to focus on this self-imposed weekly endeavor of listening. My album choice is a recommendation from a supportive reader from New Zealand. The Golden Awesome is a band from Wellington (NZ) that seems to have disbanded since 2019 –the last reported gig on their blog. They only recorded this album and a tape, a little over a decade ago. When they were active, they “certainly knew how to fill a room with a big lush soundscape” according to my source. Without knowing much about this band, I already love the fact that all one can learn from them is in a three page blog and a Bandcamp link.

“Autumn” starts strong, with a chord progression backed by layers of atmospheric distortion. The singers are two and they mesh well, singing so connected they often reach a unison. The vocal melodies are very sweet, complementing the harsher sounding harmonics of the effect-ridden guitars. The chorus is very dreamy, bringing the song to its happier spectrum. The outro highlights the complex sounds that have been structuring the song while the couple sings portions of the chorus. This start feels blissful, in a weird/ intriguing way. “Astronomy” hits harder, the tempo is faster, the distortion is more direct. There is only one voice, of a female singer, that gets doubled at some measures of the verse. The vocal melody is less dynamic, making this song feel sadder, more serious. The lines that has been repeated with the same inflection since the verse are addictive, they accompany me to the end of the song.

“High Life” sounds more lo-fi than the songs that came before it. The voices have some robotic effect that makes them harder to discern in the verse, they become more “humanly” fleshed out in the chorus. There is a guitar doing some straightforward distorted chords and another one using pedals to make this song sound spacey. The robotic voices gain another meaning when I decipher this otherworld reference. My favorite moment comes three quarters into the song where everything becomes more somber and minimalistic, sustained by the more direct chord progression, now back in planet Earth. A return to the chorus closes this song, so far my favorite from this captivating album. “Blue” is a short song, an interlude with spectral voices that connect in friendly, rather than solemn, ways.

“Sooner and Later” sounds like my new favorite song, even though ten seconds ago I didn’t know existed. There is a muddiness to the presentation of this otherwise beautiful pop melodies that has me absolutely hooked. The chords interrupting each of the verse iterations is slapping my heart, unapologetically. Much of this song is unpredictable, and the magic occurs between the sections that feel most familiar (that resolving chord progression accompanied by the singer’s ascending pitches) and the more chaotic in between. I want to, but I can’t figure out what the singer says in those resolving moments. This fascinates me even more. Keep your secrets. I was coming back anyway.

“Ruby” is an interesting transition. The tones in the guitar sound different, less atmospheric, but still unconventional. The guitars feel more severe, the chord progression makes me feel like I am in the concluding parts of a Western movie in which someone gets bitten by a venomous snake. I want to imagine the New Zealand equivalent of this image, but I’m unsuccessful. Everyone keeps running in this image I have with the incessant strumming, and suddenly they stop. “Where to begin” brings a different kind of chord progression in crescendo, the more atmospheric sounds are layering in the back, they come in an out, as waves. This is the longest intro without vocal melodies I heard in this album yet. It makes me wonder if this song is entirely instrumental. It becomes louder, so much that the drums are slightly perceptible. Then the voices come in and they feel robotic once again. I can tell that their role in this particular song is secondary to the strumming of the guitars, overpowering any other sound as I come towards the end of the song.

“The Waves” feels good from the start, perhaps because this is the song where I can most effectively hear the bass (the one thing I have been missing from this album). This is another unpredictable song, with some strange reverberating sounds bridging the sections. I want to say it comes from a synth but it feels more analog than that. I like how much thinking I have had to do for this feelings-review. “A Thousand Nights and One Night” feels more direct, less noisy, less muddy, less distorted. The vocal melodies return to that almost hymnal register the singers so carefully nurture. It’s a kind of singing that lifts me up and gives me a cushion to land when I fall down. From the middle of the song the guitar strumming feel terminal, giving to the lasting minutes everything in its emotional arsenal. The last two minutes bring back the more amorphous and chaotic intervals, which resolve in the vocal melody now giving me an indescribable sense of solace. This album is one of a kind.

Support shoegaze from New Zealand <3