Sidewave – ‘Glass Giant’

2015 is the year of shoegaze. With legendary bands Ride and Hum playing reunion shows to seminal bands Failure and Swervedriver reuniting and releasing new albums to younger bands like Cloakroom and Creepoid releasing stellar albums, the genre known for its spacey and ambient form of rock is everywhere. And while this year that marks the triumphant return of the genre will lead to many mediocre bands releasing shoegaze records, there will certainly be talented ones who will also release music. These bands will not be doing this as a way to catch a wave on a passing trend, but rather this is their true form of expression as a unit that may have preceded this boom and will most certainly survive it. One of those bands is the Los Angeles, California quartet Sidewave, who will be releasing their first proper full-length, Glass Giant, in October.

What I love about Glass Giant is how varied of a record it is, despite all of the album’s 12 tracks squarely fitting within the shoegaze genre. Yes, their songs sound spacey and at times trippy, with a wall of sound and cascading guitar tones, but there is more to these songs that hooks you in for the entire journey of the record. This diversity is exemplified within the first five tracks of Glass Giant, which is anchored by record’s first single, “Supersonic”. Throughout these first five songs, and throughout the entirety of the album, Sidewave is able to nimbly move from songs that are light and airy, to ones that have more of a solid rock groove to them. I especially liked the one-two punch that comes from tracks four and five of Glass Giant, “Sundrop” and “Honest to God”. I still can’t get the syncopated- groove intro to “Sundrop” out of my head and I think that once you get your ears on it, you won’t either.

Sonically, Glass Giant is everything that you would want from a band like Sidewave. As they straddle between the heavy and the airy, they use dynamics artfully to build the intensity that culminates in a tidal wave of sound that crashes on the shore, not in a destructive way, but in a way that leaves you anticipating what comes next. In a way, Glass Giant is a perfect way to describe the sound of this record. It’s a massive force pushing its way towards you with each track, but there is a fragility to that isn’t intimating or abrasive.

Another aspect of Glass Giant that appeals to me is the overall pop sensibility to the songs. While I don’t expect the record to get played on any Top 40 radio show in the near future, Sidewave clearly sought to craft shoegaze songs, they did so with accessibility to it that wouldn’t turn away someone who wasn’t serious about the genre. A part what gives Glass Giant that accessibility to me is due to the voice of Sidewave’s vocalist, Phil Golyshko, who also serves as the band’s guitarist and main songwriter. With the first several listens to the record, his voice had a familiar tone to it that I couldn’t quite place before it struck me like a bolt of lightning: imagine if Matthew Sweet sang in a shoegaze band. While their voices aren’t identical by any stretch of the imagination, there is a similarity between the two that is pleasingly striking.

In a year where shoegaze has made its comeback, a band like Sidewave should not get lost in the spacey shuffle. Glass Giant is a terrific effort and will be enjoyed by hardcore and casual fans of the genre alike.