Challenger

Back to Bellevue
Self-Released
Street: 05.27
Challenger = Washed Out + Small Black + BrothertigerFrom now on, I’m just going to call everything I hear like this the Brooklyn ’80s nostalgic shoegaze/effectronic revival. I’m sure everyone knows exactly what that sounds like and, honestly, I could put 15 bands that sound exactly like this on a playlist and I bet most people would think it was all the same band. I’m getting tired of using words like dreamy, effect-laden and ethereal to describe this genre, and this album is no different: It’s as dreamy, nostalgic, shoegazey, effect-laden and ethereal as the rest of them. However, they at least attempt to mix things up on “Science of a Seizure,” but maybe that was because they were trying to make a literal musical seizure—which sounds mean, but the end result is actually pretty cool. Listen to the album only for that song because you’ve definitely heard the rest of it before.–Allison Shephard