#6: Littler – “Of Wandering”

My favorite album of last year was Colleen Green’s I Want to Grow Up, which I ranted about endlessly because I felt it was such a great, simple rock album that also articulated what it feels like to feel lost and stuck in that not-quite-an-adult territory. Philadelphia’s Littler is cut from the same cloth, and Of Wandering finds similar pathos and humor in the mundane aspects of life.

There’s nothing too fancy happening on Of Wandering, but the simple riffs and songs are the right fit for the lyrics, which are often about screwing up, struggling, and not knowing what to do. Singer Madeline Meyer sets the tone early on opener “Knife Sucker,” when she declares “I still suck at my life.” One of the other highlights, “Tectonics,” has one of those lyrics that is something I’ve literally thought verbatim: “I want to be good at a lot of things, but I don’t know how to go about that.” Those self-deprecating lyrics give Of Wandering a scrappy, underdog charm and make it one of the most endearing rock albums of the year.

#7: Rev Rev Rev – “Des Fleurs Magiques Bourdonnaient”

The shoegaze tag on Bandcamp is a mess. Most of the bands that use it don’t really know what shoegaze is, and even the ones that do are often these heinous genre mash-ups, where they’re like “wouldn’t it be cool to combine shoegaze and EDM.” No. It wouldn’t be. Shoegaze is great. Shoegaze doesn’t need to be “improved upon” by your weak attempts at innovation. When I go to the shoegaze tag on Bandcamp, I want to hear shoegaze, not not-shoegaze.

So I have respect for Rev Rev Rev, a band I found on the tag that plays straight-up shoegaze. They don’t really add new wrinkles to the genre or even attempt to innovate in any way. But they nail the guitar sound that makes me love this style of music and have the right vocals and songcraft, none of which is a trivial accomplishment given how many bands attempt the My Bloody Valentine impression and fall flat.

The Italian group sounds like the usual suspects of classic shoegaze bands, with a more heavy and psychedelic take on the genre that most closely resembles You Made Me Realise era MBV with some of the repetitious elements of space rock. The band mixes in some lighter dream pop elements, but for the most part it’s really loud guitars with light vocals. As it turns out, the formula still works, and it takes some skill to know not to mess with it.

#8: Pleasure Symbols – “Pleasure Symbols”

Pleasure Symbols is one of those bands that comes out of nowhere with a fully-formed, distinctive aesthetic. The duo from Brisbane makes icy, goth-tinged synth rock that combines like 30 different styles into something that feels like a genre of its own. Pleasure Symbols is their first 12-inch and it’s just four songs in about 16 minutes, but I listened to almost every song on repeat at some point.

The defining choice Pleasure Symbols make is taking a page out of the shoegaze playbook and burying their vocals deep in the mix. The cost is that it’s hard to make out a lot of the lyrics, but it adds to the band’s mysterious, seductive quality and is part of what made their album very replayable for me. Their songs rely heavily on repetition, looping one or two synth parts over and over, which along with the vocal mixing makes this a hypnotizing listen.