Spunsugar have released their first album, Drive-Through Chapel, through Adrian Recordings. After several wonderful singles, the band's very much memorable and well constructed take on shoegaze pop seems to be working even better in full length form, maintaining its dark character without having to sacrifice the inviting accessibility.
Happier Happyless is that kind of LP standout that doesn't need much to convince, despite its different direction which had the band surprisingly tending close to synthpop and industrial sounds. Equally, recent singles Run and Belladonna are that kind of alternative rock standards which put the trio's evident influences from the nineties on clear view, together with their cultivation and their firm positioning within the genre's classes.
The rest of Drive-Through Chapel follows a more stable shoegaze path, often conjuring up the lushness of Lush and the groundbreaking dissonance of MBV, while continually having the goth essence in Spunsugar's songwriting lingering around. With every song appearing meticulously constructed structurally and compositionally, and often over-indulging in fuller production techniques, Drive-Through Chapel is mostly an intense sounding record, as the very lively Time Enough At Last and the propulsive Where You Run Through undeniably exhibit.
Opener, Jawbreaker, shows the trio's intentions from the very beginning, and becomes one of those moments on Drive-Through Chapel which the levelness between alluring cacophony and melodiousness are in immaculate harmony.
Elsewhere on the album, the goth pop eccentricity of Video Nasty, which finds bassist Felix Sjöström taking the lead vocal role and pulling it off successfully, the smoother intimacy of Native Tongue, the extreme distortion of I Shouldn’t Care, and the darkwave propulsion of closer, Wishes, round out Spunsugar's dark, exciting and head on take on shoegaze, and comprise an overall strong debut which has broken new ground for the band's future.