Hard Light

Though shoegazes initial run in the late 1980s and early 90s was brief, the style had more life in it than might have been expected. The same can be said about Drop Nineteens: They fell apart in the mid-90s following the disappointingly straightforward alt-rock of their second album National Coma, but their reputation -- and the legacy of their first full-length Delaware -- grew thanks to the online music community and the availability of their work on streaming music platforms. During that time, the ways their 1992 debut album departed from the output of shoegazes U.K. trailblazers aged remarkably well. Delawares songs were often more grounded and approachable than the work of Drop Nineteens counterparts across the pond, but they also incorporated folk, revved-up guitar pop, and screaming outbursts indebted to post-hardcore. When they made the album, they were young and impulsive enough to set aside the demos that scored them a label deal in favor of all-new songs. Thirty-one years later, the band -- Delaware members Greg Ackell, Steve Zimmerman, Motohiro Yasue, and Paula Kelley and National Coma drummer Pete Koeplin -- dont try to recapture that spontaneity on Hard Light. Instead, they deliver more of what their fans have come to love about their music. The clouds of distortion, vocal harmonies, and chugging beats of songs like "Scapa Flow," "The Price Was High," and "Another One Another" glide so smoothly, they feel like theyve always been in the bands songbook. Drop Nineteens may know exactly what fans are expecting of them, but they also know themselves better than they did during the Delaware days. Hard Light addresses how some things change and some stay the same as the years pass, and the band uses deja vu as skillfully as any of their effects pedals: "Hard Light"s chiming guitars fade in like a returning memory, and on songs like this and "Gal," Ackell and Kelleys voices havent aged a day. They muse on the tricks time plays on "Tarantula," with Ackell singing "And you feel like its after school/In the afternoon/In the afterlife" accompanied a driving jangle that evokes Blue Oyster Cults "Dont Fear the Reaper" (which doesnt feel like such a stretch considering their covers of Madonnas "Angel" and Barry Manilows "Mandy"). The years away have only reaffirmed that no matter how blurry Drop Nineteens songs sound, their hearts are clearly on their collective sleeve. Hard Light is a much mellower, tenderer album than their debut, and the serenity of "Lookout" and "T" -- where Ackell and Kelley still sound perfect together when they sing "it was all more than enough" -- suggest theyve making peace with the past rather than living in it. Hard Light is far from Delawares rollercoaster ride, but its update of that albums spirit should please the fans Drop Nineteens made in the decades since their debut. ~ Heather Phares