Punk Rock Ist Nicht Tot

I first came across the Butterfly Explosion a couple of months back when I reviewed the Psychedelica 4 compilation from Northern Star records. The track I heard then was ‘Closer’, this album’s opening track, and I remember being blown away by its shimmering guitars. Since then these five Dubliners have been working hard not only to record this, their debut album, but also to cement their reputation as one of the frontrunners of the shoegaze revival. The end result of all this hard work is the mindbogglingly ‘Lost Trails’.

Though they clearly have shoegaze tendencies they skilfully mix them with spiralling, shimmering dream-pop soundscapes. The songs, as you’d expect from a shoegaze band occasionally explode but always keep the melodic side of the bands they are often compared with, like Ride or My Bloody Valentine. As the music swoops and soars, accompanied by Gazz Carr’s tender vocals (think Billy Corgan in his softer moments), it’s easy to get lost in the music. In fact of the several times I have already played it through, the most satisfying was when I was able to just lie down in a dark room, with the music coming through some very powerful speakers, and just let it envelope me.

Of the eleven tracks the best are the aforementioned ‘Closer’, ‘Tracing Stars’ and ‘Chemistry’ which is probably the heaviest track on the album, but in truth I love them all. Even the instrumental ‘Automatic’ effortlessly holds my interest throughout, which is a significant achievement as I normally find instrumentals quite tiresome.

The Butterfly Explosion have a truly epic sound and the sheer magnitude of ‘Lost Trails’ is astonishing. If I were a gambling man I’d have this as a late entry on a lot of top ten albums of the year lists, it’s certainly made mine. Play it loud. 5/5

Mark Cousens

Out now on Revive Records

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