Gwilym Mumford 

Froth: Outside (Briefly) review – shoegaze revivalists make fuzz with precision

  
  

Froth
Adventurous art-rock … Froth Photograph: PR Company Handout

As anyone familiar with the work of Cheatahs, DIIV or Nothing will know, we’re not exactly short of shoegaze revivalists these days, and the dangers of getting lost amid a sea of similarly minded artists are manifold. But with their third album, Froth manage to breathe new life into a sometimes stale genre. Outside (Briefly) sees the LA four-piece marry the bleary soundscapes of My Bloody Valentine with something closer to Spoon’s metronomically tight art-rock. It’s a mixture of fuzz and precision that frequently produces surprising results: Passing Thing is a Sebadoh-like chug that takes an enjoyable detour into mathy interplay, while New Machine imagines what would happen if Lush ever tried krautrock on for size. It’s only when Froth abandons this invention for something more trad (see the dreary ballad Petals) that things go awry. For the most part, this is an adventurous work that finds new area to explore in shoegaze’s well-trodden territory.

 

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