Southern California shoegaze squad COLD GAWD return to Dais for their second and most supreme suite yet of crushing downer bliss: I’ll Drown On This Earth, set for release on August 30th.
From the start, the album rips in what singer and principal songwriter Matthew Wainwright describes as “go for it” mode; holding back nothing, wasting no time— all killer, no filler. Although the bulk of the songs were written in 2022, recording sessions weren’t booked until March of 2024, which allowed ample time to refine and distill the music’s hooks, heaviness, and haze. The result is a perfect storm of distortion and dream pop, cracked love songs cloaked in swooning walls of noise. These sounds are on display on first single, “All My Life, My Heart Has Yearned For A Thing I Cannot Name” which arrives today. Wainwright comments, “What I’m trying to say with this song and the whole record was best said by Victoria Legrand when she said to: ‘Trust in yourself and trust in the people that love because those are the people that matter most.’”
Recorded at Paradise Recorders in Anaheim, CA with Colin Knight (of post-punk unit Object of Affection), Wainwright tracked the strings while Cameron Fonacier handled drums. The process was efficient and effective, sharpened by years of performance. The songs sound as dynamic as they do dialed-in, soaked into the bones of the players. The lyrics came last, written by Wainwright a week before recording. Moods of surreality, infatuation and melancholy flicker and fade within a fog of memory and reverb.
As on 2022’s God Get Me The Fuck Out Of Here, COLD GAWD’s classic but contemporary vision of shoegaze manifests intriguingly in outlier moments. Theirs is a muse as vivid as it is varied, from “Loveless” to Drake to post-hardcore to Beach House. I’ll Drown On This Earth evocatively captures the expanding canon of COLD GAWD, dense with riffs and raptures, escape and revelation, channeled from stacked amps and hidden powers.
Pre-order I’ll Drown On This Earth here and look for more news from COLD GAWD soon.
COLD GAWD live dates:
July 25 San Diego, CA @ Casbah
July 26 Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room
July 27 Sacramento, CA @ Starlet Room
July 29 Seattle, WA @ Madame Lou’s
July 30 Vancouver, BC @ Fox Cabaret
July 31 Portland, OR @ Polaris Hall
August 2 San Francisco, CA @ Rickshaw Stop #
August 30 Los Angeles, CA @ Genghis Cohen $
September 8 Santa Ana, CA @ Observatory %
# w/ Spiritual Cramp and Ultra Q
$ Record Release Show w/ Britty Drake and Vatican Voss
% w/ Soft Kill, Beton Arme and Concrete Elite
