When new sounds from Seefeel last filtered in, they sounded older than ever. Mark Clifford, Sarah Peacock, and various collaborators had, for some two decades, distilled the aquatic shoegaze rave of early classics like 1993’s Quique into the minerally syrup of 1995’s Succour, the chemical fumes of the following year’s (Ch-Vox) and then, finally, the brilliant and parched sediment of 2011’s Seefeel, so bright you had to squint at it. By that point, their grooves were more dust than dub. The timeless now of their long, lovely songs had faded into unstable memories, and then acts of remembering, via fascinating reissues in packages that felt like terminal excavations.
Which makes Everything Squared, Seefeel’s mini-album of new recordings, such an unexpected joy. It’s not just that Clifford has figured out a route back to the old ways, although, blissfully, he has; nor simply that there’s still an audience for such endeavors. The pleasure of this half hour lies in its optimism—its faith that so much can be made of so little, still.
“Lose the Minus,” for example, offers only the essential: a simple bass tone that manages to both defy gravity and trace its effects; a whisper of melody; Peacock’s voice, glistening with a simple FX gloss. A guitar vibrates, then crests. It’s over. It’s enough. While equally brief, “End of Here” is sort of its opposite, an exercise in fullness made of fuzz and decay. It’s almost too much, then it leaves you alone.
Elsewhere, Clifford and Peacock let themselves stretch. The beguiling “Hooked Paw” swaps out the band’s sonar blips for crunchy building blocks that tumble into thick, bassy depths. Seefeel are not exactly a funky band, but they swing more than they’re given credit for. And with its scratched, metallic frame, “Antiskeptic” reminds you that Seefeel’s roots are as much industrial as ambient. The crooking rhythm is a kind of window through which bright streaks of synths arch and scatter. Occasionally, trance chords flash like artificial lightning. The world-building creates tension. Seefeel’s early now becomes what will happen next?
Peacock’s voice often answers that question. She belongs in the pantheon of vocalists—from peers like Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell and My Bloody Valentine’s Bilinda Butcher to contemporary wonders like Beach House’s Victoria Legrand and more eaze and L’Rain, and of course the miraculous Elizabeth Fraser—who figure out ways to sing without always forming words. Instead, Peacock makes moments. In “Hooked Paw,” a murmur becomes a hall of mirrors. In opener “Sky Hooks,” her voice is the star, shining front and center in an arrangement of foggy bass, swooping pads, and crowds of sizzling noise and chimes that gather to form the track’s climax before vanishing into echoes. Peacock offers navigation and, maybe, even a kind of narrative to follow.
