Glitter Etiquette’s latest EP “Cerulean” is a cinematic plunge into noise-washed futurism, where shoegaze sensibilities collide headfirst with glitchy electronics and a post-everything edge. Across five tracks, the band takes the sonic building blocks they laid in Silicone Bodies—grungy textures, dreamy layering, and melodic dissonance—and bends them into something less earthly, more synthetic, and infinitely more daring. What emerges isn’t just evolution; it’s escape velocity.
From the opening seconds, “Cerulean” wastes no time in conjuring its world. The guitars are still here, smeared in delay and distortion, but now they share space with buzzing synths that surge and crumble like electric tides. The drums—sometimes organic, sometimes sequenced—drive everything forward with mechanical urgency, while the basslines dig deep, pulsing with a heartbeat that’s equal parts dread and desire. It’s shoegaze, yes, but cracked open and rewired, throwing out sparks and subharmonics as it goes.
What’s particularly striking is how each track on “Cerulean” plays with structure and texture in different ways. One might build slowly, layering loops until it breaks into a chorus of apocalyptic brightness; another might slice itself into stuttering fragments, resisting a climax in favor of suspended tension. Vocals are often drenched in reverb or buried under walls of sound, not to obscure meaning, but to blend seamlessly into the instrumentation—treated more like another instrument than a spotlight. This choice enhances the dreamlike quality of the EP, giving each lyric the weight of a half-remembered transmission from another world.
The emotional through-line of “Cerulean”—the search for something lost, something pure—is mirrored in its sonic palette. Songs flicker between despair and defiance, between ambient interludes and moments of sheer volume, all unified by a clarity of intention. Glitter Etiquette isn’t just crafting noise; they’re sculpting it, wielding distortion as storytelling. References to My Bloody Valentine and Air Formation are fair, but “Cerulean” feels like it’s speaking a dialect all its own—a hybrid language of synthwave decay and romantic collapse.
Where Silicone Bodies leaned into abrasion and Springfall hinted at lightness, “Cerulean” finds power in duality. It’s both an attack and a lament, an ode to a color we can’t see but desperately feel. Glitter Etiquette has made something achingly present in its absence, and in doing so, they’ve made their most vital statement yet.
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