Trementina – Almost Reach The Sun
The sun can do strange things to a man. Mad dogs and Englishmen, so goes the phrase. It can warp perception of reality even, conjuring at its worse painfully intangible mirages borne of nothing more than desire. Trementina make retro shoegaze that is aptly blinding in its ferocity. And, on their debut album, Almost Reach The Sun, a track like “Makes Me Think” is like standing in the path of an exploding supernova, great waves of guitar scree coming close to vaporising lead-singer Vanessa Cea’s suitably dreamy vocal.
Meaning “turpentine” in their native Chile, Trementina sound simply like they’ve been getting loaded on its fumes for days. This is truly woozy summer music for the tinnitus crowd. And, what Almost Reach The Sun lacks in the originality stakes (you’re not going to get far without mention of MBV, Slowdive, Lush, Medicine etc.), it compensates for with spectacularly smiley noise-pop.
Almost Reach The Sun isn’t all muscle, however, its screeching blasts of feedback, rapid-fire snares and supercharged wail choosing of their own volition to sit next to the cutest indie-pop kid in class. Cea’s English-language vocal, part Elisabeth Fraser, often nothing more than atmospheric oohs and ahs, is swoonful stuff for starters. The fuzzy back-and-forth she shares in the melodic “Brilliant Noise”, for example, is pure Jesus & Mary Chain – David Quantick’s famous observation that the Reid brothers sounded like “a giant bee in an elevator shaft” still as true as ever here.
The nostalgic “Kisses In Your Eyes”, too, flirts with the late 80s/early 90s, landing like Yuck after a moderate session on the weights. Least ripped of the bunch, yet still a stand-out, “Grounded” is also Almost Reach The Sun’s most sombre moment, a distorted slow-dance alone that’d be shoehorned onto the Lost In Translation soundtrack in a heartbeat. As happy a jam band, too, as they are an indie-shoegaze one – an epic wah wah solo blows the roof off album closer “I Know You Well, for example – Almost Reach The Sun is the sound of Icarus crashing to earth in a literal blaze of what could have been … except, never outstaying their welcome, never less than a total success, Trementina see the sun as only the beginning.
Best tracks: “Makes Me Think”, “Grounded”, “Kisses In Your Eyes”
~Almost Reach The Sun is released on vinyl May 20th 2016 via Blow Your Mind.~