Cathedral Bells perfectly balance the old with new on Velvet Spirit

Clocking in at just over thirty minutes, the Florida-based outfit’s debut album Velvet Spirit is a quick-hit of sweet, intoxicating sound that, paradoxically washes over you gently while thrusting itself forward. It’s an intriguing contradiction that Messore’s distilled into a perfect cocktail; into something that sounds both contemporary and of a past era, one in which bands like My Bloody Valentine, Joy Division, The Cure and The Jesus and Mary Chain plied their trade.

Unsurprisingly, Messore draws inspiration from this bunch, dusting his dream-pop with a delicate gauze at times, like in “A Passing Phase”, driven by an ultra-fuzzy guitar line, and in “Ethereal Shadow”, its mid-section holding a dirty bite. He throws a healthy dose of krautrock and post-punk flavours into the mix too, most prominent in “Reflection”, “Disconnected” and “Cemetery Surf”, which hurtle along on motorik drumbeats and zippy basslines. Synths, guitars and vocals mesh wispily together over the top, seemingly afloat on the warm thermals created by the tight, pumping rhythm section. It’s a mode Messore’s adopted for the entire album, in varying degrees, giving the music a sweeping, enveloping feel and a mesmeric ebb and flow, thick with mood and colour.

At its core, Velvet Spirit is an album that borrows heavily from the past, but crucially, it doesn’t shy away from that or try to hide it. Messore’s tugged at numerous threads to weave together a comforting, alluring fabric of recycled sound, that’s as fitting an acknowledgement of its influences as it is a dazzling display of its own identity.