Review: Dexters – ‘Shimmer Gold’


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It’s always a pleasure to encounter a band which strikes that balance between punching the stomach, banging chords until the fingers bleed and playing outside just as the dust of the day settles.

Still in keeping with Dexters‘ tag as the renegades, vagabonds, vampires and vigilantes of the current grey English landscape, stale with the same old tune, ‘Shimmer Gold‘ is ultimately an 11-track diary entry written after a drunken night full of beautiful tales that, when wrapped in angry guitars, guttural bass attacks, icy keyboard beams and cluttered drums, allows the art of storytelling to become something more than a text conversation between two friends, but a memory of something extraordinary which all are bound to remember whether they like it or not.

Opener ‘Cloudfest’ is the prime example of how a tune can build without losing its climax. A scratched and distorted guitar itching away in the background introduces the album, it’s a burst of ambition that when propelled further by interweaving guitar stitches gives the song an original quality other bands with such swagger and muscle could easily attach themselves onto. Next, ‘They’re Blind’ reinforces the power of a guitar when it’s plugged in and turned up to twelve. It never forgets it’s a tune built for bars, beyond the confines of the indie-rock ‘selling out’ cliché. The breakdowns, much like the track that proceeded it, are full of entertainment and embrace, catalysing mosh-pits and taming the animals that surround them, yet simple enough to sing along to and intelligent enough to not be the stereotypical hipster racket.

Recover’ epitomizes and embodies what a bass guitar can actually do when noticeable behind punk rock drums and snarling vocals. The guitar forever prominent snakes in nicely along with start-stop reactions that swing and swoop back and forth on a rope burning the hand of its holder about to snap above a pool of bloodthirsty alligators. Chaotic yes, but never confused, perfectly executed in a short space of time – proving that minute tracks provide maximum enthrallment.

The album never depletes or dissipates these themes. It more decimates its obstacles and decorates the horizon with how the band thinks and believes it should be like with the remains. ‘Start to Run’ is a realization that no matter how fast we run, perhaps a slap across the face is an easier way of saying ‘screw you’. Fuzzy guitars and rugged backing vocal howls set the sky alight with positive thoughts after evading what nearly killed you. Another nasty tune, ‘Never The Right Time’, starts with abstract squeals that tease and torment with flirtatious silences before soon shooting the resulting agitations, grooving down a mudslide in perfect precision, clashing and colliding into one big middle finger of an anthem.

Following suit, ‘The Hard Way’ projects Tom Rowlett’s natural voice magically, letting it breathe and be the mishmash of elegance it was written to be. The atmospheric breakdown conjures up headlights through thin layers of fog, and is an appropriate way to describe the song’s daring and endearing appeal.

‘Shimmer Gold’ really does glisten and gleam, capturing that glint of attraction to material things on a spiritual level. ‘Can’t Sleep’, constantly at war with the dreamland and the real world, is a funky and freakish track collecting all the missing pieces of a memory, hoping you can reassemble them in the perfect place as before. It’s distracted by psychedelic delays and captivating musical gestures which keep it fresh and futuristic despite the past being such an influence on the flow of the album’s multidimensional sense of direction. Closer ‘Shimmer Forever’, an instrumental among the melody and melodrama of everyday life, is an excellent way to end – justifying the right to reflect and recuperate.

It goes without saying the songs are strong; they are cinematic but never overdone. It’s the sight and sound of one eye open on the one you want, with the other one still dreaming of a better life.

(Ryan Walker)


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