As we approach AOTY season, Queasy‘s debut album Shining Now is not exactly on the lips of a lot of curators and tastemakers — but it absolutely should be.
A wholly independent release that hit streaming services this summer, it is hands-down one of the best things I heard 2022: an electrifying amalgam showcasing not only the Philly four-pieces’s wide-reaching and impeccable taste, but their ability to make a spectrum of genres from shoegaze to screamo to shimmering alt-pop co-mingle seamlessly.
Comprised of bassist and singer Corinne Dodenhoff, guitarist-vocalists Maddog Davis and Stevie Dodge, and drummer Pavlo Demkiv, the band founded in 2018, released some demos ahead of lockdown, and returned in a big way this spring with “Nice.” It’s a soaring Yo La Tengo-esque anthem about the cosmic absurdity of making friendly small-talk when we’re bombarded with news about war and death, natural disaster, folks having their rights stripped away and whatever else: “the whole world’s fucking burning, but when you ask me how I’ve been I’ll say ‘just fine.'”
As I gushed to Dodenhoff this summer, I would have been stoked if Shining Now had been a full album of “Nice”-s, but the variety it boasts is remarkable: dreampop moments in the vein of Slowdive and The Sundays, noisey and mathy stretches indebted to Sonic Youth, searing bits of post-emo catharsis out of the Thursday school. We get a snapshot of the album’s cohesive variety in this performance at WXPN Studios, beginning with a brand new song they’re debuting here.