My Review: Sugar For The Pill - Wanderlust

My review: Sugar For The Pill - Wanderlust 

And beauty is not a need, but an ecstasy. It is not a thirsty mouth, nor an outstretched empty hand, but rather a burning heart and an enchanted soul.

(Khalil Gibran)

Echoes of hope come from Greece, a land fraught of importance, history and fascination.

And fascination makes possible the movement of souls that ask themselves questions as a necessity and a form of intelligence.

For three decades now, a part of the world, specifically in music, has linked the love and fatigue of living with the approach of a noisy backline called Shoegaze, with the kindness of Dreampop attached.

And from the mysterious and mighty Greek capital come five angels with their debut album: Vana Rose (vocals), Spyros Mitrokotsas (guitars), Elias K (guitars), Stefanos Manousis (bass/keyboards) and Konstantinos Athanasopoulos (drums).

They have poured out all their youthful propensity with enthusiasm and high skills to flood our astonishment with fast and enormous curiosities, to be an enchantment that solidifies the remnants of our small joys.

Drawing the time of melancholy and positivity bound together, they give the sky a new meaning because they make it not only the place of our gazes, but above all the one where to rent the next house.

Songs that travel with conviction, persuading, enlarging our quality of listening: they are seeds of life at a time when desolation and violence are trying to defeat us.

So this set of flights that we like to call songs becomes precious.

The Shoegaze trademarks are all there, but we can also find traces of post-punk and veiled pop propensities, that make the album an abundant and nutritious crossroad, satisfying our increasingly demanding palates.

It seems like a mission impossible nowadays to stun with a musical listening, either for the excessive mass of proposals, or for an addiction that decreases the ability of a real and deep study.

But Sugar For The Pill amaze us precisely on this aspect: they know how to pierce our hearts thirsty for enchantment and uproar with constant ability, surrounding our soul with a sound and songs that make continuous shivers a serene map of the universe.

We are happy even when they offer us sad diamonds: only the Masters are allowed this ability.

We find tree-lined avenues of delays and reverberations that are not enough on their own: here come to aid intense melodies and new solutions to make everything fresh, like a river that kindly emerges from its bed to water our souls.

The artistic maturity is present in every aspect: from music, to production, to artwork.

A record to put in the safe of our heart like a unique jewel, which will fortify us and always give signs of its vitality to our tired bones.

To combine sturdiness, rhythm, melodies, softness in this way in forty-one minutes is a remarkable challenge, it should not be left alone and deserves to be constantly illuminated by listening that must become faithful.

The novelty they present is a sign of incredible importance: we can do nothing but plunge, with desire and intensity, into their songs.

There is a moment in which we have to take possession of the confidence in the future and it is starting from this album that the present can anticipate it with great qualities…

Song by Song

Quicksand

Quicksand is the poetry of dust that you hear in the initial notes of keyboards and then deliver in the guitar and in the vocals which shock for their reflections of the 90s, creating echoes in the heart.

Like Fountain of Light, the song lives on the union of alchemy and celestial excursions, with the bass that alone would be enough to make us fall in love. But all the members of the band enter the work shop, where they exercise their impulses, the passions that generate this jewel, as a unique specimen in which to rejoice, with wide and serene smiles.

Drink Conium

The drums kick-start this ride, everything rises, in rhythm, in intensity, with guitars scratching lightly, with the beautiful bridge that opens the sky to the chorus that is a shot to the side. The atmosphere is subtle even though the bass and drums are shining hammers of strength.

Falling Back To You

Falling Back To You is the movement of the sea that enters the sand and does so with subtlety, with elegance, while the drumming alternates, beating out the rhythm with the guitars that travel in the macrocosm of Dreampop and a bass that, starting from the Cure and arriving at Joy Division, is a solid pillar for Vana Rose’s voice which electrifies the air with its melodic melancholy.

The guitars of Spyros Mitrokotsas and Elias K are ecstatic and invade the senses, keyboards and the bass of Stefanos Manousis are ecstatic and frenetic, with the drums of Konstantinos Athanasopoulos giving liveliness, joy and a sense of rush towards that little bit of enthusiasm left for us to live.

Soul Can Wait 

After the three singles here comes this song: Adorable, Cathrine Wheel and Swerdriver appear mixed, festive in the sound complexity, rather than in the rhythmic one, of the song. A jewel with a skin tinged with Pop.

At minute two and forty-five the song stops: it is the guitar that continues it, showing all its modern candour, a beam of marvellous light that drags the band into the end with Vana's splendid vocals.

More Than a Lover

The 90's Indie beginning is already able to conquer and then everything opens up when vocals come and the guitars become more full and carnal. It's as if Slowdive take off their coats and fly high in the chorus, giving the song that sense of completeness that makes it perfect. It's seductive to see tout-court shoegaze from the side which seems lighter: a journey through styles that gives the song the breath of the wind.

Moan of the Thunder

Once the soul has been freed from its mental prisons, it finds itself devoid of all difficulties: this track is exemplary of this, because we find ourselves with a melody that frees the heaviness of the world and Vana demonstrates all her talent with vocals that are a melancholic smile which abandons the fear of living. And if legend has it that Shoegazers always have their heads down, just listen to this song: you can make sweet noise even when looking at rainbows.

Diamonds

The Master Rhythm returns to create new explosions: we find ourselves in a dance that is dreamlike and sensual, on ethereal and remote territories, guitar bass and drums are impetuous, generous, while vocals are a poem that seems to come from a comet.

The mellifluous sound looks like something that comes out of a polite and gentle hive. A wonder.

I Wish I Was The Fire

U2 seem to open the dance and then the evident ability of the Greek line-up to navigate in the possibilities of sound frescoes that constantly rise comes into focus.

With the imprint of a fast gazelle that knows how to hold pathos at high altitudes, the song is able to present a joyful and magnetic aura with drumming and bass defining the boundaries of a resounding intensity.

Shiver 

Tension and romance show up in the initial piano and with the arrival of the guitar everything becomes more complex: it's not easy to sustain the beauty that doesn't need roar to be such.

Then it's a crystal that runs wild, causing a sidereal daze: the guitars become vehement, but wisely held back. The evident electric impulses connect with majestic melodic flashes.

Stardust 

2020's 'Catch the Breeze' comes at the end of the album: the reference is only to the beginning of the track, with all due caution in the reference.

Because then the vibrations shift, annexing other smells and colours.

A closure that shows an evident fresco in an angelic movement, with melodic perfection coming out of guitars still in a resounding state of grace.

Pounds of generous restlessness and yearning stick to the temple.

And the band takes under its arm the desire to play a symphony that brings tears to jump amidst the ringing of thrilling guitars.

An outstanding debut makes it clear that albums like this are the poetry that survives ugliness. Extraordinary!

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld 

Salford

March 20th, 2022

Wanderlust will be released by Shelflife (Us) 

and Make Me Happy Records (Greece) in a 12” LP.

https://sugar-for-the-pill.bandcamp.com/album/wanderlust

https://open.spotify.com/album/7uG92ZPgm55BueIhF3AVCc?si=7JUeGqLuR-KCedfQ78K1fw

https://music.apple.com/gb/album/wanderlust/1608450155