This is Film School's sixth album of gauzy shoegaze dream pop and was recorded remotely during lockdown with the band split between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
The album opens like a tribute to David Bowies Station To Station with the guitars sounding like a train on Superperfection and then the drums and vocals come in and it becomes Shoegaze song with the vocals drenched in reverb and echo with a very slow clap track in the background this draws you into Film Schools world of wild times.
Said Your Name is gauzy vocals and atmospherics set around a drum pattern almost at odds with the prettiness of everything else that provides a tiny jolt and a hint of early China Crisis. The video for this song is surprisingly basic from a band called Film School.
Stratospheric Tendencies starts gently and then slowly but surely builds as they try to shoot for the Stratosphere and manage to get further than Elon Musk managed, while the lyrics are rather introspective and downhearted as they look for ways to shoot for the moon rather than being stuck in a rut.
Why sounds like a lost single on Heavenly from the early 90's it's slight in the way you'd expect it to be. Soft Reflections revolves around the bassline for me that the synths and vocals build upon to make this song pulse in ways designed to make you swoon and feel all warm inside.
Isla is a sweet love song or is it a tribute and if it's the latter is it to Isla St Clair or Isla Blair, either way the second half of the song sounds like it comes from a kitchen sink drama being sound tracked by Roddy Frame.
The More I Know has a very J Spaceman guitar line that gets drowned out by the Bassline that seems a bit intrusive and sadly doesn't sound like anything that needs to be over 5 minutes long as it sounds like Interval music to me until after nearly 4 minutes the vocals finally come in, but don't really justify the over long intro.
CPPT is a slow synth pop opening that feels rather drowsy as they slowly add layers of sound as it builds into a tune I guess may be about a Central Pennsylvania Plant Trader.
Take What You Need is a nicely upbeat song, of betrayal, as they tell the lover to Take What They Need with no need to apologize, just take everything, as long as they are still together, on a tune that seems to be re-working a Simple Minds song from Sparkle In The Rain but with far less embarrassing drums or guitar sound.
The album closes with Drone 2 a song built around a long drone that they then add the drums and guitars too that makes it less drone like.
Find out more at https://www.filmschoolmusic.com/ https://filmschoolmusic.bandcamp.com/ https://www.facebook.com/filmschoolmusic/
