'Like a Fire Without Sound' is three tracks in and already I'm experiencing a strange sense of deja vu. Is the player on repeat? No, track three, 'Slumberland' sounds very like the one before, 'Turned Tables', to the extent that I actually had to check the player wasn't on repeat. It also sounds very like Slowdive performing 'Pictures of You' by the Cure. This pretty much sums up the tone and style of the album as a whole: delicate, sedate and atmospheric, yet rich with texture and tone. Yes, it's pure shoegaze, and it's downbeat, in the way that 'Disintegration' is downbeat and also proved to be the precursor to the whole 90s shoegaze scene.
A wistfulness permeates the narratives and vignettes that form each song that drifts in and out gently, unobtrusively, to the extent that it's sometimes difficult to pay attention to the lyrics: Marc and Tanya's harmonies blend into one another and in turn merge into the music to create a soft, subtle ambience. From the delicately picked 'Always Returning' to the measured 'The Great Pretend', with it's layered harmonies, 'Like a Fire Without Sound' is an exercise in restraint and shows how far melodic minimalism can be taken. For this reason, it's one of those albums you really have to be in the right mood for: in the wrong frame of mind, the slow chiming production-smoothed sounds and songs that fade in and fade out without really going anywhere could be frustrating, bloodless, and rather samey. On the right occasion, though, it's a sweet and charming collection of songs.
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