Nebula Reviews: LSD and the Search for God — LSD and the Search for God (Summer Daily 7/26/22)

Artist: LSD and the Search for God

Album: LSD and the Search for God

Release date: January 16, 2007

Label: Mind Expansion

RIYL: Slowdive, My Bloody Valentine, Spacemen 3

Listen: https://lsdandthesearchforgod.bandcamp.com/album/lsd-and-the-search-for-god

Shoegaze is a weirdly named genre that poorly describes what the music actually sounds like. Named for the propensity of its founding bands to be constantly checking their guitar’s effects pedals during live performances (i.e., gazing at their shoes), it’s a style that places great emphasis on atmosphere and warmth, sometimes at the cost of melody.

The genre’s defining acts, most notably My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive, each released a few albums in their heyday during the 90s, sometimes initially panned but later acclaimed. The San Francisco act LSD and the Search for God mimic the sounds of their forebears carefully, but even compared to the painstaking approach taken by these acts (it took MBV 21 years to release a follow-up LP to Loveless), they’re a band with a limited release footprint: only two EPs have been released in the past 15 years with no indication that there’s more to come. Often, without a full album to generate appeal, it’s hard to guess why a band might earn the same accolades within a particular scene that LSD and the Search were able to achieve — some hints indicate that their live performances gave them enough fanbase for their self-titled EP to take off.

I’d be curious to see how their stage presence and live sound differs from the atmosphere they draw on LSD and the Search for God, mostly because as it stands, they stand just a bit too far into the shadow of their influences to have an effective presence in the studio. Don’t be mistaken — there are four solid tracks on here (and one, “Starting Over”, that’s truly great; the band’s two vocalists, Andy Liszt and Sophia Campbell, trade lines on a duet that, on its own, makes this a worthwhile project). At the end of the day, the band does succeed at nailing the dreamy atmosphere; while it’s not a defining or an essential record, it gets the job done.

Rating: B