They Are Gutting A Body Of Water went international this year, with a European tour as well as spots at both locations of Outbreak festival in the UK. With a CD compiling their previous albums on sale, it felt like a line drawn separating the old.
LOTTO is the new album. Three years since last album Lucky Styles (known as s on streaming services), the band has been relatively quiet on the release front. It lets you drift into an ethereal haze, like all good shoegaze does. Vocals are only present when they need to be, and the melodies keep reverberating around your head long after the album ends. At the time of writing, the only sold out physical format on their Bandcamp is the cassette, and the extra tape saturation and degradation would easily add to each listen of the album.
LOTTO has more sections of spoken word delivery on the album, like on opener ‘the chase’, first single ‘american food’ and closer ‘herpim’. Although Sprechgesang is a controversial and possibly oversaturated part of a few music scenes (UK post punk especially), it manages to feel new, and possibly exciting, in a way many bands don’t.
Whereas previous albums ended feeling like a 21st century continuation of Pygamalion by Slowdive, LOTTO is much rawer. There are fewer electronic interludes and the guitars sound more typical of a shoegaze band, but tracks like ‘sour diesel’ feel more like anthems than things in their previous discography. Things that would have felt like fragments of melodies that could come back to you in your sleep are tied together into song forms that grab you. There is still a lo-fi aesthetic to the album, but this feels like more of a consistency to the production, and the songs hit harder for it. Moving away from production decisions like that could be seen as a move to become more commercial, but feels more like matching the songwriting in its consistency.
There is still some of the older They Are Gutting A Body Of Water in there. Album closer ‘herpim’ combines the spoken work with shoegaze guitars, but brings back some of the electronic sampling with amens, a lo-fi jersey club/reggaeton kick loop, and vocaloid vocal chops in the intro. It’s the song that most references the style of the earlier albums, with the bell like guitars chiming throughout.
There are fewer big swings (and with that fewer synths) on this album. The ethereal haze of previous releases is still there, but with fewer switch ups and changes in vibe and texture, it lost some of what made They Are Gutting A Body Of Water different, but gained a new consistency and songwriting that pushes LOTTO to being a new shade & expression to They Are Gutting A Body Of Water’s sound.