Gut Reaction:

Sweet Nostalgia Amongst the Genre-defying Hills of Green 

Welcome musical cosmonauts to our first addition of Gut Reaction, our cozy greenhouse for the oddball albums that excite our tired hearts. These aren’t the Jabberwalky-esque beasts that require aprons, gloves, and scalpels like our slice-and-dice Dissection Table series (shit gets bloody over there). Instead, these albums keep us eager to keep exploring by filling us with a sense of hope and adventure.

Today we’re looking at lush and breezy genre-hoppers that offer a soft, surreal, and nostalgic escape from reality. Each album here feels like a portal to a pastel parallel pastoral dreamworld, like you’re stepping into those rolling hills of the famous Windows XP wallpaper. It’s like remembering the backyard grass from your childhood; it’s greener in your memory than it was in reality, isn’t it? But regardless, those impossibly golden memories are sugary sweet and offer a needed reprieve from the drudgery of daily life. Those distorted flashbacks are a balm for the mind, just like these three albums presented below.

As always, please consider supporting these majestic humans—Bandcamp, CDs, vinyl—whatever your poor heart and fragile wallet can manage in these trying times. Thanks again for stopping by our blog and reading this installment of Gut Reaction. May the field be always greener on your side of the fence!

An artistic landscape depicting green rolling hills, a winding river, snow-capped mountains, and a sky with clouds that resemble closed eyelids with long eyelashes.
Close-up of a grassy area with a pink sky background.
A close-up of damaged torn plastic with a semi-transparent overlay of a grassy field and a dog.

  • If you like the busy 2000s aesthetic of technicolor dolphins diving in luscious seas of deepest lapis while rolling hills of neon green swell with butterflies and bubbles in the background (*cough* Fugiter Aero), then you’ll probably dig this album. It’s sun-washed French bedroom pop/synthpop with breezy, jazzy elements that all comes together in one hell of a hypnotic soundscape. Before I knew it, the album was over, leaving me longing for more and a sudden, inexplicable craving to search my favorite childhood toy up on eBay. Bright, floaty, and charmingly rich.

    Favorite: “Open”

  • This album makes me feel like I’m in a spaceship; it’s overly air conditioned and its landing on the lushest dessert I’ve ever seen with sands of deep blue, like in Vaults of Vaarn, or something. It’s mood-forward and genre-agnostic, combining elements of lo-fi, art rock, synthpop, post punk, indie dance, and vaporwave. The bassline is thick, yet the album remains shockingly danceable and vaguely tropical, resulting in a pace that says, “hey crew, this planet looks like the one!” I feel like I’ve got to grab my spaceship and disembark already; when I look out, the sands ripple with glitter and the air itself is carbonated. The atmosphere is so rich with groovy detail that it’s easy to forget there’s vocals until they randomly sprout up behind you. Hypnotic through and through.

    Favorite: “Cement”

  • Before this album, I must sheepishly admit—I’ve never been a country fan. Here, however, it’s dripped in like an unexpected breeze through an open window, and my entire world has changed. This is sorrowful alt-country folk spliced together with jazzy lo-fi samples. Honestly, it sounds like someone put country music and the lo-fi girl in a blender, and somehow the monstrosity combo became something bittersweetly angelic. I don’t know how to articulate it; this album has expanded my world, opening my eyes to the limitless possibilities of combining country with other genres. The album feels like the first time you get in an airplane; slowly, your hometown’s crops reduce to mere squares, and before you know it, the entire world is passing you by.

    Favorite: “House of Cancer”