Shoegazing music has transformed itself a hell of a lot over the past two decades or so. The definitive heavy guitar/soft singing My Bloody Valentine sound has mellowed out over this time of musical evolution. Most, and possibly anything with curtains of echoing guitars and droning instrumentals are now meshed into the whole shoegazing scene. As well, most musicians tend to not gaze at their shoes anymore.
Change isn't always a bad thing though, as a matter of fact a good toking friend of mine says that change is the key to life. Hammock certainly proves this, as their album Raising Your Voice...Trying To Stop An Echo is a surreal way of capturing life, its possibilities, and all things beyond. At least that would be my interpretation, because the vast instrumentation of this album truly has the ability to give each listener their own interpretation of it.
The band is consisted of two members: Marc Byrd and Andrew Thompson, though it sounds like the band has at least five or six players creating the massive wall of sound that is Hammock. Although each song has the absolute most ethereal layering of effects laden guitars echoing throughout (and as a matter of fact this is one of the most guitar and effects focused records I've ever heard), everything seems to blend together so well in this record, as if every instrument and every aspect seems to intertwine with each other as one. This is a very Souvlaki era Slowdive type of sound, and the influence is quite obviously heard; probably what grouped Hammock into shoegaze.
What I thought was really neat about this record were the three songs on it with lyrics. To be honest, the lyrics themselves aren't that great and seem fairly uninspired and cliché (No more time for waiting/So you throw yourself away/You threw yourself away/You threw yourself away). But I do absolutely love the way that the lyrics work with Hammock's soft vocals to once again - blend in with everything else. Think Sigur Ros: most of us don't even know what the hell they're singing about, but it's still wonderful. It's almost like the words were carefully chosen for their timbre or tonality or whatnot to be utilized for the sound.
Shoegazing never died, as many people believe it did. It just turned into something different. It evolved, and probably for the better, as all music does. Bands like Hammock try to bring it to the audiences' attention, but regardless, the fact is continuously under-recognized. It's just the fact that shoegaze is such a definitive term of music – the My Bloody Valentine's Loveless sound – which if you think about it, is one of the only records that sounds like it! I know I'm speaking a very debatable position here, but shoegaze is very transformational music. Hammock is evolutionary, and it'll keep evolving with greater efforts and further achievements that I believe anyone fond of anything ambient, droning, or of course shoegazing, should not hesitate to look forward to.
