Album by Summer of Hate
Blood and Honey starts with shoegaze and alternative rock, then pulls sounds from all over the place until it becomes something much harder for me to pin down.
Summer of Hate is a Portuguese band built around droning guitars and dreamy vocals, but there are psychedelic sounds and rhythms here that make me think of Middle Eastern and Indian music. I’m hardly an expert on either, but those different flavors mixed into the fuzz give this album a character that separates it from a lot of shoegaze.
The title track, “Blood and Honey,” has this heavy, sludgy grime underneath it while the vocals float above everything and make the song feel strangely ethereal. And I swear I hear something like a sitar in there. Maybe I’m completely wrong, but whatever I’m hearing adds another texture to all that distortion.
“El Saif” takes that heaviness somewhere more rhythmic. There’s an almost danceable quality underneath the darker sounds, as though the band has found a groove inside all the noise.
“Mayura” gets more sinister. The rhythm keeps shifting in ways that make the song feel unstable, while the guitars and vocals continue building this dense psychedelic atmosphere around it.
Then the album starts to brighten. “Além” and “Joy” have a springier indie-pop and dream-pop sound that immediately makes me think of late-80s and early-90s alternative rock. There are jangly Johnny Marr-style guitars, a little early Church in there, and layered vocals and harmonies that make everything feel lighter.
It’s a pretty dramatic change from the sludge and darker sounds of the earlier tracks, but it doesn’t sound like Summer of Hate suddenly became a different band. The same haze hangs over everything. They’ve just found somewhere brighter inside it.
“The Gospel (According to Summer of Hate)” stretches out for nearly ten minutes to close the album. It builds toward this gorgeous, drawn-out outro that I never want to end.
Blood and Honey can get heavy without sacrificing beauty and dreamy without sanding away all the rough edges. It can move from sludge and drone into something jangly and melodic without making the album feel stitched together from unrelated pieces.
I started out thinking I was going to listen to a Portuguese shoegaze record. By the end, I was not entirely sure what to call it.
I just know I liked it.
Verdict: Good
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