Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - On The Echoing Green (2017)

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma follows-up the hazy shimmer of his masterpiece ‘A Year with 13 Moons’ on his most overtly accessible album to date ‘On the Echoing Green’. This is Jefre’s unabashed Shoegaze album, enlisting the help of Evan Caminiti and Byron Westbrook on Guitar, while Maxwell August Croy, Honey Owens and Sobrenadar supply occasional vocals.

The album opens where ‘…13 Moons’ left us off on “In A Copse”; a short, slowed down vignette bleached out by the sun, before A Song of Summer provides the album’s most joyous, anthemic moment. Making few concessions to the classic Shoegaze template for its first 4 minutes, it sounds like it could have been lifted off Slowdive’s Souvlaki, while the section that follows gives away its provenance with an immersive line in bass distortion that slowly erodes and kicks back into the track’s main refrain before closing out.

As Ledesma explains: “I was interested in trying to bring out more overt pop elements, to let them come to the front and be present. I also have more trust now in letting things happen – trusting other people’s musicianship, and being open to people’s ideas. Eventually, things emerge.”

The rest of the album deftly balances those classic Shoegaze references with Ledesma’s by-now perfected drum machine and tape delay arrangements, gradually dipping into more experimental terrain as the album progresses, especially on the beautiful Autumn interlude, and the closing field recording treatment Door to Night, effectively taking us away from the abundance and glee of the first half and into the introspective tristesse as the seasons pass.