Album Review: Reighnbeau- Hands

I wish I could remember the actual context of a Facebook exchange I had awhile back with someone, but I think the end result of it was the realization that the New Mexico-based band Reighnbeau is a successful hybrid of shoegaze and trap music.

At the time, it took me a second or two to process this, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized how accurate of a description that is. And it’s only been solidified more with the hard-hitting “trappy” style percussion sequencing on “Dust,” one of eight incredible songs on Reighnbeau’s latest full length, Hands.

Hands is part of the spring batch of cassettes from Bridgetown Records, a collection that was recently blessed into the world by the Bridgetown gawd himself, Kevin Greenspon. And it was Hands that I was most looking forward to from this bunch of albums, based on Reighnbeau’s evolution in sound, starting with their 2012 LP Ashes. There, they mixed a shoegaze and “downer rock” aesthetic, with a cavernous, menacing atmosphere, but relied mostly on acoustic instrumentation.

Later that same year, on a one-off single, “Splinters” (which also appears on Hands), the band started to embrace heavily delayed electric guitar, creating a woozy, codeine-drenched sound—an idea that seems to have served as the blueprint for this most recent effort, all while dialing back some of the inorganic, synth-heavy sounds dabbled with on last year’s “Water,” a track contributed to the Family Time label’s 4-way split 7” EP.

Mixed appropriately low, and jumbled into the fold, frontman Bryce Fletcher’s spidery, whisper-thin vocal delivery becomes like a secret you are on the verge of hearing, but can’t quite make out, adding a bit of mystery to the songs on Hands. Musically, this can all be considered “shoegaze,” but throughout the eight songs, Fletcher varies the style within the genre—there are slow motion, dream pop moments (“Run With The Woundedd” and the somber as hell “Echo”), but then there are more aggressive and abrasive songs as well—like the double shot of “He” and “Saltwoundd” that arrives near the end.

Never short on creating the feeling that you’re in a dream about to turn into a Lynch-ian nightmare, Hands is nothing short of a triumph for Reighnbeau. Claustrophobic, murky, yet incredibly unintimidating at the same time, it works some kind of balancing act by being very accessible, luring listeners into the hazy, gorgeous yet unsettling, shoegazey layers found within.

Hands is out now as a limited edition cassette or as a digital download, via Bridgetown.