Album Review: The White Cascade - Endless

At this point, I can’t even recall how I first heard of the distribution and record label Deep Space Recordings, based out of North Carolina and run by the gawd Jeff Ware. It was probably at the end of 2011, when, even in the early days of my desk job in marketing for a publishing company, I had a ton of time to putz around online looking for new music, and I had a newly disposable income with which to buy that music—and for a while there, Deep Space was a place I would go for recommendations in dream pop and shoegaze in years before my overall interest in the genres had waned.

North Carolina’s own White Cascade was one of those bands I was introduced to by Ware—he had hooked me up with a cassette copy of the band’s second EP, and since then, things have been relatively quiet on their front. Because when you are in a band, but also hold down, like, what is presumably a day job and shit, you aren’t bound by the “album cycle,” meaning that you can take your time if you want, being as meticulous as your heart desires when working on something new.

That’s exactly what the White Cascade have done with their debut full-length Endless. The thing arrives sounding as majestic as the frozen image of a wave splashing on the LP’s sleeve—across the record’s ten songs, all of them some absolutely labored over, getting things to sound just right—just dreamy enough, just noisy enough, and just hazy enough. Or, in the case of the opening track, “Anything U Want,” and that crisp drum production.

In listening to Endless, I feel confident in saying that if ever there was a worthy successor to the My Bloody Valentine throne, it’s the White Cascade: Endless is a seamless and effortless blend of shoegaze aesthetics. It’s psychedelic and spacey, combining beats and atmosphere, hooks, and that distended and distorted guitar jangle to create a well-rounded listen.

As the album progresses, you realize just how big Endless is. Perhaps that’s why it’s called “Endless” because it’s so fucking expansive. The title track alone shoots for anthem status, and hits its mark with precision. And even moments like “Digital Pictures of Japanese Castles” are hypnotic in their swirling, quiet introspection.

Endless is also the kind of record that isn’t afraid to be self-indulgent; and considering that their second EP ended with a fixed groove (on cassette) it’s no surprise that tracks span 7, 8, and even 9 minutes in length. And one of those songs, the epic closing track “Nomad” ends with nearly 90 seconds of squalling feedback.

Two years ago, as summer turned into fall, The Band in Heaven released the masterful Caught in A Summer Swell—an album based around the idea of bittersweet nostalgia, and the longing for the summers of our youth that fade with the turning of the leaves. This year, as the days grow shorter, as the trees have already started to dump red and golden leaves on the grass, the swirling, enveloping Endless has arrived at the right time.  It’s lyrics are a mystery—since, you know, the vocals are buried in the mix and run through a ridiculous amount of echo—but this is less about lyrics that are poignant about losing your youth with each passing summer, and more about a feeling.

And in the end, that’s what Endless does a auspicious job of evoking—a kind of feeling of hope; the hope from summers long ago, and the promise of something new, or starting over, that each autumn always brings. It’s a gorgeous, shimmering record that despite all its shoegaze and noisy trappings, is able to transcend to make something all together breathtaking in its scope.

Endless is out now digitally and will be available in a physical sense later in the year.