33:32 // September 19th, 2025 // Julia’s War Recordings
Like most normal people, I spend a lot of time wading through the “shoegaze” genre tag on Bandcamp. There’s a lot of good stuff there, but it can take a little effort to find something that feels like it’s truly special. Total Wife are something special. While the band have been around for a few years, the fresh LP come back down is the first music I heard from them, and I couldn’t have asked for a better introduction.
come back down is deceptively beautiful in both its music at face value as well as its sequencing. Opening cuts “in my head” and “peaches” are excellent takes on 90s gaze that largely falls on the Loveless end of the spectrum, showcasing the band’s ability to weave together nostalgic textures for genre purists. However, after establishing their mastery of this craft, the frantic “naoisa” rears its head. It’s a song that places Ash Richter’s beautifully detached vocals into a glitchy drum’n’gaze framework, and consequently shifts the overall vibe of the record towards something much more exciting. Above all, it’s fascinating how the analog electronics gel perfectly with the established gaze atmosphere: the dissonance remains a primary and entirely delightful focus.
Subsequently, Total Wife allow their music to bleed in and out of these two modes: there’s a gorgeous through-and-through-gaze riff on “second spring”, while the slacker-drem of “chloe” stacks an indistinguishable number of layers to achieve its genuinely otherworldly melodies, persistently underscored by a slow, pulsating beat. Late-album highlight “(dead b)” returns to the hectic glitchgaze and ups the distortion for good measure, before “ofersi3” launches a full-on industrial assault of noise at you. Naturally, the song transforms this garage-based intensity into manic glitchcore prior to its transition into the heavenly melodies of album closer and the no-frills gaze experience known as “make it last”.
While this may sound like a lot, come back down does not feel like it. It’s a brilliantly sequenced record: its more out-there experiments are comfortably surrounded by gorgeous dreamgaze tracks, and every song remains entirely committed to the project’s overall detached atmosphere. Sure, it’s aimed at gaze-enjoyers first: certain Bandcamp-dwellers might wish the analog beats permeated more of the music. However, it’s clear that Total Wife are an experimental shoegaze band, rather than an experimental band with shoegaze leanings: come back down is an album to zone out to amidst the ethereal melodies, but don’t be surprised when it zones you back in with an unexpectedly enticing pattern or two.
8.5/10