I have no memory as to how I stumbled onto Sydney, Australia's Futureheaven, but have been following them on Instagram for a good while. Yet, I somehow still managed to completely miss that they had issued a new EP, Forgetting Who You Once Were, back in February. The release presents five tracks from today's ever-popular dream poppy grungegaze corner of sounds, and—at least to my ears—is obviously better than average.
I often view the tactic of semi-restrained vocals placed deep in the mix as a shortcoming of sorts, but it works just fine here—in part because there is more life to the vocals than is often the case. And that compliment also applies to the music, whose atmospherically textured sheen builds into a zestier display of propulsive power chord rhythms that lands on a degree of catchiness that I wish were more frequent within this genre. "Ghosts" is my personal fav, but I must admit that "Tired Eyes" was incredibly close behind.
It looks to me like Forgetting Who You Once Were is digital-only, which honestly shocks me. Quite a number of relatively boring bands of this nature have hooked up with labels for physical copies of less interesting output, so I'd very much expect Futureheaven to fall into that position sooner than later based on the quality of this material. For now, head to Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music, and so forth...
