Some bands don’t disappear, but instead drift deep and deeper into the ether, turning up strange new minutiae, odd crawling shapes; far and further they go, fuelled by their own twisted obsessions and a sideboard full of Velvet Underground rarities and whispered rumours of My Bloody Valentine reunions.
Stephen Lawrie’s Telescopes and their drifting kaleidoscopic dream-pop in terms of other bands, it’s because they have so clearly distilled and refined their own sound long ago: hidden, spooky, mesmeric, a secret gardening of secret delights.
So much so that this, their twelfth album in a 30-year career, can only really be described as ‘The Telescopes’.
You couldn’t call it ravishing (although the way the guitars trickle and scratch over sepulchral bass on Come Bring Your Love before exploding in distortion certainly is). It is, however, an unbidden delight: hypnotic, breathtaking and quite, quite beautiful.
