Drop Nineteens – “Tarantula”

The members of Drop Nineteens were about the same age as the college-age listeners who are just discovering their music today when they released their then-last album 30 years ago in 1993’s National Coma. If there’s any artist from that era beyond Duster whose influence has been felt even more so within the new wave of shoegaze’s shape-shifters, it would be the oft-overlooked purveyors of its ’90s collegiate rock sound where static and refined rock melody coexisted in a bookish manner, fittingly from the ivy leagues of Boston. On this year’s return album, Hard Light, Drop Nineteens return in wiser form. Still, on a highlight like “Tarantula”, there’s a timeline blurring through youthful wistfulness, as vocalist Greg Ackell recalls afterschool afternoons, this time from the afterlife of Drop Nineteens existence. That electric crush may be a little more distant, but it’s not necessarily completely out of reach in recapturing generation-transcending feelings.

Drop Nineteen’s Hard Light is available now Wharf Cat Records.