Recommended EP: Spiral XP & TV Star – ‘TVXP’

In an interview with +rcmndedlisten last year upon releasing their EP, It’s Been Awhile, Spiral XP frontman Max Keyes was pretty explicit about not wanting his band being pigeonholed as shoegaze, but rather, “pop music, albeit louder than most pop music.” Given the current landscape of indie rock trend, you’d think most bands wouldn’t mind embracing the genre signifier, but in keeping with the Pacific Northwest’s penchant for underground rock outlier activity, the Seattle band sounds intent on further ambigufying frequencies alongside scene peers TV Star — the floridly tripped out power-pop band which features members of Militarie Gun and Regional Justice Center who last year also released their promising first EP, Hallucinate Me — on their new collaborative extended play, TVXP. Four songs from the current tourmates merging their creative palettes together in a way that inspires something new out each, it’s a case of two bands on the rise feeding off similar but different vibes, with its opener, the Keys-led “Snow Storm”, coloring melody in psychedelic hues and post-country bends in their glinted shape, or the way Ashlyn Nagel’s windswept vocals lift the tremolo guitars of “Maida” and the EP’s closer and title track into the heavens and close enough to kiss the sun. It’s a solid presentation of the Seattle underground’s next wave, and where each band goes from here will be a path they’ve inspired from one another in true community form.

Highlights: “Winter Snow”, “Maida”, “TVXP”

Spiral XP & TV Star’s TVXP is available now.

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