Regardless of your thoughts on Whirr, there is one absolute truth to be stated in the conversation: between them and Nothing, these are the two most influential artists of the modern shoegaze’s current movement. In the years in which they became recluses within the scene, Nothing took up the torch for its heavier rock foundation in propelling its louder, hardcore-indebted exteriors toward wider audiences which has since landed them as openers for arena staples like AFI and My Chemical Romance, and just last year, an entire festival curated under their flag on both sides of the United States. You’d have assumed that Whirr’s footprint would simply dissipate due to their radio silence.

Instead, discovery trends changed and their impact quietly began feeding newer artists drawn toward the dreamier numb of their weighted blanket aesthetic which has since made them figureheads throughout shoegaze’s bewildering TikTok era, focusing less on bolder melodies while tapping into cooler color spectrums in a swirl of dissonant feelings — perfect for the generational post-pandemic malaise of the now. Returning a decade later more grown and repented with Raw Blue, their first new album since 2019’s very quietly released Feels Like You, the Modesto band led by Nick Bassett finally can be acknowledged in much better light, even if the deepest wells of the ‘gaze’s abyss are still where they prefer to dive into.

Again, it comes back to that defining Whirr aesthetic which they have perfected — a teetering balance between riding out turbulent waves of feedback and an immersion of distant echoes through a similar degree of sensory tranquilizing. Its effect transports mind and body neither near Heaven nor the depths of Hell, and instead into its own outer space gravity, here refined by embossing the layers of guitars and big bang rhythm and opening new pathways to experiment with glitching patterns of static and horns. Raw Blue may be its hue, and what a deeply resonant one it is in making it their arguably their most visibly audible listen to date.

Highlights: “Collect Sadness”, “Walk Through Space”, “Enjoy Everything”

Whirr’s Raw Blue is available now on The Funeral Party.

Buy | Stream