Photo by Luke Ivanovich

When every band in Philly was zigging into shoegaze, A Country Western zagged down a totally different path of their own rustic road of indie rock makings on their 2024 sophomore breakthrough, Life on the Lawn. It’s funny that now, two years later, a lot of those same bands within shoegaze’s new wave are starting to catch onto with where the four-piece had already gone in the underground world of guitar rock. It’s as good a time as ever for them to leave the nest of familiar territory for some place different, and that journey takes flight on “Blood Eagle”, the lead single off their new album, Audition Tape.

You might press play, hear the slamming layers of feedback-compressed riffs being warbled by a crush of rhythm and think, “Oh, so they just went back to shoegaze?” Not quite, my Bilinda Butcherer of genre facts. Whoever told you that anything with distortion pedals rumbling through its core failed to realize that does not automatically a shoegaze song make. If anything, A Country Western put faith behind the origins of ’90s indie rock’s noisier collisions and all of those artists’ dooming shrugs, right down to the obtuse lyrics that sound like a cool thing, but cryptically could mean anything. There’s your answer, indeed.

A Country Western’s Audition Tape will be released October 21st on Crafted Sounds.