Wild Nothing, Gemini

To claim that Wild Nothing makes shoegaze music is a bit like saying that Kurt Vonnegut wrote science fiction novels. A dumbed-down, decades-old genre reference doesn't begin to plumb the depths of Gemini, the home-recorded debut by Virginia native and head Wild thing Jack Tatum. While the boy-in-a-bathysphere vocals and overall sonic vertigo-go evoke the misty moors of mid '80s England quite a bit more than Tatum's Blue Ridge Mountains, there is an insistently strummy pop-guitar element to Gemini that makes it a real twin to the Pains of Being Pure At Heart's similarly styled breakthrough. Every time you feel like getting lost in the melancholy haze, Wild Nothing is waiting with a life-saving hook.