Altered Zones

No Pain in Pop just sent over this new single from London five-piece Echo Lake, who first appeared on our radar when Dan Nixon of 20 Jazz Funk Greats made a video for them using Kinect technology. "Another Day" tips the wall of sound vs. popcraft ratio in the latter direction, pushing Linda Jarvis' vocals to the front of the mix alongside a lead guitar melody that is actually distinguishable. Despite frequent comparisons to the Cocteau Twins, Jarvis' delicately acrobatic vocal line is more likely to recall the melodic sensibility of The Cranberries (in a good way). As for the shoegaze tag, Thom Hill's obsessively multi-tracked layers of drone and guitar tremolo feel more like a luminous halo than a curtain. Below, some backstory on the song, straight from Hill himself:

"Well the song is basically about doing the same old shit but trying to break routine and trying to be positive.. about being in a shitty job and weird state of mind and drowning in the boredom of the same old day to day routine. I wanted to write a really catchy pop song but something that still felt kinda sad. This was the second version of the song as the first was too drowned in ideas. This version is stripped down (for us!) and the guitar line was a bitch. Took me so long to mix." --Emilie Friedlander, Visitation Rites

MP3: Echo Lake: "Another Day"

"Another Day"/"Breathe Deep" 7" is out July 18th via No Pain in Pop