Ears Wide Open: Golden Daze

Daiana Feuer on December 3rd, 2015

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This February, Golden Daze will release its debut album on Autumn Tone Records, the label run by Aquarium Drunkard’s Justin Gage. Songwriting duo Ben Schwab and Jacob Loeb — both of whom hail from the Midwest but call Los Angeles home — say they’re inspired by 1960s melodic rock, Cass McCombs and Brian Jonestown Massacre, and if you dive into the dreamy layers of reverbed guitars and the soft wash of shoegaze noise on first single “Salt” without getting lost on some kaleidoscopic tangent, trace elements of these influences reveal themselves behind the soft vocal “oohs.” It would not suffice to rest on the delicate aspects of the song, because the tangle of melodic lines is pretty in the way greasy hair looks good and shiny after several days of being uncombed. You can pick out every fine line one by one, but really the way they knot together makes it most appealing.

||| Stream: “Salt”