Kevin Bronson on April 26th, 2022

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Tombstones in Their Eyes yields the acronym TITE, so besides the band’s majestically swirling, sumptuously stoned shoegaze music, they have that going for them.

The Los Angeles rockers today released a new EP, “A Higher Place,” via Josie Cotton’s Kitten Robot Records. It’s the follow-up to last year’s album “Looking for a Light” and, incrementally, a move toward the melody-first approach of ’90s shoegaze.

Says singer-guitarist John Treanor: “I love singing, and now, instead of 10 layers of fuzz guitar, it can be six layers of harmonies on some songs, although we still do a lot of fuzz guitar.”

Treanor, joined on this EP by a lineup of guitarists Paul Boutin and Phil Cobb, bassist Nic Nifoussi, drummer Stephen Striegel and vocalist Courtney Davies, worked with producer-engineer-musician Paul Roessler (Nina Hagen, Josie Cotton, among others) and New York-based James Cooper on the recordings.

Three-way harmonies on “I Know Why” prove an inviting introduction to the EP, and tracks such as “I’m Not Living in Fear” and “The River” rely on a narcotic drone to soothe their downcast themes. Overall, the six-song “A Higher Place” joins the canon of immersive music offering passage to a different place, or at least an anodyne for the one we’re stuck in.

||| Watch: The video for “I Know Why”

||| Also: Stream “A Higher Place” in its entirety