Diving Headlong into Shallowater

The Texas trio's slowcore bootgaze is heavy, hypnotic, and emotionally relentless. Just how I like it.

To those who say variety is the spice of life, I say take a beat and consider Shallowater, a band not from Shallowater, Texas, but from Lubbock (and now hailing from Houston). Their 2024 release, There is a Well, is filled with songs that are nearly identical in feel and structure. There’s no mellow, contemplative “Wild Horses” to offer a musical counterpoint to a rollicking “Brown Sugar.”

Sound boring? Some might find it so. But those folks probably find Picasso’s blue period boring, too. If you like the formula, then what’s the problem?

And I like Shallowater’s formula. The songs, which each unspool over several minutes, begin sparse, languorous even, quiet, and then explode into a raucous frenzy of distortion and fuzz. While Shallowater’s music has been described as slowcore or “bootgaze”—a play on shoegaze that harkens to the band’s Texas roots—I also hear some Hüsker Dü and Nirvana in there. It’s intense music, made more intense by the relentlessness of it as each song blends into the next, offering no respite.

Binging on it of late, including the trio’s brand new release, God’s Gonna Give You a Million Dollars, I was put in mind of the 2004 documentary, Super Size Me, in which Morgan Spurlock eats nothing but McDonald’s for 30 days, the results of which are, unsurprisingly, dire. I’d similarly not recommend listening only to Shallowater for 30 days—that could be as detrimental to your emotional health as Spurlock’s binge was to his physical health. In fact, I’d be sure to have “Walking on Sunshine,” or anything by Prince, cued up for immediately after taking a shot of Shallowater—the musical equivalent of the vegan detox diet Spurlock turned to after his McDonald’s experiment.

But it’s certainly worth spending some time mired in the shoals of Shallowater.

I’d start with “Lonely Sea” off There is a Well. I absolutely love this song. When I first heard it, it reminded me of something off Hüsker Dü’s Candy Apple Grey, maybe “Hardly Getting Over it”? Although I then went back and listened to “Hardly Getting Over It” and am now less sure of that, but still, there’s something at the core of both songs that resonates similarly for whatever reason. Could be the brooding guitars.

Or could be the lyrics.

As befits the music of “Lonely Sea,” Shallowater lead singer, guitarist and songwriter, Blake Skipper, gives us lines like:

Though the sun is beating down, there’s ice still on the ground

Don’t leave me here as helplessness surrounds

I lay and I wait and I watch you fade away

Don’t let me fall into the everlasting gray

Compare that to this stanza from “Hardly Getting Over It”:

Grandma, she was sick and she is gonna die

And grandpa had a seizure, moved into a hotel cell and died away

My parents they just wonder when they both are gonna die

And what’ll I do when they die?

To be sure, Bob Mould’s lyrics are a little more direct, but they both gesture in the same downward direction, no?

Anyway, just check out the track. And for sure, don’t pull the ripcord before you get to the guitar solo which explodes like a firing squad at the 4:30 mark. As many of you know, I often suggest listening to a song loud through high quality headphones and that advice certainly pertains here.

That’s something, right? Actually, I now think it sounds more like A.A. Bondy’s “A Slow Parade” than “Hardly Getting Over It,” but, really, who cares? At bottom, it just sounds like a great song. Because it is one.

Although I went to great lengths above to describe Shallowater’s music as lacking variety, another track I dig, “Snap,” does offer up some nuanced differentiation in the scattering of a few harmonic guitar notes and backup female vocals. Although this track clocks in at over seven minutes, again, don’t bail before the music crescendos and the gloriously distorted guitar parts explode midway through the song.

As for Shallowater’s new record, God’s Gonna Give You a Million Dollars, the formula of quiet, almost trance-inducing guitars giving way over several minutes to a raucous cacophony of distortion pretty much holds steady. Hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!

For starters, give a listen to “Ativan.” You’ll need to set aside some time as it’s nearly nine minutes long. Unlike its pharmaceutical namesake, I’m not convinced it will address any anxiety. And it for sure won’t help with insomnia. But it’s well worth the investment of time.

My gut tells me these guys would be phenomenal live. So Fine Tuning fans in the Big Apple, mark your calendars: October 1 at the Bowery Ballroom. Sadly for me, I don’t see any Bay Area dates, so you’ll have to let me know if my instincts are correct.

And finally, a shout out to Josh Terry for turning me on to Shallowater through one of his playlists. His No Expectations Substack newsletter is a must read.