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Nov 3, 2023It’s a Christmas morning of an album, each track a new gift to treasure. It’s a set of songs that bring you deep into them, a mist of musical vapor in which snapshot reminiscences can be made out as the fog wavers.
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Nov 7, 2023Even if Hard Light is more homogenous than Delaware, it retains the group’s interest in always finding a different tonality, skipping from one genre or influence to another and conceiving genuine hit material.
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MojoDec 13, 2023It's an impressively elegant and expressive one. [Feb 2024, p.87]
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Nov 16, 2023It's the murkier-in-tone moments that stand out: while The Price Was High emerges with spellbinding dissonance and keeps the tension throughout, A Hitch surrounds its ringing hook with rippling guitar work. Tarantula is poised to become a staple on their future setlists alongside past singles like Winona, on which the band turns up the tempo with a driving melodic groove that satisfyingly fades as soon as it hits.
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Nov 3, 2023The final 2 minutes of the [last] track feature a stream of guitar-generated distortion dotted with melodic hints that quickly rise and pass. It’s a glorious coda to an impressive return, a reemergence that shows the band at their most versatile, free to be themselves.
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Nov 3, 2023Hard Light is far from Delaware's rollercoaster ride, but its update of that album's spirit should please the fans Drop Nineteens made in the decades since their debut.
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Nov 3, 2023It’s a smoother ride than Delaware, for better or for worse, but not without edges. Drop Nineteens have not lost all of their style; if anything, they’ve gained some finesse. It was never supposed to happen, but we should be glad that it has.
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Nov 6, 2023While the textures of shoegaze are everywhere, the closest thing to a shoegaze song is “Rose With Smoke,” a spare, guitar-only instrumental that acts as an intermission. Everywhere else, the band sounds locked in and linked together—if you want to catch the sense of play, just focus on Zimmerman’s giddy basslines—and the result is the kind of slow-release euphoria you get from an afternoon catching up with old friends.
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Nov 14, 2023All told, this is an album which will almost certainly be enjoyable if you like kinda hazy, kinda ethereal, kinda catchy indie/alt thingamajigs, but it’s also an album desperately lacking the hint of an edge which would give the total product further potency. Even so, it’s a solid comeback from another crew of aging shoegazers, just don’t set your expectations too high.
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UncutNov 3, 2023The likes of "Scapa Flow" and "Rose With Smoke" are assured orthodox shoegaze, while "Tarantula" reflects a more playful, almost power-poppy tendency. [Dec 2023, p.28]
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Nov 3, 2023For the most part, Drop Nineteens play to what they do best, which is creating hooky, melodic songs that don’t shy away from experimental passages and sonic side plots.
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Classic Rock MagazineNov 14, 2023Hard Light works so well because rather than cling on to relevance during the wilderness years, Drop Nineteen have simply waited and let the world catch up with them. [Dec 2023, p.77]
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Nov 3, 2023In shearing off that thorniness, Drop Nineteens have returned as a highly competent, often lovely, and perhaps less interesting version of themselves.