Thursday 18th February 2010

THE RADIO DEPT – “HEAVEN’S ON FIRE”

The Radio Dept almost came too soon, forerunners to the shoegaze revival that acutely gripped the blogosphere last summer, and continues to still (and I say blogosphere because how many people outside of the GvB readership have actually heard of half of those bands?!). Which is ridiculous when you consider that they were always revivalists.

Never really pioneers, The Radio Dept were simply doing what Scandinavians have been doing since forever, expertly absorbing the fragility and melodicism of indiepop into the sonic adventurism of where it went next; My Bloody Valentine, basically – their career arc a blueprint for a nation. So it’s no surprise that there’s nothing new here, they just kept on keeping on. But there’s an intriguing footnote.

The Thurston Moore sample that opens “Heaven’s On Fire” jars at first, apparently incredulous to the song’s tropical lilt. And perhaps even more so given that they’ve made a pop song that not so much burns a “bogus capitalist process” as plays into its hands as we begin to see the chillwave transgression from blog fetish to mainstream concern. But then maybe therein lies the critique.

Radio Dept didn’t come too soon, they came exactly when they needed to. Before, now, after, it’s all the same when you’re true. Once the tide turns in the capricious blogosphere and we’re back on some alternative anti-lo-fi trip, The Radio Dept will still be going, transmissions from their own satellite heart, caught in their own orbit just outside, in the stars, strung out in their own firey heaven waiting for the earth to roll back around in line with them again.

The Radio Dept – “Heaven’s On Fire”

(Photo: Sannah Kvist)