They Are Gutting a Body of Water have been one of the most crucial American shoegaze bands over the past decade, from the DIY neo-shoegaze hotbed of Philadelphia. Douglas Dulgarian began making noise as TAGABOW in 2017, playing house shows and releasing early cassettes like 2017’s Sweater Curse. But the TAGABOW project came together as a flesh-and-blood band with bassist Emily Lofing, drummer Ben Opatut, and guitarist PJ Carroll. Their new LOTTO is their most intensely emotional noise yet, a showdown with addiction and disease and death. It’s an exorcism of an album — heavier than heaven, hotter than hell, bold as love.
Once dismissed as a Nineties fad, shoegaze has never stopped mutating and expanding as a musical language. Pioneers like My Bloody Valentine, Ride, and Slowdive are infinitely more beloved and influential now than back when they originally existed, as young musicians keep exploring how to use these hyper-distorted guitar sounds to tap into emotional forbidden zones that can’t be accessed any other way. It’s all about opening up inner space — kind of like the way MBV would crank up “You Made Me Realise” until everyone’s central nervous system would melt like a Dali-clock soufflé somewhere around minute twelve.
Dulgarian, the son of a dirt-track racer, epitomizes the restlessly innovative spirit that keeps shoegaze so vital. He started TAGABOW in Philly, a town with a long-running homegrown DIY punk tradition, with early gems like his 2019 Destiny XL. But he began mixing in elements of Nineties drum-and-bass and glitchcore noise breaks on the groundbreaking experiments of Lucky Styles and Swanlike (Loosies 2020-2023). He’s also made his Julia’s War label a shoegaze mothership, putting out pivotal albums by Her New Knife, Ruth in the Bardo, Bad History Month, Glixen, and Mormon Toasterhead, as well as better-known names like Wednesday, MJ Lenderman, and Feeble Little Horse.
Dulgarian anchors LOTTO around the lead-off track “The Chase,” a terrifying horror story where he agonizes his way through a drug relapse. With no reverb to hide his voice behind, Dulgarian narrates the harrowing details though the digitally drenched chaos. “I dream of teeth falling out,” he mutters. “I dream of swimming through dirt, and later wake up in a pool of sweet, as she gazes at me lovingly, the me she remembers.” He’s physically torn between love and death, marveling at the soul-crushing power of both. But it ends with him forced to ask himself, “To which one will I say ‘I love you?’ To which one will I say ‘I need you or I’m gonna fucking die’? Because it’s true, it’s for both after all.”
The band’s ever-evolving sound takes a step forward on LOTTO. For all the electro mayhem, it’s the off-kilter blast of four musicians causing havoc in a room together. “American Food” is a road-trip swirl of sirens, hip-hop beats, DJ scratches, a skewed folkie vocal chant—“tell me there’s a better one, and I’ll go and get my gun” — through layers of distortion. Moments of lyrical guitar beauty pop up, as in “Trainers” or “RL Stine,” only to get trampled underneath blasts of industrial-strength feedback roar. In one of the most moving tracks, “Herpin,” a fragile electric strum meets up with an oddly nostalgic roller-rink organ. They head down the road together, hand in hand, getting clobbered by shockwaves of noise, wobbling side to side, yet never quite toppling over. Like everything else on LOTTO, it’s a moment where fierce industrial brutality creates raw human emotion. Even on an album with this much bleakness and terror, They Are Gutting a Body of Water make a beautifully uplifting noise.
