Xuvetyn: A shoegaze masterpiece turns thirty

What if you combined sweeping ambient soundscapes with the denseness and fuzziness of shoegaze? The answer lies in Lovesliescrushing, who has managed to create the perfect marriage between the two over their entire career. One of their best albums, “Xuvetyn,” turns 30 years old in 2026, and I am here to say that it is every bit as forward thinking as it was upon first release. 

“Valerian (Her Voice Honeyed)” fades into a song that slides from airiness to deepness like being under a waterfall in the middle of a beautiful day. “Xarella Almandyne” is similarly airy but uses more distortion to achieve the effect. The higher pitch of the melody combined with the distortion makes it feel like you’re ascending amongst clouds during midmorning. 

“Mandragora Louvareen” is a good example of how the band uses its brand of shoegaze to create a deeper and more resonant environment. The deep rumbling throughout the song underscores the melody perfectly, and it feels like a blissful late evening outside when the sun has almost fully set and the temperature is just perfect enough to want to be outside until night finally arrives.  

“Golden-Handed” is also quite deep and resonant, particularly feeling like a foggy early morning on the way to work or school. The vocals in this song feel distant and more buried than other songs on the album, yet they sound like they’re more one with the ambient environment. 

An anomaly within the more resonant songs in the album is Mother of Pearl.” It starts off with a droning melody that fades into some sparkly textures. The vocals fit very well within the drone and the higher-pitched sparkling, acting like a bridge. Around the three-and-a-half-minute-mark, though, the drone fades and we are left with chimes and vocals underneath. The sound of this song overall feels like I am looking at rays of light hitting the ground during a tranquil spring morning.  

Some emotional cuts from the album include “Blooded and Blossom-Blown,” “Ghosts that Swirl,” and “Silver-Fairy Threaded.” “Blooded and Blossom-Blown" is less fuzzy and has a warm instrumental to make the song more cinematic-sounding, feeling like a climactic moment within the album. “Ghosts That Swirl” is the only moment of the album that I can describe as eerie. Unlike “Blooded and Blossom-Blown," the song uses fuzziness and more shrill sounds to make an instrumental that sounds like you’re near train tracks at the dead of night.  

The nine-minute behemoth “Silver-Fairy Threaded” is sparse in its beginning, with a deep drone undercutting the vocals. Around the four-and-a-half-minute mark, we hear an increasing amount of guitar come in until it culminates into a towering wall of noise that envelops the listener. When listening to this part of the song, I feel a sense of peace despite the noise on display, and the tone feels relaxing. The noise eventually dissipates  into slow and jangly guitars with the vocals front and center.  

The interludes throughout the album are interesting to listen to as well. “Staticburst” and “Monar” both feel like large bits of sound  compressed into small nuggets of time, bridging gaps between larger and sprawled out ambient pieces. “Aquan 1” and “Seesaw” are much different, though, sounding more like their longer, ambient counterparts. “Seesaw” especially sounds representative of the album’s cover the most. 

Overall, “Xuvetyn” provides the listener with not only a wide variety of emotions and style,  using fuzzy shoegaze-y goodness to accentuate it all. If you’re the type of person who enjoys texture in music, I cannot recommend “Xuvetyn” enough.