BEATGLIDER hail from the sleepy Essex town of Rayleigh, home of the busy small-circuit rock club The Pink Toothbrush and...not much else, actually.
The story of how they came to be recording their debut single and album in LA's Hollywood Hills with Beck/ Badly Drawn Boy producer Tom Rothrock is prosaic and actually more a case of graft and luck rather than due to the glare of spotlights and publicity, but that suits the low-key and rather lovely world Beatglider's music dreamily inhabits.
At the time of writing, your reviewer actually knows little of the quartet, but he likes the melancholy, largely unhurried songs he hears. "We Gotta Coast" itself is very much of the old-skool tradition, slipping into focus somewhere between later Pavement and New Order at their chiming best circa "Power, Corruption And Lies." It's summery in a shady kinda way, with gorgeous 'bop bop' backing vocals and no intention of being thrown off its' path to something only just south of pop perfection.
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The promo is so enigmatic that I don't even have the names of the two other tracks included here, but they're both pretty damn delectable, anyway. The first is plangent and gentle, with lazy strumming and a real sense of wonder, while the closing tune yawns and stretches into something closer in spirit to, uh, the original crop of shoegazers after a minute or so, when the guitars get wind of the new array of FX pedals at their disposal. Doesn't get in the way of the full-blooded melody though and you come away from this first liaison full of well-being.
It's a long way from the muddy Thames Estuary to the sunkissed US west coast, but it's a leap Beatglider's prettily intense music makes with consummate ease. We await the album with bated breath.
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