The Stargazer Lilies – Love Pedals

You know that feeling when the world slows down for a second. The air thickens. Colours blur and shimmer in a way that makes you question if you’re awake or already dreaming. That’s exactly where The Stargazer Lilies music lives. The new release is less an album you listen to and more a place you drift into. Once you’re there, you don’t want to leave.

Kim Field and John Cep have been bending sound into strange and beautiful shapes for years. First with Soundpool, where they managed the unimaginable, disco and shoegaze colliding in a glitter-soaked blur. Now, they are The Stargazer Lilies, where their vision has turned denser, darker, and more intoxicating. They’ve always had a knack for making reverb feel alive, like it breathes in the spaces between the notes.

My first real encounter with The Stargazer Lilies was Occabot. That record floored me. Like a hidden portal opening up, where distortion wasn’t just a texture but a whole new terrain. I can still remember hitting play and sitting stunned, thinking how the hell have I missed this until now. That moment of discovery has never left me, and every release since has been a reminder of how deep their sound can run when you give yourself to it fully. Love Pedals pushes even further. It carries the same slow-burning magic but drenched in more weight, more atmosphere, more heart.

Let’s see what new worlds this album will take us to. Time to drop the needle.

The album begins with ‘Ambient Light’. It is both an opening and an invitation. Guitars stretch like molten glass, bending and sliding into strange shapes, while Field’s voice hovers, fragile but unyielding. This is a new sound for the band. Almost sludgy, driven by that busy bassline. Still unmistakably The Stargazer Lilies though. Theres no mistaking Ceps unique guitar style.

From there, ‘Love Radio Show’ breaks through with a pulse that feels warmer, looser. It’s hazy but alive, the kind of song that flickers between romance and menace depending on where your head is at. The guitar tones are sharper, cutting little slashes into the haze. The chorus doesn’t so much announce itself as it blooms suddenly, like headlights hitting fog. By the time the song settles into its hypnotic groove, you’re deep inside their world. Only two songs on and I’m in heaven here.

‘Perfect World’ pushes things further inward like some dissolving memory. The tempo is slow and steady but the sounds wash over you in waves, giving the sense of time stretching. There’s a sweetness buried beneath the fuzz, it seduces while leaving you unsettled. This is the sound of the band taking that sound they created on Occabot and elevating it to new angelic highs and for that reason it has to be my album stand out track.

Then comes ‘By Your Side’, which feels like the closest thing to a ballad here, though of course nothing The Stargazer Lilies do is straightforward. The guitars cradle the vocal, not smother it, wrapping Field’s delivery in fuzz and haze. But through all that weight, the sentiment cuts clear. You feel the intimacy, the promise of connection, even if it’s delivered through layers of distortion. It’s claustrophobic and tender at once. How Cep simultaneously gets his guitars to sound like a choir and a space ship taking off is beyond me.

The midway point is marked by ‘Shining Yellow’, and the title says it all. It really does glow. The guitars chime brighter, the textures open up, and suddenly there’s space to breathe. After the heaviness of the first half, this track feels like stepping outside into sunlight after travelling through the night. The shoegaze wash is still there, but it’s tinted with a psychedelic summer shimmer that gives it lift. It’s a real trick to create these new moods and textures but you know your still in The Stargazer Lilies world.

‘Heaven Knows’ turns the mood again. The low-end digs deeper, the guitars stretch into feedback-drenched delayed wails, and the track moves with a slower crawl. There’s resignation in it, but also beauty. The vocal melodies hover above the maelstrom like a flicker of hope refusing to be stamped out. The guitars hit in waves washing over you whilst the vocals anchor us in its wake. This is such a visceral listening experience.

Then the strangeness peaks with ‘Trans Med’. It feels more like a sound ritual than a song, with tones bending and breaking apart, percussion dissolving into the ether. It’s hypnotic, unsettling, and yet utterly compelling. You get the sense that they wanted to break the dream open here, let you see the seams of the world they’ve built. It’s the boldest cut on the album, the one where they stop hinting at psychedelia and just throw you into the deep end. This is lysergic at its most extreme. This song made me hear colours!

‘Hold Tight’ pulls things back into something more grounded, though only slightly. The rhythm feels like it’s dragging its feet, but there’s warmth in the way the melodies wrap around each other. After the chaos of ‘Trans Med’, it’s almost like a hand on your shoulder, a reminder that you’re still being carried through. The mood makes this feel like a lost track from The White Album that was excluded for being too out there. The chorus carries a sense of defiance, a whispered mantra to cling to connection even as everything else unravels. That guitar solo though. It utterly melts your brain. I have no idea how that is achieved.

The album closes with ‘Love Radio Show (Radio Edit)’. On the surface, it’s just a shorter version of the earlier track, but it works beautifully as a bookend. The repetition feels deliberate, like a dream you slip back into just before waking. The edit strips away some of the haze, leaving a sharper silhouette of the song. It’s a reminder of what you’ve passed through, but cleaner, brighter, as if the band wanted to leave you blinking in the morning light.

By the end of Love Pedals, you’re left in that strange half-place between exhaustion and renewal. The Stargazer Lilies have always blurred lines, between past and future, between shoegaze tradition and new territory, between intimacy and vastness. With this record, they lean fully into that, letting it define the experience. It’s music that consumes you, stretches you, leaves you disoriented in the best way. How do I feel about The Stargazer Lilies after listening to Love Pedals? I continue to be in awe of their creativeness, their ability to transport me into their records and completely consume me. How do I feel about them. I love em! If you’ve been looking for a record that makes the familiar feel uncanny, that takes the weight of shoegaze and bends it into strange new shapes, Love Pedals is it. Just don’t expect to stay the same once you step inside.

Love Pedals is out now via Shoredive Records and Little Cloud Records on some very lush coloured vinyl variants. Follow the band on The Stargazer Lilies Bandcamp page.

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