Everything Else – Another One Making Clouds

One thing I love about the shoegaze scene is that if a new band appears that are absolutely nailing it then you’ll find out about them in no time. Everyone is so supportive and keen to share their latest discoveries. And so it was that I found Everything Else via a number of shoegaze pals. The fact that so many of my trusted sources were shouting about this album led me to placing a blind order for the vinyl, without ever hearing it. As expected, they weren’t wrong.

Everything Else are two childhood friends from Liverpool who’ve been playing together since they were six. By nineteen, they’d holed up and made this debut album for Big Potato Records with nothing but guitars, pedals, and an instinctive connection that’s impossible to fake. The label kept their promise to release it exactly as captured, no tinkering, no studio gloss. That decision matters, because what you get here isn’t polished perfection. It’s the sound of youth at full tilt, reaching for something epic from a bedroom floor. You hear traces of The Cure’s icy grandeur, Echo & The Bunnymen’s shadowed anthems, Flying Saucer Attack’s haze. But mostly, you hear two people trying to put the confusion and wonder of their nineteen years into noise.

Let’s drop the needle and see where this album takes us.

Kicking things off ‘Deep Mind’ sets the scene. The guitars are reverb drenched, tumbling over each other in waves, with a rhythm section that sits quietly at the back letting the guitars wash over them. It’s a gentle opener but already you can gauge the level these two lads are working at. There’s a nuance at play that belies their tender years. Wow, what is to come.

That bleeds straight into ‘Two Monkeys’, the track that first introduced them. Distortion thick enough to rattle windows, but inside it sits a melody that twists and clings like an echo of some lost nursery rhyme. The rough edges are the whole point. It’s the sort of fuzz that feels alive, messy, human. You can imagine them cranking the fuzz pedal too far in a rehearsal room and deciding, yes, that’s it, leave it.

‘Every Word Said’ brings a shift. The guitar lines get brighter, more intricate, and the song opens up into something closer to eighties goth pop, though still clouded by reverb. Vocals, now more up front in the mix, stretch into the sky, carrying a bittersweet weight. You can hear two friends locked in with each other, weaving something far bigger than their setting.

The title track is the centrepiece. ‘Another One Making Clouds’ feels like a storm rolling across the horizon. Layers stack until you almost lose your bearings, even though there’s no vocal it still maintains its humanity, fragile but steady, reminding you there’s a heart beating at the centre of the noise. The way it moves between heavy swells and quieter, breath-held moments recalls Flying Saucer Attack at their most engulfing. It feels like watching weather form and break apart.

From there, the record keeps shifting shades. ‘Hollow Surrounds’ has a darker pull, almost like something from C86 era Glasgow. Its slow and steady and even keeled start to finish. There’s something comforting about that.

 ‘Uncertain’ carries that restless teenage spirit, equal parts hope and frustration. There’s an ease about its pacing that feels like a walk through a city at night, streetlights flickering on puddles. Gone is a that even tempered approach and in comes a real dynamism. The bloom into that chorus is incredibly uplifting and life affirming.

‘Watch’ slows things down. The bass thumps like a heartbeat while guitars sway around it in looping arcs. You could lose yourself in this one, the way it hangs in mid-air, refusing to resolve. It’s a track that aches without saying much, which makes it hit even harder.

Then comes ‘So Long’, the shortest moment on the record. A two-and-a-half-minute sigh, like the band needed to step out of the fog and say something plain before diving back in. The guitars truly shimmer and glow on this one, warmth just oozes out the speakers.

And then the closer, ‘In Bed’. It’s intimate and woozy, the kind of song that feels like it was written at 3 a.m. with the lights off. The reverb folds in on itself, leaving just enough space for the listener to feel like they’re inside the room with them. If you’d told me this was a lost Slowdive single I wouldn’t have questioned you. It’s THAT good.

Across its nine tracks, Another One Making Clouds never loses that balance between scale and closeness. It sounds massive, but it always keeps you in the loop, like a secret being shared. That’s rare. Most records at this age shoot for volume and forget intimacy. Everything Else somehow caught both. Listening through, I kept flashing back to the bands I found as a teenager, the ones that made the world feel wider and stranger. This album carries that same charge. It doesn’t just speak to being nineteen. It bottles it. The confusion, the want, the weight of trying to understand yourself while everything around you shifts. They’ve managed to turn those feelings into sound. Another One Making Clouds is the kind of debut that will make you believe in albums again. It takes the noise, the haze, the shadows, and turns them into something you can hold onto. A record made by two friends who trusted their instincts, and in doing so created a world worth getting lost in.

Another One Making Clouds is out now on vinyl and CD via Big Potato Records.

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