Slow Crush – Thirst

I have a lot of fondness for Slow Crush. They absolutely nailed that heavy gaze sound I had been craving on their debut album Aurora. They were one of the first bands I seen after the pandemic, and what a show it was too. They’ve been riding that line between heaviness and fragility since then. The Belgian outfit have built and maintained a reputation on touring relentlessly, sending their shoegaze storm through sold out venues across continents. Their 2021 record Hush became the sort of album people clung to when everything around them was collapsing. That’s no small feat. And while the pandemic pressed pause on live music, it pushed the band to retreat, reflect, and ultimately create. Now, four years later, Slow Crush are back, bigger, bolder, heavier, yet full of moments that cut to the bone.

When they entered The Ranch in Southampton, the mission wasn’t just to repeat old patterns. They wanted rawness. They wanted risk. They wanted to capture imperfection as beauty. Drums recorded in a kitchen. Glitches left in place. Even a saxophone sneaking in on one song. The band are unafraid of tearing down their own walls. Isa Holliday (bass, Vocals), Jelle Ronsmans (guitars), and Frederik Meeuwis (drums) dug deep, often to the point where Holliday broke down in tears mid-song. The vulnerability stayed in the recordings. You hear it. You feel it. Holliday says the band had a clear goal when recording this album.

That moment begins with ‘Thirst’. A bold opener. The guitars surge like floodlights cutting through fog. Holliday’s voice floats, barely tethered, but every word lands heavy. It sets the tone. This is an album about desire and absence, about balance and essence, about needing something you can’t quite name. The song climbs and falls, but always with a sense of forward motion, of hunger. By the end, you feel that title etched into your skin.

Then comes ‘Covet’. A shorter, sharper hit, beginning with a quiet prelude that soon explodes. The band lean into grit here. The sax arrives near the end, curling around the vocals like someone falling out a late-night jazz club. It’s short and to the point and doesn’t dominate the trac. If anything, it makes you focus on the guitars more. One of those left-field decisions that make you grin because it just works.

From there, ‘Cherry’ spreads out wide. Dreamy guitar textures wrap around you like velvet curtains. It’s lush but heavy, the kind of track that makes you close your eyes and imagine yourself falling backwards into sound. There’s sweetness here, but also something sour underneath. Like its namesake fruit, ripe but bleeding red.

‘Leap’ takes that tension and punctures it. Opening like a lullaby its minimal and leaves plenty of room for the emotion in the vocals to really hit you. When those guitars enter though there’s a bigger impact. Really take a minute to focus in on Meeuwis’ drums. The dextrous energy on show is outstanding. Lifts the whole track to another level!

Then the record shifts into shadow with ‘Hollow’. Barely three minutes, but devastating. It’s skeletal, stripped back, and painfully exposed. You can hear the emotion Holliday struggled to get through. It lands like a diary entry left open on the floor. You need to experience this in headphones up loud. The choice of guitar tone is inspired throughout too. The textures compliment the vocals beautifully throughout to that screamed outro and the dead stop.

After the hollow comes the hold. That reassuring lift appears with ‘Haven’. A title that fits perfectly. Warm guitars, a steadier pace, and vocals that feel like a hand on your shoulder. Theres a real spacious feeling to this track, to the distance between the guttural bass and chiming guitar lead that just engulfs you.

And while we are in there ‘While You Dream Vividly’ takes you by the hand into that twilight space where beauty and dread mingle. The track meanders like a fever dream. You’re not sure what’s real and what’s imagined. I can only compare this to the result of a Robert Smith and Keven Shields collab. Goosebumps stuff.

The heavier streak returns with ‘Bloodmoon’. It’s a stormer. This makes me think of Kate Bush in her moodier moments but with a shoegaze backdrop. Again, the drums lead the way with a stunning performance from Meeuwis. I love how dynamic the track is especially from that half point dip and slow build to the end.

Then the band offer something more unexpected with ‘Ógilt’. Translated to ‘Invalid’ the song is a textural exploration of ambient tones. A soothing palate cleanser before the finale.

Closing the album out, ‘Hlýtt’ brings grace and weight. Nearly six minutes of expansive shoegaze grandeur. The song grows, swells, then breaks apart. It feels final. Like standing at the edge of the sea at night, knowing the tide will wash everything away but staying there anyway. The title may translate as ‘Warm’ but this is glacial stuff. The perfect curtain drop.

What makes Thirst remarkable is its balance. It’s heavier than anything Slow Crush have made before, but it’s also their most vulnerable. The fragility of connection, the ache of distance, the glory of reunion, the sting of loss, it’s all here, inside these songs. You hear the band’s years on the road, the cultures they touched, the people they met, the emotions they finally let themselves access. And you feel it all rushing out at once. Thirst is such a clever album title choice. It’s the condition of being human. Longing for closeness, longing for release, longing for something beyond what you can hold. Slow Crush capture it with sound that swallows you whole.

Thirst is out now via Pure Noise Records. Follow the band on the Slow Crush Bandcamp page.

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