When Osaka indie-rock shoegaze band Acidclank popped up in 2015 with its debut album, Inner, the band showed a tremendous versatility in sound. The record essentially felt like a lo-fi exploration of 90s UK indie music, drifting from shoegaze to psych to pop. On each of the two singles that followed, the band continued to give different looks into its wide range song-writing capabilities. Acidclank’s latest full-length effort, Addiction, is more of the same, drawing on a variety of influences and styles, but featuring enough consistent elements that it never feels weird or disjointed.
There are some familiar titles in the track list, including a buffed up version of “Clever” from Inner and both of the singles that were released last year. Just like the first album, Addiction features some very shoegazey tunes, highlighted by “Turning” and the very Loveless-inspired “Sleepwalk”. On songs like “Wrong” and the aforementioned “Clever” Acidclank delivers some noisy but danceable indie rock, while “Disease” feels like a nod to Death Cab’s Transantlanticism. Throughout the album, you get a lot of different but high-quality looks, as the band has shown a knack for consistently crafting catchy, well-written songs. But Addiction really shines when it gets super trippy, particularly on “This Time” and “Overdose”. The former has a very Dark Side of the Moon vibe to it with a slow-paced, steady groove setting the foundation for layers of spaced out guitars and reverb-soaked vocals. “Overdose” is pacier, more of a free-form psych track with guitars, atmospheric synths, and harmonized vocals all blanketed over a droning bass line, waxing and waning in intensity. While the album as a whole is consistently very good, these two tracks are the standouts.
Addiction CD versions can currently be found on Amazon is currently available on most streaming platforms. You can purchase it via iTunes as well, and an LP version is due out at some point in the next month. You can also check out some of their earlier work at Bandcamp.