Fleshwater: 2000 in Search of The Endless Sky
Boston’s Fleshwater gained popularity in the scene with their unique blend of shoegaze, nu metal and grunge. An offshoot of the acclaimed mathcore outfit Vein.fm, Fleshwater finds its members exploring a softer side of the sonic spectrum while still retaining an edge, as suggested by the title of their debut album, ‘We’re Not Here To Be Loved’. Despite that defiant title, the 2022 album was met with widespread praise among heavy music fans, leaving them hungry for more — praise that now finds its answer in the form of 2000: In Search of the Endless Sky.
Even before pressing play on the album, its title and cover art (more on that later…) already hint at its themes and sonic landscape. By the year 2000, grunge was past its heyday, shoegaze hadn’t yet found its home outside the indie-head crowd and nu-metal was in full swing. Against that backdrop, the phrase “In Search of the Endless Sky” stirs up feelings of nostalgia, wistfulness and a kind of melancholic existentialism.
As the album begins, we find the band really leaning into its shoegaze influences, particularly the heavier side of the genre like Swervedriver and Drop Nineteens. With hauntingly beautiful vocals from Marisa Shirar, fuzzed-out dissonant guitars and frantic pulsating drum work by David Haik of Pianos Become The Teeth, opener ‘Drowning Song’ is a short, but effective, mood setter for the rest of the album.
Throughout the remaining tracks, Fleshwater employs many of their signature elements, but allows them more space to breathe and develop. The songs on ‘We’re Not Here To Be Loved’ rarely breached the 4-minute mark, while the majority of the tracks on 2000 are between 4 and 5 minutes in length. With these longer compositions, the band is able to explore a vast array of sounds and even introduce some instrumental “interludes”, such as at the end of ‘Green Street’.
Guitarist Anthony DiDio has stated that the lead single, ‘Jetpack’, was the anchor song for the album, which becomes immediately evident upon listening. It starts off with a poppy, danceable groove that underpins some of the album’s most intelligible lyrics: “It’s a perfect day / to throw you away / and find myself in a pool of static / it goes to show how much / keeping the faith can keep you out of touch”. We then get a section of heavy guitars and dueling vocals between Marisa and Anthony, which eventually gets drowned in noise and gives way to a lilting, longing 3/4 section before moving back into the pop groove for the final lyrics: “Nothing has changed”.
It is possible to get a taste of the entire album just from listening to ‘Jetpack’, but that’s not to say that there aren’t still some surprises to be found. The drum & bass influence of ‘Last Escape’, the ambient interlude in ‘Be Your Best’ that closes out the first half of the album, the slow-burn of ‘Silverine’ and the interesting production effects of my personal favourite track ‘Raging Storm’. And now, back to the artwork. While ‘We’re Not Here To Be Loved’ featured a closeup of a rubber duck on the cover, ‘2000: In Search Of The Endless Sky’ signifies the evolution and expansion of the band’s sound with a stylistically similar swan. In the classic tale, the ugly duckling feels lost and lonely until it becomes a swan and is admired by all for its beauty and grace – a fitting parallel for the two albums. After all, while swans may be beautiful, they are also aggressive.