Words by Jason Lee. Cover photo by Xavier Guerra.
GIFT’s music is elemental.
On their sophomore LP Illuminator (out today on Captured Tracks) the synths pulse, burble, and shimmer like crystalline castles in the sky (see: “To The Stars And Back”, “Glow’).
Meanwhile, the guitars sketch out pointillistic arpeggios and searching melodies like stars in a constellation (“Falling Down,” “It’s All Too Fast”) as the rhythm section flows like liquid mercury its molten grooves somehow both heavy and fluid (“Later,” “Milestones”) with vocals swaddled in a thick layer of airy ambience like they were recorded in a rainforest at dawn or dusk (“To the Stars and Back,” “Destination Illumination”).
Meanwhile, the lyrical subject matter on the album is just as elemental—light, water, time, space—with the last two held over from GIFT’s first LP, Momentary Presence. That record was recorded almost entirely solo by GIFT’s front-presence, TJ Freda, during COVID lockdown resulting in what’s gotta be one of the most non-bedroom-sounding bedroom projects ever what with its Cinenascope-style widescreen sonics and a lyrical fixation on becoming untethered from time and space—“without weight” and drifting light as a “feather” with “vertigo” as a result—where elsewhere Freda makes mention of “time mov[ing] slow” and “years float[ing] by,” with songs like “Gumball Garden” (about waking up one day to find the city you live in is devoid of other human beings) capturing both the anxiety and the otherworldly beauty of floating unmoored in (inner) space detached from familiar coordinates.
One last note on Momentary Presence: the first track is called “When You Feel It Come Around” and it’s about panic attacks—which if you’ve ever been lucky enough to have one (as we have!) is like being thrust onto an invisible roller-coaster out of nowhere untethered from the physical world and from your own body besides with gravity suddenly deciding to take a vacation as your heart rate rushes forward thus creating an odd sensation of time speeding up and ceasing to exist at the same time…
…and the first time you have one you really think that you’re about to slip the surly bonds of earth and trust me it’s f*cking terrifying like a terrorist attack by your very own body so yeah “panic” is an apt word but once you eventually come down there can be an almost euphoric sense of calm as if the rest of the world has indeed melted away and you’re left at its still center but be prepared to spend the coming weeks or even months anxiously fixated on when the next attack might arrive…
…with Momentary Presence and now Illuminator capturing this mashup of adrenalinized rush and opiated calm to no small extent (minus the stark fear, thankfully) which maybe helps explain how GIFT’s music manages to sound both organic/elemental and psychedelic at the same time but where compared to the floaty/formless feel of “When You Feel It Come Around” TJ has described placing more emphasis on tight structures, melodic hooks (plenty of those on the first album tho’!) and dedicated choruses this time around in tandem with streamlining the process—Illuminator was recorded with a pro studio setup vs. “in a hallway with a laptop” with TJ’s bandmates playing a major role as collaborators at every level…
…but not to worry cuz even with all the changes on Illuminator (and the record taking changes over time ae a major theme) it’s far from a radical departure from Momentary Presence in fact we’d say more like a refinement and an expansion instead with plenty of new wrinkles sure but retaining the overall heavy-yet-spacious vibe of the first record where listening to it is something like walking through a cathedral made of songs you can wonder around and get lost in built on a foundation of big massive slabs of sound but with tons of empty “negative” space too thus lending an airy, soaring quality to those big slabs of sound and leaving space for plenty of dramatic shafts of light to enter the picture in the form of ornate little sonic flourishes that stand out upon repeated listens…
Photos by Marisa Bazan (left), Dana Trippe (top and bottom right), and Marisa Bazan (middle right)
…and speaking of shafts of *light* it’s a major theme of the record as noted above—the thing is called Illuminator after all—with TJ explaining elsewhere how light holds a two-fold significance in terms of literal illumination/enlightenment but also in terms of speed as in “speed of light” as in there’s much grappling lyrically with time and its discontents (and its occasional delights) in an accelerated culture with the opening lyrics of lead-off track and lead-off single “Wish Me Away” being…
It steals my breath / times lost I pretend
It dawns on me / this life I can’t repeat
Like sinking sand / its gone way to fast
Will they remember me / just in time to bury me
…on a track whose instrumental opening sounds very much like a ticking clock overlain with pulsating keys and looping guitar and a sample (?) of what sounds like someone scribbling in a notebook and/or erasing what they’ve just written with TJ describing the overall theme of the song being “about giving into the feeling of everything slipping away…just take it all away, put me out of my misery, wish me away” and then there’s the next track “Light Runner” which draws inspiration from Madonna’s “Ray of Light” and “celebrates the triumph of emerging from a dark time while acknowledging the transformative power of overcoming it” and then there’s “Later” which “explores surrendering to the overwhelming sensation of life slipping away before my eyes” etc etc…
…none of which comes off nearly as downcast or introspective as most of these descriptions make it sound cuz if anything GIFT ramp up the blissed-out, hyper-visceral quality of their music on Illuminator or as TJ Freda says re: “Wish Me Away” that “while this all seems daunting and sad there’s a feeling of optimism in this song, holding on for dear life and refusing to give up hope”,,,
…and notably the GIFTers were self-acknowledgedly strongly influenced by touring Europe over the preceding year and digging into the history of “Madchester” and like-minded ‘90s UK bands like Stone Roses, Primal Scream, and Massive Attack known for wedding indie sonics to massive earth-and-ass-shaking grooves not to mention a promoter in Glasgow taking them to an underground rave “blowing our minds wide open” and if you’ve never heard “Fool’s Gold” before go and listen to it stat and practice shaking your tail feather so that when you catch GIFT on their upcoming tour you’ll be ready to bust a move to some of their newly danceable tunes instead of just standing there slack-jawed like you normally do…
…and if there’s any other clear precedent for what GIFT does on Illuminator we’d have to say it’s ELO’s criminally under-appraised Time from 1981 which is likewise an ethereal yet powerful, melodically sublime concept record about (you guessed it!) the passage of time and all of its sickening crimes but where Jeff Lynne somehow gets beamed forward in time to 2095 and misses his girlfriend terribly especially as the sexy robot dressed in a jumpsuit who doubles as a telephone (prescient!) isn’t quite cutting it, set against a backdrop of glistening proto-synthpop crossed with ELO’s usual sonic grandiosity…
…and while I’m guessing GIFT have never heard this record I just thought it was an interesting point of comparison but don’t worry Illuminator is also highly appropriate for fans of (FFO!) Spacemen 3, M83, MGMT, Beach House, Panda Bear, Magdalena Bay, DIIV, Beach Fossils, Wild Nothing, Juan Wauters, Milüfer Tanya, and THUS LOVE, and with the last six of these being or having been signees to legendary Brooklyn-based label Captured Tracks (tho’ Beach Fossils only briefly) it’s fitting for the record to be GIFT’s first release on the storied label founded in 2008 which much likewise be a grounding influence…
…and speaking of “grounded” we haven’t even gotten around to introducing the other members of GIFT yet which is a good note to go out on and boy oh boy however ethereal and space-rockish their music may be it’s a pretty grounded bunch who bring a lot of their other life skills and professional experience to the picture that being multi-instrumentalists Justin Hrabovsky and Jessica Gurewitz (the latter of whom contributing vocals and lyrics as well) with Justin being a master engineer (including on Illuminator) and Jessica being a photographer/designer/marketer with Kallan Campbell on bass (owner of the much-loved Brooklyn DIY venue Alphaville) and Gabe Camarano on drums who played in a Beastie Boys cover band at his high school’s battle of the bands contest that got disqualified for saying “porno mag” while TJ himself works as an independent visual designer, sound designer and art director.
So better go listen the album now cuz ya could very well get hit by a bus next time you leave your squalid little apartment or as TJ puts it on the final lines of “Milestones” i.e. the last track of Illuminations: “where did the time go? / I guess it’s all over nownn”…