Claire Records, 2007

Ifwhen veers from the sounds of multi-instrumentalist Merc’s previous band, All Natural Lemon & Lime Flavors. That group, now disbanded, challenged the conventions of Shoegaze, Mathrock and Pop by moving past those genre’s musical boundaries. Ifwhen looks back at where All Natural Lemon & Lime Flavors left off, and keeps going forward. Merc, along with bassist Kentaro and keyboardist Mary Macdowell, sludge their way through and intentionally nauseating sea of exploration and discovery.

“Fantastic Maneuver”, the album’s opening track, begins on a groovy baseline moving up and down through sticky keys. The beats skitter on underneath. Then, at 57 seconds into the song, the sound takes a dramatic and unexpected turn. Still murky, but now in different waters, instruments clash against each other as hollow vocals cling overtop. Those first 57 seconds into the album prepare the listener for what’s to come: a beautiful kind of motion sickness.

As all good Shoegazers do, Ifwhen creates an atmospheric wall of sound. With this band, however, that wall is unlike any other. It is impossibly thick and it is dizzyingly with movement. The ambience is purposely disrupted by abrupt, dramatic changes in motion and tone. These thin slivers of time-changes punctuate the noise and accent its ever-changing direction. The perpetual movement blurs the 10 tracks on We Will Gently Destroy You, causing parts of the album to sound slightly redundant. In spite of this, as each song trudges though its many changes in frequency, it still retains a sense of self.

It’s the separation of instruments, voice included, that really make this album work. On one side is the keys, guitar and voice, blurring together into a thick field of soupy sound. Meanwhile, a deep and flowering bass pulls itself away from the muck. As do the penetrating, almost obnoxious, drums. The instrumentation almost sounds as if the individual band members are playing different songs that somehow manage to occasionally align. The balance is well-realized and very well executed.