Centered around songwriter/guitarist/vocalist
Will Anderson,
Hotline TNT officiate the marriage of shoegaze and rust-belt indie rock on their second album,
Cartwheel. While the band have clearly studied the slushy guitar swooning of
My Bloody Valentine, the sad-hearted hookiness of
the Replacements or
Teenage Fanclub, and the dour slowgaze aching of
Red House Painters at their most intense or
Slowdive at their most awake, these incongruent reference points become something new when combined. Where
Hotline TNT's 2021 debut
Nineteen in Love was already exploring this concoction of sounds, the upgraded production of
Cartwheel offers a more immediate impact, one where none of the details are lost in the waves of top-volume distortion. Opening track "Protocol" hits all of the marks straightaway, with layers of acoustic guitars and burning fuzz tones bleeding into blown-out drums and even more guitars, but somehow still leaving space for distinctive vocal melodies and a sense of pop dynamics even amid the overpowering flood of noise. Songs like "History Channel" and "Son in Law" are muscular blasts of tightly constructed songwriting pushed to the brink of shattering, while relatively subdued tracks like "Out of Town" and "Stump" tap into the melancholy character of
Let It Be-era
Replacements and simply turn everything up. As much as
Hotline TNT are informed by classic shoegaze ("Maxine" sounds like it could be a
Loveless outtake and "Spot Me 100" evokes the same vaporous highway mirages as
Swervedriver before breaking into a confusing drum'n'bass bridge), their maxed-out production choices have a lot in common with contemporaries like
Chastity or
LVL UP.
Cartwheel's sampler pack of destroyed guitar tones, powerful songwriting, and wafts of nostalgia for multiple eras of slowcore and shoegaze all contribute to its high replay value and overall captivating sound. The album reshuffles a deck of familiar reference points, but it still deals a hand that's engaging and holds a bothered beauty of its own. ~ Fred Thomas