Three years ago I was writing for a site called Punk Rock Theory. The owner was a man named Tom based out of Belgium. Knowing that I had an almost indiscriminate affinity for anything shoegaze, he sent me an album from an up-and-coming Belgian band.

The album was Aurora from the then-unknown (stateside, at least) shoegaze outfit Slow Crush. I was impressed with the advance I received and preordered it on vinyl. That proved to be a wise move for me, because once the album was released, it gained so much hype that it became impossible to find a copy for a reasonable price—even with a steady stream of represses, which were all sold out within minutes. And rightly so. Aurora captured everything that the throngs of shoegaze revivalists tried to create without shamelessly pulling pages from the Slowdive or My Bloody Valentine guidebooks to shoegaze.

Even now, Aurora remains in constant rotation in my record collection. So its follow up Hush comes with impossibly high expectations. And while I won’t spend too much time trying to compare the two albums, Hush is largely successful because it sidesteps these expectations instead of trying to meet them. This is clearly the same band: the ethereal guitar tones and transcendent vocals are still here, often accompanied by a driving rhythm section. But Slow Crush isn’t trying to recreate the formula that made Aurora a breakthrough hit.

Instead, the album feels incredibly at ease. The band knows their voice and is content to let that voice speak for itself without quenching it under the weight of ambition. Many of the tracks are subdued and intimate, leaning more into soundscape and balladry than pushing into what might pump up numbers on Spotify playlists. In fact, the album sometimes feels antithetical to the streaming ethos: song lengths regularly stretch past the six-minute mark, often bleeding into the track afterward, making for a frustrating and unrewarding listen out of context. There aren’t any obvious singles here. Even the shortest tracks eschew catchy hooks in favor of amorphous soundscapes.

And let me be perfectly clear: that’s why this album is so good. Slow Crush very easily could have written another album of shoegazing pop songs carefully crafted for streaming algorithms and baiting bloggers. Instead, Hush forces the listener to engage on the band’s own terms. It’s not an album for passive, cherry-picked listening. Rather, it’s the kind of album that should be listened to all at once, preferably loudly, and maybe even in the dark. Only then will the full beauty of the record unfold itself. It might require a lot from the listener, but it rewards that devotion with blessings beyond measure.

One last thing: I would be remiss if I didn’t give special mention to the guitar tones on this record. Slow Crush famously designed their own fuzz pedal for Aurora, which they often sell—and quickly sell out of—on their Bandcamp page. These are the kinds of guitar tones that gear geeks dream of. Any pedal nerd on GuitarTok or Instagram wishes they could create clips with half the tone of this album. But great tone itself doesn’t make for great music. Spend fifteen minutes scrolling these corners of the internet, and you’ll realize how monotonous shoegaze can get when it’s used as an excuse to demo the most expensive pedals money can buy. Slow Crush knows this, and even as gorgeous as the guitar tones are—and they are stunning—they’re never the main attraction. That tone is just one flavor in the five-star meal that is Hush.

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