Having emerged as one of Ireland’s finest talents in recent years, the Belfast shoegaze quintet Virgins release their debut album. This record sounds fresh and invigorating, nodding to the past with the brightest of futures.
After gaining some warranted attention from 2022’s EP release, Transmit A Little Heaven, Virgins deliver Nothing Hurt And Everything Was Beautiful at the perfect moment. The current shoegaze wave, which is awash in the music scene, is bringing young and old together to enjoy the reverb and fuzz that the genre brings, and on this album, we get a full-on force of nature.
When you hit play or place the needle on the opening track, the wonderfully named s o f t e r, you get an instant rush of adrenalin and sonic sounds reverberating through the speakers. It’s a tour-de-force of a song; the delicious, ethereal vocals of singer Rebecca Dow are incredibly rich and deliver that perfect blend of Rachel Goswell mixed with Elizabeth Fraser. Built around a truly glorious riff, the song floats around beautifully, sometimes feeling like a murmuration and then moments later like a jet plane taking off.
s l o w l y, l o n g follows swiftly with more incredible, dreamlike chords and vocals from heaven. The driving, angular guitar sounds from musicians Michael Smyth and David Sloan push the song forward; it’s a truly welcome assault on the ears and senses. c l o s e accompanies that ideal with fuzz-drenched guitars, the chords moving and shaping a wall of sound that doesn’t let up. It’s an Alt-Rock dream of a track and feels like something the grunge noise merchants’ Nothing’ would record.
What follows next is nothing short of remarkable p a l e, f i r e is six minutes of sheer bliss. It builds and swoops as all the instruments bend together to make you feel otherworldlike. It shifts any deep mood you care to mention, and when Rebecca’s vocal joins in, it’s like a dopamine shot. There’s an avalanche of noise, drums filling the sky as wailing guitars bend and shape along with them.
d i s a p p e a r e r brings a slightly slower, calmer, yet still entirely driven sound. Again, Rebecca Dow’s vocals are wonderful, bringing out the beauty in a swirling storm of noise. a d o r e slowly rumbles in, bringing a tsunami of reverb and further pushing the boundaries of shoegaze and what is wrapped around it.
s u n p o t s has a truly delightful Cocteau Twins charm about it. A delicious fuzzy bass sound runs through the song, and a middle eight breaks only to build again as Dow sings, ‘I hear voices on the radio.’ If there’s any justice in the world, this song and her voice will be heard on said radio.
The record closes with t e n d, the last song written for the album. It ebbs and flows delightfully, bringing all that came before it together in a juggernaut of melodies, angst-driven guitar, and blissed-out percussion. It fuses what Virgins are all about. It leaves you thoroughly engrossed in their sound and hungry for more.
Nothing Hurt And Everything Was Beautiful is the perfect example of a band launching themselves forward at a pace. From a noisy practice room in Belfast, this record is reaching people across the globe. The album title is a brilliant nod to the classic novel Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, where the protagonist has become ‘unstuck in time’. It is dark and has a depth that takes you on an epic journey, which truly encapsulates the themes on the record. Make sure you dive deep into it.
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