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Around on CD

With their two albums to date, Bay Area six-piece Whirr have developed a reputation for dirgeful shoegaze, buttressed with textured layers or guitar and weighty, driving compositions. Spacious and moody, their 2012 LP Pipe Dream drew comparisons to heavyweights of the genre My Bloody Valentine, Ride and Slowdive. Now, Whirr returns with Around, an album that finds the group restrained, and perhaps even a bit darker. Here, they explore longer songs, with their shortest clocking in at just under six minutes. Catchy melodies, traditionally a part of the band's wheelhouse, give way here to a droning ambience, shifting Whirr slightly from their shoegaze core toward a dour post-rock sound. Vocalists Kristina Esfandiari and Loren Rivera keep their contributions misty and abstract, serving here as additional instruments more than messengers. But the thunderous drums and lavish guitar work remain - albeit in a colder, glassier form - making Around both a departure and a logical step forward from Whirr's previous work.