Marisa Shirar is the lead singer for the heavy shoegaze band Fleshwater, and those guys are doing great for themselves right now. Last year, Fleshwater released their sophomore album 2000: In Search Of The Endless Sky, and I saw them headline an extremely sick show with Chat Pile and Balmora. Since then, my daughter has gotten into the band, which I didn't see coming. Fleshwater are coming to Richmond in a few months, and their show has already been moved from the 500-cap Broadberry to the 1500-cap National. Now, Shirar is singing in another band, and they're making some very different music.
Shirar is childhood friend with Miles Morris, drummer for the LA band Bad Suns. (Wikipedia tells me that he is also Tommy Lee's nephew. Didn't see that one coming!) Last year, Morris wrote a bunch of new songs, and he put together a brand-new group to play them. Morris plays bass and drums in Bedelia, and he enlisted Shirar and Ethel Cain guitarist Dakota Floeter.
A couple of weeks ago, Bedelia shared their debut single "Tightrope." It's a gauzy, propulsive piece of alt-pop that would've done brilliantly on early-'90s college radio. Today, the follow that song with a new one called "Valley Sadness," which is just as pretty. Both tracks make great use of Marisa Shirar's huge voice, but they don't sound anything like Fleshwater. Instead, they're going into the Sundays/Cocteau Twins shimmer-sigh zone, which is a great place to be. Hear both songs below.
