Lilys are largely regarded as a shoegaze band first and an undersung indie-pop band second. The project that Kurt Heasley started in 1988, and has carried since with a rotating lineup, helped define America's response to first-generation shoegaze with their 1992 Slumberland debut, In the Presence of Nothing. The similarities between that album and what My Bloody Valentine were spearheading across the pond were obvious, but the record was a clever enough take on the sound that it remains an essential piece of the genre’s greater catalog today. However, the band steered into dream-pop and then full-on indie-pop on future releases and left their abrasive gaziness behind. In between Presence and 1994’s Eccsame the Photon Band, Lilys released a mini-album called A Brief History of Amazing Letdowns that's finally received its proper reissue.
As you might imagine given its liminal location in their developing discography, this project neatly split the difference between their shoegaze and indie-pop tendencies. This official reissue features all six songs from the original release, four demos from that era, and a previously unreleased track called "G Cobalt Franklin." The latter sounds like something Duster would've written later in the decade—slow, trudging, and psychedelically muddy—while the other demos are noticeably more minimal and less punctuated than the peppy indie-pop cuts in the original tracklist. Opening track "Ginger" is a driving power-pop song with a shoegaze tinge that's closer to Pavement and Guided By Voices than Slowdivem, and would be replicated 20 years later by a band like LVL Up.
"Any Place I've Lived" is a golden indie-pop nugget in the vein of Yo La Tengo, but tracks like "Jenny, Andrew, and Me" and "Coby" have reverse-reverb leads that stretch atop their sturdy, sticky forms. Heasley would go on to write progressively sleeker records throughout the rest of the '90s and early 2000s, but this collection of early gems prove that they were destined for more than squally distortion from the get-go. © Eli Enis/Qobuz