Then again, is Giant Steps a shoegaze album? “Lazarus” had been a statement of intent, a signal that the Boos were sloughing off the confines of that press-invented genre, which makes it all the more ironic that they were soon saddled with another. But Giant Steps doesn’t really share the introversion or monolithic din of its shoegaze peers. It has the squalling, colossal sheets of guitars, most prominently on the quiet-loud blowout “Leaves and Sand” and the Bob Mould-inspired “Take the Time Around” (the Boos toured with Sugar in 1992), not to mention “Butterfly McQueen,” which culminates in mangled paroxysms of noise intense enough to cause a hapless mixing engineer lifelong tinnitus.
But where Loveless sounded impenetrable, almost machine-like in its sustained roar, Giant Steps sounds warm, human, communal, even symphonic at times. The noise and sculpted feedback are interspersed with cello, trumpet, flügelhorn, clarinet, and a Casio VL-Tone monophonic synthesizer. In the middle of “I’ve Lost the Reason,” a discordant build-up clears to make room for gushing woodwinds and sha-la-la-la vocals. “Thinking of Ways,” with its dreamy harmonies, labyrinthine horns, and skyward guitars, sounds like SMiLE by way of Ira Kaplan. Throughout the album, friends pop in for guest spots, with Pale Saints’ Meriel Barham lending vocals to “Rodney King (Song for Lenny Bruce),” Chris Moore handling trumpet on “Lazarus,” and a “load of mates” joining in for the swelling finale of “The White Noise Revisited.”
While writing Giant Steps, Carr was flooded with “a surge of memories,” he told Select, things he hadn’t thought about for years. He spent nights smoking Nepalese Temple Balls, writing songs, trying to make sense of his young life. It’s an album in which a preternaturally talented 24-year-old takes stock of the detritus of youth, sifting through it all for meaning. The nostalgic “Barney (…and Me)” revisits the childhood dreams Carr shared with Sice, while “Lazarus” evokes a quarter-life crisis of sorts: “When I start to think back/I feel like I’ve spent my whole life just kicking ’round/And not getting in the way,” Sice sings. The chorus is grandiose and wordless, filled with revelations too profound to translate into words.
