“Reach”

Where some artists use shoegaze textures as a vessel for ennui, Will Kraus whips them up into an enthralling frenzy. The Brooklyn drummer and noisemaker, who released his debut album under his surname in 2016, prefers screeching into vats of static over his genre's preferred vocal simmer. Kraus' songs don't merely float by; they grab you by the eardrums and shake up your equilibrium. Kraus's new song “Reach” is no exception: The first offering from his forthcoming second LP, Path, loses none of that urgency, even if it does gain some clarity. For the first time, Kraus's smeared vocals sound like real, discernible words.

True to his glitch-gaze aesthetic, Kraus only offers legible lyrics in strangled fits and starts: On “Reach,” he repeats the phrase “reaching through me” over frantic backbeats and fuzzed-out guitars, his voice still corroded but higher in the mix and a little sharper than usual. Even though he barely breaks above a whisper, there’s an urgency to the way he sings here, like he’s straining to communicate discreetly amid all the noise. “Reach” starts to unravel that classic shoegaze dynamic of louder-than-life guitars and soft vocals. Kraus sings quietly, but his voice is also the strangest and most jagged part of the storm he's brewed. It’s a toothy, gnarled sound that’s instantly compelling, and it continues to put Kraus a cut above most artists dragging shoegaze into this millennium.