- Balaclava
- 2025
"Brazilian shoegaze" sounds like a subgenre that might be rattled off by a record collector in a High Fidelity-esque satire of hipster music nerds, in a list along with lo-fi post-bebop and early 21st century zydeco revival. Yet there's a shoegaze lineage in Brazil, and Terraplana have been part of it for nearly a decade. Formed in 2017 in the southern city of Curitiba, the quartet has been more recently gaining traction internationally thanks to their 2023 debut album Olhar Pra Trás and a split with Shower Curtain, fellow dreamy Brazilians now stationed in New York. Natural, their sophomore LP out today, ought to put them on even the most casual underground rock fan's radar.
If you're sick of every third buzz band slinging some warmed-over version of shoegaze, please know that Terraplana aren't mere trend-humpers. They're not TAGABOW-style digital deconstructionists, and they're mostly not messing with the extremely played-out "grungegaze" sound — though when they do, as on Natural lead single "Charlie," they remind us that the aesthetic can still be vital in the right hands. Most of the time, Terraplana gravitate toward grand, swooning indie rock that draws from across the genre's history, surfing the gorgeous overlap between the gorgeous and the abrasive.
For Natural, Terraplana teamed with Joo-Joo Ashworth, brother of Sasami, the LA-based producer who has worked with local greats like Dummy, Mo Dotti, and Automatic. Together, they landed on a mix of lo-fi graininess and crystalline clarity that gives the band's music both texture and heft, finding a splendor somewhere between the meticulous studio craftsmanship of the Marías and the raw, unkempt beauty of early Parannoul. Sometimes the songs unspool with the delicate celestial quality of Slowdive; other times they whirr along with the serrated dissonance of Sonic Youth. It never ceases to sound like the work of a well-honed unit who've learned how to maximize their versatility without compromising their sense of self.
As with many shoegaze greats, Terraplana feature a rotating cast of vocalists. Bassist Stephani Heuczuk often takes the lead, lending spectral qualities to the hazy tumult. Guitarists Vinícius Felix and Cassiano Vidal sometimes step to the mic as well with a blunt indie-pop delivery, creating a guy-girl interplay that reminds me of bands like the xx and the Goon Sax. They sing in Portuguese, so English speakers may not know what they're hearing — not that intelligible vocals have ever been a priority in shoegaze — but spending some time with Google Translate will be worth your while. Opener "Salto No Escuro," for instance, paints a vivid picture of spiritual release similar to Radiohead's "Pyramid Song": "I jumped/ Into the dark and the void/ Nothing to fear or doubt/ Even if I couldn't see/ I couldn't see/ I know how to swim in chaos/ And then let go/ I know how to dance in chaos/ And then let go."
The one exception to the Portuguese lyrics comes on "Hear A Whisper," which brings in Winter — another esteemed member of the LA shoegaze scene — to sing similarly elliptical lines like "Into nothing/ Watch your breath/ Follow slowly into all the things you said." It's the right kind of sentiment for music like this, evocative but open-ended, alluding to internal crises and dimensions beyond the terrestrial plane.
That song boasts a frenetic rhythm that seems to thread Wendeu Emerick's drumming with flickers of a programmed beat, almost like an indie iteration of Linkin Park's "Faint." It's one of many stylistic detours that keep Natural from falling into a rut. Elsewhere, Terraplana achieve both visceral uplift ("Charlie") and throttling downward churn ("Salto No Escuro"). The guitarists make skillful use of their pedalboards to shift the dynamics within each track, sometimes in ways that call back to the spacey intensity of Modest Mouse's The Moon And Antarctica: the bent, flangy chords that accent "Todo Día" before its descent into static, or the way "Airbag" peels back its mounds of distortion to reveal delay-addled high-range riffs.
Natural is not one of those albums that trails off at the end, either. Finale "Morro Azul" closes out the tracklist with a burst of nervous tension, Heuczuk's fervent bass line driving the music forward as the band evokes the searching distress in her lyrics. "There is nothing like you here in Morro Azul," she sings in her native tongue. "I've tried to find you as one more/ I've swam and drowned in the blue." She should keep on seeking. Terraplana's search for transcendence is yielding some tremendous returns so far.
Natural is out now on Balaclava.
Other albums of note out this week:
• Circuit des Yeux's Halo On The Inside
• Courting's Lust For Life, Or: 'How To Thread The Needle And Come Out The Other Side To Tell The Story
• RWAKE's The Return Of Magik
• clipping.'s Dead Channel Sky
• Throwing Muses' Moonlight Concessions
• Nels Cline's Consentrik Quartet
• Whatever The Weather's Whatever The Weather II
• cootie catcher's Shy At First
• Coheed And Cambria's The Father Of Make Believe
• St. Lucia's Fata Morgana: Dawn
• Bambara's Birthmarks
• Twin Shadow's Georgie
• Carly Pearce's hummingbird: no rain, no flowers
• Davido's 5ive
• The Body & Intensive Care's Was I Good Enough?
• Riki Lindhome's No Worries If Not
• Ricky Warwick's Blood Ties
• Sleepersound's My Own Dead Love
• Steven Wilson's The Overview
• Mia Wray's Hi, It's Nice To Meet Me
• Nightstalker's Return From The Point Of No Return
• Susanna Hoffs' Meanwhile
• SOM's Let The Light In
• Cameron Keiber's Nurser
• Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek's Yarın Yoksa
• Neal Francis' Return To Zero
• Gregory Uhlmann, Josh Johnson, & Sam Wilkes' Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes
• Warren Zeiders' Relapse, Lies, & Betrayal
• Das Beat's Frau Fatal
• Giovannie And The Hired Guns' Quitter
• Envy Of None's Stygian Wavz
• Edwyn Collins' Nation Shall Speak Unto Nation
• Warbringer's Wrath And Ruin
• T. Gowdy's Trill Scan
• Joni Void's Every Life Is A Light
• Kronos Quartet & Mary Kouyoumdjian's WITNESS
• The Dennis Egberth Dynasty's The Dennis Egberth Dynasty
• Anoushka Shankar's Chapter III: We Return To Light
• ZZ Ward's Liberation
• Migau's Agartha
• cleopatrick's FAKE MOON
• 44th Move's Anthem
• Zoë Mc Pherson's Upside Down
• Dorothy's The Way
• Weaving's Webs
• Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali's At the Feet Of The Beloved
• Dream Brigade's Dream Brigade
• Neal Morgan's PAW
• Frank Meyer's Living Between The Lines
• Devin Maxwell's Selfies
• Red Fang's Deep Cuts
• Simon McBride's Recordings: 2020-2025
• Kap Bambino's No Domination
• Dead Rabbitts' Redefined
• DeeBaby's Ms. Salazar
• Huremic's Seeking Darkness
• Kid Spatula's Joozy
• DoloRRes & Cherry Chola's JACUZZI mixtape
• Touch The Clouds' Touch The Clouds
• Rose Cousins' Conditions Of Love - Vol 1
• Various Artists' Mizik Maladi: Disques Debs International Vol. 3
• Throbbing Gristle's Live At The Volksbühne, Berlin, New Year's Eve, 2005
• Goo Goo Dolls' A Boy Named Goo (30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition)
• Jimmy Page & The Black Crowes' Live At The Greek 25th Anniversary deluxe reissue
• Ovlov's Buds Demos
• Ozzy Osbourne’s See You On The Other Side V2.0 box set
• of Montreal's The Sunlandic Twins (20th Anniversary Edition)
• The Faint's Blank-Wave Arcade & Wet From Birth reissues
• Rojuu & evilgiane's 62 starz EP
• Woesum's Protected EP
• Bo Staloch's The Garden EP
• Theo Bleak's Bad Luck Is Two Yellow Flowers EP
• Dana Gavanski's Again Again EP
• Mia June's Brain Like Computer EP
• Ruston Kelly's Dirt Emo, Vol. 2 EP
• Casino Hearts' A Walk In The Grass EP
• Oscar Farrell's I've Already Called EP
• Nasty's Black My Heart EP
• John Malkovich's OPUS: THE MORETTI EP
• Flora From Kansas' Homesick EP
• LE SSERAFIM's HOT mini album
• Seulgi's Accidentally On Purpose mini album
