Album Review: Rose Windows - The Sun Dogs

Nearly 25 years ago now a nascent Seattle band dropped their first long-player on local indie Sub Pop, and the rest is history. Seattle's Rose Windows aren't Nirvana, their debut The Sun Dogs sure ain't Bleach, and it's extremely unlikely that their career trajectories will overlap, but there's still plenty to love here.

The Sun Dogs is a brilliant offering, the seven-piece moving from drone rock to stoner to pastoral seamlessly, their sound always lush and full while cannily avoiding bombast. Vocalist Rabia Shaheen Qazi is a revelation, her vocal turns throughout incredibly expressive and compelling, but the true mastermind is guitarist and songwriter Chris Cheveyo. Both the arrangements and production – courtesy of Randall Dunn (Sunn O))), Boris, Earth) – are incredible, giving these ancient-sounding tracks a surreal, otherworldly vibe, both distantly familiar and thrillingly unique, and always resoundingly beautiful. You're always constantly surprised by what comes next, but it's never jarring and makes sense in even immediate hindsight.

Of the nine lengthy songs, Native Dreams is like Black Mountain at their most Sabbath-inspired, devil pact tale Walkin' With A Woman starts in a dreamlike drone before picking up pace and bursting into bloom, Season Of Serpents is a sparse folky number with haunting vocals and finger-picked guitar being gradually visited by flutes, oboes and strings which drift in and out, while The Shroud's massive hypnotic intro leads into an Eastern-flavoured stoner blues dirge. It climaxes with The Sun Dogs II: Coda, a gorgeously languid track opened by male vocals and eventually dominated by simply stunning arrangements.

Epic, mesmerising and with any luck coming soon to the dusk slot of a festival near you.