By – Jason Hamric

Shoegaze has always been about feeling more than anything else. It’s music that drowns you, lifts you, makes you weightless one second and completely crushes you the next. quiet pleasures, the latest EP from Glixen, really gets that feeling in a way that sticks. It’s heavy without being suffocating, dreamy without drifting too far away, and honestly, it just different and familiar at the same time.

The moment “shut me down” starts, you’re in it. No vocals, no clear direction, just this swirling mess of guitars that feels like walking into a thick fog where you can’t tell up from down. It’s oddly disorienting, like something’s about to happen, and then—nothing. It just leaves you hanging there, waiting… Then bam—“all tied up” kicks in, and suddenly you’re falling. The drums hit hard, the guitars crash over you like a wave, but Aislinn Ritchie’s voice? It’s floating right above it all, just out of reach. It’s like trying to grab onto something in a dream but feeling it slip through your fingers. You don’t totally know what she’s saying, but you feel it, that sort of frustrated, restless energy, like running in circles in your own head. “avoid” slows things down, but instead of feeling soft, it feels like sinking. The guitars are hazy and stretched out, and the backing vocals make it feel like a memory replaying over and over in your head. It’s short, but it leaves you with this weird, bittersweet ache, like that quiet summer moment right before the sun goes down when everything feels a little too still but golden.  “sick silent,” which feels like getting hit by a wave in the best possible way. The distortion is huge, the bass feels like it’s vibrating through your whole body, and when the vocals come in it somehow makes everything feel even heavier. Yet, underneath all that weight, there’s something strangely peaceful about it. And just when you think you’ve figured out the pattern, “lick the star” pulls the rug out from under you. It starts off barely there, like it’s holding its breath, and then—out of nowhere—it explodes. Guitars screech, feedback spirals everywhere, and it feels like everything’s coming apart at the seams. And then, just like that, it’s gone, leaving you in silence, staring at the ceiling, wondering what just happened.

I’m a firm believer that people with severe ADHD relate and feel shoegaze the most.  Between the swirling and detuning and the very juxtaposition of it all.  The relief of a beautiful vocal against that turbulent sea keeps my frontal lobe stimulated and my spidey senses on 11! quiet pleasures isn’t just another shoegaze record and like every great one—it’s the kind of thing that gets under your skin. It’s an entire mood, a full-body experience, the perfect soundtrack for late-night drives, existential crises, or just lying on your floor staring at the ceiling. Glixen aren’t just recreating the past—they’re making something that feels real, something that makes you want to keep coming back, just to feel it all over again. If this is where they’re at now, the future is gonna be huge.