EP Review: Picture Postcard – with time

We’ve covered Picture Postcard twice in recent months, and now make it a hat-trick with the band’s new EP, with time.

We covered the first song on the EP, wherever you’re meant to be, back in April, and listening back to it, the layering sets it apart from the general shoegaze scene. Vocals spring out of the mix; the backing vocals hit home, sitting atop reverb guitars and surprisingly crisp production when it comes to the drums. It sometimes swaps that around smoothly and without fanfare; the layers rearrange, but only briefly.

That sense of layer upon layer is also a feature of cranberry juice, and it is here that the band’s reworking of shoegaze-leaning sounds is a strong feature. A post-punk rhythm section drives the song, and you really get to grips with how the band has left space between the song’s constituent parts for the listener to lose themselves in contemplation.

On the title track, you are pleasantly surprised by the presence of an acoustic guitar and what sounds like vocal samples, and yet the dream pop themes within the arrangement don’t feel out of place in the EP which the band has deftly constructed. Things don’t disappear in the mix; they shift and swirl like a morning dew, light at times, but with a lasting effect. Multiple vocal lines as the song reaches its conclusion are part ethereal, part haunting, the echo of an emotional sonic boom.

The texture and tempo changes on so far, a quiet fury driving the guitars, even as the vocals are set to calming mode, the drums precise and unemotional. There are howls of rage piercing the veil, but only momentarily, but you can’t help wonder if they remain present, just out of hearing.

Seeing us out with the aptly titled swan song, I feel it fully grasped what the band possibly set out to do: it is here that the quartet’s application of a Sigur Rós style post-rock sensibility coalesces, as if a summation of the previous four songs. It’s gritty, though; intimate and expansive, quiet and loud – a whole series of contradictions within a few minutes, which makes you look back at the rest of the EP and realise how adventurous and amazing with time actually is.

Picture Postcard released with time on the 7th of May, 2026, via Irish emo label Never Meant. The EP can be heard on Bandcamp and Spotify. The band holds an official EP launch party at Bello Bar in Dublin on the 21st of May, with dates in Cork, Galway, and Belfast to follow. For details of those gigs, head to the band’s Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok accounts.

Header photo by Denis