New Music: Vanity Box – Die Natur Macht Ihre Gesetze

Vanity Box dropped their Sudden Loud Sounds on a Capital City LP today via Zeevonk Records, with Die Natur Macht Ihre Gesetze already a personal favourite.

Beginning with a lo-fi meets power pop jangle, the track, whose lyrics are in English, finds a groove of its own that you’ll want to hold close, a fluid, constantly evolving synthesis of dream pop, shoegaze, and 90s alt-rock.

Vanity Box list Yo La Tengo, Drop Nineteens, and Spiritualized as potential comparisons for the album, and they are very valid ones, though not quite capturing the scope of the music on the album. Shoegaze certainly forms the basis of the song but leans more into distortion than reverb, and often blindsides the listener with moments of solitude, ones where the vocals of Julia Bekker (the band’s bassist) seem alone in a sea of music. The beautiful words that drive the song are based on a lyric, originally in German, written by her late father. I’m not sure if this is an outright love song, but love can certainly feel like that in its purest moments.

If you have a place in your heart for The Sundays and The Organ, bands that live on long after their existence, then make extra room for this band. Nature may make its own laws, but so do Vanity Box, and it would be foolish to disobey.

Sudden Loud Sounds in a Capital City can be picked up in digital and vinyl formats on Bandcamp, and is also streaming on Spotify. Connect with Vanity Box on Instagram for other listening options and band updates.

Zeevonk Records is a record label and art collective independently releasing music from the North of the Netherlands, with the majority of their artists based in Groningen.