Concert / Shoegaze Cold Gawd + Soft Blue Shimmer

Cold Gawd is the flag under which California-based multi-instrumentalist Matt Wainwright creates stormy, wounded shoegaze music born of open tunings and R&B melodies. Inspired by these sounds, Cold Gawd presents a refined, modernized take on the genre. Wainwright cites the thematic common ground between shoegaze and R&B as a central muse, both obsessively fixated on love, lust, and longing, in forms alternately grandiose and minor key.

Cold Gawd are coming to present their second and most supreme suite of crushing downer bliss, released in 2024. I’ll Drown On This Earth is a storm of distortion and dream pop, love songs cloaked in swooning walls of noise.

For fans of:

Nothing, DIIV

Soft Blue Shimmer is Meredith Ramond (vocals, bass), Charlie Crowley (guitar, vocals), and Kenzo Cardenas (drums). It’s rare a band name directly encapsulates its sound, but Soft Blue Shimmer couldn’t be more fitting for the trio out of Los Angeles. The proof can be heard on each of the band’s records, with their floaty and hazy instrumentation glistening alongside emotionally charged lyrics. 

Their new album, They Will Leave Us With Nothing, is slated for 28 February 2025. ​“In a year of grief, struggling, and often sudden & uncomfortable change, we’ve been given the unique opportunity to make something close and honest and exciting,” they wrote on their socials. Let’s hope they’ll share bits of it with before the release!