Emerging: Spool’s “Ghost”

There’s still time to add some soil-covered gems to your 2019 music library, and one of the year’s better albums to be mostly overlooked — including by this blog! — comes from Tokyo quartet Spool. Their self-titled full-length from this February hits a sweet spot between two music communities that carry on strong in Japan, as they embrace indie-pop and shoegaze (check the song “Be My Valentine,” get it?), matching sticky hooks with lots of feedback. Let’s not make the same mistake twice and celebrate new single “Ghost,” a slow-burning number that finds them leaving a little more space (and slowing things down) to create way more tension. Here, Spool nail the melancholy central to both rock styles they draw from, all without having to lean on the basic tropes of either. Listen above.