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There is a record you reach for when nothing seems to be working—not relationships or plans or even drinking—or when everything is working all of a sudden, and you can barely stand it. It's not for cry-your-eyes-out catharsis or finally deciding to pull yourself together; it's for those moments in between, when you only can formulate one-word thoughts and you feel so scattered you can hardly move.

Baltimore shoegazers Thrushes wrote that record, Sun Come Undone. The quartet's dreamlike wall of sound obscures simple, repetitive lyrics, creating one beautiful mess. Chimes ring, horns drone, and drums and bass keep an almost militaristic steadiness while electric guitars reverberate over and under the sounds. The wave of noise crests and crashes throughout the record, often a few times within a single song. It is difficult to differentiate one song from the one that follows. The result is angry, haunting, determined, ecstatic, and confused—it's David Lynch on a record.

Anna Conner's vocals are plaintive without being cute; at the other end, she rages without bitterness. “You don't care,” she murmurs at the record's open, hinting at some revenge to come. Instead, the words fade into the centerpiece—that wreck of sounds. For those accustomed to narratives in their music, the result is jarring. The noise doesn't just complement the vocals, it drowns, echoes, and clashes with them. On my favorite track, “Wake Up,” the feedback slowly builds until Conner begins screaming, “Wake up...the best part is coming home.” The guitars clang, inciting a frantic battle among instruments, reverb, and vocals in one arms-open anthem. It really feels like rushing home.

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