Hit Pick

The dream-rock maestros in The Very Hush Hush (due at the Hi-Dive on Saturday, January 10, with Navy Girls and O’er the Ramparts, and at the Gothic Theatre on Thursday, January 15) have an unmistakable sonic kinship to bands like Mogwai and Sigur Ros. Fortunately, though, the members of the Hush have cleansed their sound of all the superfluous wankery that weighs down the latter, leaning instead toward the work of the former. This is vintage shoe-gaze the way it was meant to be. Washing Songs, the band’s latest, aptly titled effort, is like a watercolor painting of a road trip through a sprawling desert terrain — set to sound and motion and captured with the streamlined precision of time-lapse photography. Reverb-soaked vocals hover like voluminous thunderclouds, producing ambient shadows and textures with each movement. Arpeggiated guitars and austere piano runs blur together like broken white lines on an interstate, while laid-back rhythms invoke the repetitive cadence of a humming motor. If you’re all about staring at your shoes, this is where the rubber meets the road.