Pink and blue swirl vinyl
30 odd years of Slumberland and still the hits keep landing. Even amidst their enviable success rate, the Bay Area's Blue Ocean feel like a recent high point for the label you might reasonably consider indiepop's Golden Rivet. Always different, always the same, never letting you down etc etc. And yet Fertile State isn't indiepop per se, better understood as its next logical evolution, uniting MBV phaserstun fuzz with the big chrome dream of Disco Inferno and Moonshake's leftfield pop transgressions. Or, if you're looking for a soundbite: Flying Saucer Attack had they been on Sarah and produced by Graham Sutton. In a way, i suppose it's a throwback of sorts for Slumberland given their long-time-back associations with Hood and the Bristol scene, though i don't really hear Blue Ocean as retrogressive, their buoyant melodies and dulcet tones offset by neat production flourishes and subtle abstracted electronics. In a just world, this one would light up the shoegaze tag on TikTok (but we all know the world isn't just). And besides, how much longer can we wait around for that fourth MBV album? Fertile State is easily good enough to make you forget all about it for the next forty minutes.
