I’m going to break the (self-imposed) rules of the blog for the moment and skip way ahead in the alphabet because I’m worried I’ll never get to this if I wait, and I have some feelings about this record.

A couple weeks ago, I was browsing the used section at a local record store and found a bit of cover art that intrigued me. After some quick googling and about thirty seconds on Spotify, I took a gamble on this record—largely driven by the term “sludge pop” that I saw in a review.

And boy, does this disc live up to every possibility that phrase put in my head.

WHIMZ is a collaboration between Sunny Faris of Blackwater Holylight and Cameron Spies of Night Heron—two bands I’m entirely unfamiliar with, so I can’t speak to what ingredients from their other projects made it into the pot.

But what I can speak at length about is the gooey, syrupy pop music they made together. I’ve described this record as both “if Beach House became bodybuilders and got super into SunnO)))” and “if Madonna took a bunch of indica and listened to Dopesmoker.” It certainly has no shortage of pop chops, offering up breezy melodies with sugary sweet vocals that wouldn’t feel out of place playing in a Whole Foods.

The instrumentation though is a different beast. The tempos are largely glacial, moving like a yoke of oxen pulling the heavy atmospheres created by synths and guitars. It wouldn’t be surprising if the looping, buzzing intro section of “AM1” erupted into a full doom metal assault instead of a glistening dream pop verse. “AM2” is even darker, maintaining its minor key for its runtime. The only moment of urgency is when “PM2” bursts with a Krautrock drumbeat from the weighted blanket of “PM1.”

And friends, I didn’t know I needed this so much. It lives in a place where the dreamy post metal of SOM or the synth doom of Pinkish Black sometimes pass through on the way to larger or darker moments. But this liminal space is fertile ground in its own right, and WHIMZ has made a fine settlement in it. Now the only hope is that the duo continue with this collaboration. Twenty-four minutes isn’t nearly enough.