Looking back, the marriage of grunge and shoegaze should have been a little more obvious. At first blush, it might not seem like the unwashed, clenched teeth noise rock of the Seattle Sound would have much in common with the dreamy, mumbling walls of noise of the Scene that Celebrates Itself. After all, what kinship can Slowdive have with Soundgarden?

But if you look further from the center of each scene, you start running into bands like HUM, Failure, and Swervedriver—or even, I don’t know, The Smashing Pumpkins. The ’90s were filled with bands that found a middle ground between each scene’s love of huge guitars and hiding pop structures under noise and atmosphere.

And as ’90s Alt-Rock remains an evergreen influence on young bands, the two genres have sort of merged into a revisionist portrait of the decade (think Superheaven, Teenage Wrist, Greet Death, etc).

Downward, themselves named after a HUM album, have been on the periphery of my awareness for a while. But as often happens with hyped-up super-independent acts, it’s proven difficult to find any of their records for sale. But a few weeks ago, a copy of this 2022 EP popped up on Discogs and I snatched it without a thought.

The Brass Tax offers up some of the finest grungegaze around, their riffs and melodies landing in the same territory as fellow alt-rock acolytes like Narrow Head and Lume while offering songs that are catchy in their own right.