Sometimes, it feels like I discovered Gates completely on accident.
I had never heard of them when I saw that they were touring with Thrice and La Dispute, two bands I love that sound absolutely nothing like Gates. I was intrigued by Wikipedia’s description of them as a post rock band, but that description clashed with the first few seconds of Parallel Lives, and it took a few other people clamoring about the record for me to revisit it in earnest.
Once I was enraptured by it, I took to searching for anything that gave me the same heart-rending mixture of indie, emo, and, yes, post rock. Their debut record, Bloom & Breathe was fine enough, but it felt far more like a Moving Mountains tribute than the band that would give me one of my favorite records of the last ten years.
So when Here and Now was released, it was one of the fastest instant-buys I can remember. And that paid off. These six songs don’t just satisfy the craving for more music like Parallel Lives—they exceed it.
