Shoegaze used to be the wonderful retreat of those who wanted to escape the boredom of monotony or the confines of reality and sit in a dazed out hazy chamber of carelessness. That is until the genre became redefined by nu-gaze bands that kind of ruined the whole chill of the genre. Since then, artists have had to find new places to retreat to for some hush.

Enter She-Devils, whose self-titled EP is the haziest and laziest release you’ll hear this month. A sunkissed, stoned-surf rock vibe echoes across the EP but is most prominent in lead track Come. It’s a really interesting insight into what happens when the tight-but-loose-sounding styles of surf-rock melt into a genuine stoner sloppiness. The outcome is something that is both hypnotic and mildly irking.

But any issues you have with the sound dissipate by the final track, with the sound eventually having the same effect as a mild sedative. It’s relaxing, no matter how hard you try to find fault with the release. As vocalist Audrey Ann drawlingly delivers in Come, “don’t try to resist me“.

Somewhere in the haze of the blazed instruments, predominately on second track Where There’s No One, there’s a sense of childlike naivity and innocence. There’s a few instrumental lines that run through the release that embed an endearingly pure quality to the sound. It makes the deliberate sloppiness palatable to even the snobbiest music critic.