Shallowater
God’s Gonna Give You a Million Dollars
SELF-RELEASE
The marvelously self-dubbed “dirtgaze” trio Shallowater refer to the part of Texas from which they hail as somewhere “where the Dust Bowl never died.” As scads of rural areas in the Lone Star State continue to shrivel up miserably and hopelessly, Elon Musk is spending god knows how much money to build a palatial-sounding new rural town. Located just outside Austin and about two hours’ drive from Shallowater’s Houston home, it will occupy 3,500 acres of land and be home to employees of his companies SpaceX and The Boring Company—i.e. lucky lottery winners á la those who cravenly participated in his election lottery scheme. America, welcome to Dickensian Britain.
Any sane person who cares about humanity is likely enraged by the atrocious wealth disparity growing all across America. It’s enough to make a monk erupt in a tirade-filled, red-faced scream until they can no longer breathe. And that’s what we find in Shallowater, who play some of the quietest and slowest music you’ll hear in 2025 before losing their shit and pivoting to deafening, distortion-filled cacophony of the Sonic Youth variety. It takes the trio exactly two minutes and 45 seconds into the opening title track to God’s Gonna Give You a Million Dollars for them to go all Incredible Hulk on us and smash, smash, smash away until they temporarily exhaust themselves of their fury.
Although genres like “slowcore,” “post-hardcore” and “country” have been used to describe Shallowater’s highly nuanced sound, these terms often feel reductionist once you factor in the band’s tendency to play with the patience, skill, and care of classical pianists. The two best examples of this approach to making such affecting and often haunting music are “Sadie” and “Ativan,” two of the epics on this six-song LP. “Highway” is a little looser and freewheeling, imbuing the record with an oasis of lightheartedness about a more commonplace subject that doesn’t require as much of an astute focus. Closer “All My Love,” featuring a guest appearance by Hayden Pedigo, is a warm embrace that tries to reassure us, as best it can, that it’ll all be OK.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, the eight-and-a-half-minute “(Untitled) Cowboy” is a slow-as-molasses rumination that resembles a genius but draining Wim Wenders film. The song is about a broken romance between two people, but it encapsulates the message and despondent spirit of this record: Really, what the hell are we all doing? Why do we tolerate the intolerable? Is creating a society even worth it when we allow it to morph into a malevolent, monstrous, mutant form of what we designed it to be? It’s time to stop—to let single notes hang in the air for more than 15 seconds as we meditate and even examine whether detachment and isolation might actually be the better options.
