Building on the promise of their 2023 debut album, Shallowater refines their fascinating blend of woozy, country-flecked Americana and dejected slowcore.
Release date: September 5, 2025 | Independent | Instagram | Bandcamp
The 2020s have given birth to the crosshatching of numerous disparate music genres and styles by assorted groups – the unholy but surprisingly harmonious combo of mathcore and vaporwave from Houston, Texas’s fromjoy being a recent favorite example. Fellow Texans Shallowater joined these ranks of bold musical alchemists with their 2023 debut, There Is A Well, offering an unexpectedly appealing mix of twangy country and distorted shoegaze; the band’s tongue-in-cheek logline describes them as ‘raw West Texas dirtgaze‘. Unlike, say, Wednesday‘s combination of alt-country and indie rock leading to more upbeat, straightforward songs, Shallowater‘s answer to this equation extends outward to a more experimental place. Their songs often take several minutes to explore musical motifs, stacking ideas on top of each other before the expected post-rock crescendo meets the earthier end of their self-proclaimed dirtgaze style. There Is A Well came out at the very end of 2023 (literally the day before the year ended) and so I didn’t come around to listening to it until 2024. However, it left a strong impression on me and left me interested in what else they Shallowater had in store, and they’ve delivered on their sophomore offering, God’s Gonna Give You a Million Dollars.
The title track begins God’s Gonna Give You a Million Dollars on as understated a note imaginable: some Slint-esque guitar harmonics cohabitate with gentle drum work and Blake Skipper’s almost whispered vocals. After nearly two minutes of this atmospheric scene-setting, bassist Tristan Kelly and drummer Ryan Faulkenberry pick up the pace and change up the time signature as the trio effortlessly launch into a cycling 12/8 groove. A minute of this leads to another unexpected beat switch, as Skipper’s guitar shifts into a monumentally heavy, distorted crunch with a bluesy lead laid on top. It’s as thrilling as it is startling, but then, as if to say, ‘BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE‘, Shallowater brings things down to a simmer once again during the last portion of the song: ‘Fireworks drift away/From the cemetery/On New Year’s Eve/Crushing me between the glow and the concrete’. It leaves the listener emotionally battered by the variety of musical avenues traveled over the course of four-and-a-half minutes and on the edge of one’s seat wondering what’s coming next.
The following “Sadie” starts off sounding like Alice in Chains‘ “Rotten Apple” of all things: the chunky bass notes slower, but the mood just as heat-choked. Despite its seven-and-a-half minute length, the song never drags or loses interest due to its always-evolving structure, with some lap steel guitar making a welcome appearance in its final leg. The cheekily titled “Untitled Cowboy” features Faulkenberry playing drums with brushes for its first quarter before switching to sticks as the band lurches forward into a folk-rock stomp for a hot minute. Then the trio drops the tempo again as Skipper laments, ‘All that time I wasted/Thinking there was someone/Held in place by nothing’. The band circles around him, cooking up a laidback country rock jam with the odd squall of guitar noise thrown in for good measure. These ingredients congeal in a most satisfying brew, never once clashing with each other – all the more impressive for a song that goes on for over eight minutes.
“Ativan” is the longest song on God’s Gonna Give You a Million Dollars, clocking in at nine minutes, yet features the least amount of lyrics of any song here. The ramp-up that occurs halfway through the song, culminating in a sublime Americana riff put through deep-fried distortion, is so emotionally affecting and uplifting it makes one want to jump for joy. Shallowater ease off the throttle after this for the remainder of the lyrics, which take a turn into the despondent:
‘Old times could never know
How dark the dust would grow
A man can’t live
On Ativan and ice chips
But they can keep him kickin’…’
The closing “All My Love” is a gorgeous country ballad featuring none other than American primitivist practitioner (and current Chat Pile collaborator) Hayden Pedigo on guitar. Unlike the other songs on the album, this one keeps things quiet, bare, and intimate for its running time. The storytelling in Skipper’s lyrics paints a forlorn, detailed picture of what could otherwise be a mundane image of ‘A rotting house/Hidden in the plains of Oklahoma’, but the combination of his singing, the band’s composition, and Pedigo‘s textured work makes for a plainly devastating conclusion to proceedings:
‘The roof was opened up
And the sun was breaking in
But the walls held on to a darkness
Three rusty hinges holding onto almost nothing
Unopened letters from twenty years ago
Self help books and horoscopes
For now it’s a picture of what it’s like to get old
Twenty-five miles from town
Time will cave the floor boards and wind will bend the frame’
With God’s Gonna Give You a Million Dollars, Shallowater take what they achieved on their debut and improve on just about everything. The songs, while long, hold interest the whole way through with their winding structures or, in the case of “All My Love”, through sheer emotive power and storytelling prowess. Their spellbinding union of sounds and styles makes them more than simple amalgamators or novelty artists; their music is dramatic and gripping, perfectly conjuring up a dusty old town with intimate memories on a wide open canvas. I’ll take my payment in more music from Shallowater, thank you.
