Tampa (Christopher West, Canada) dropped his debut EP Baby this week and carefully the tone is being set by the short opener Gaze, which doesn’t indicate the direction this EP will be going – settling pretty tones right between modern shoegaze as well as older psychedelic rock. Baby, the next track and title track, decides to settle right between the 2 types of music in the timeline: A really nice wink to the dare-to-be-open soft grunge ballads and college rock of the 90’s, including introspective lyrics (I don’t wanna hear it. All the guys you know. I shouldn’t be jealous. ’cause I don’t love you that much) and an actual instrumental solo outro. If there’s anything modern music lacks nowadays… It’s a relief to hear this again! Absolutely ready for alternative radio too and has it all to be an airwave classic!

Irene grooves on like the Smiths and Screaming Trees used to in their glory days as well as earlier Dashboard Confessional and Pedro the Lion, with vocals put tenderly on a solid rhythm track on which every element can clearly be heard. Hereditary, a little more uptempo, really stresses the great things from the 90’s and 2000’s we’re not hearing often anymore even more. IWBYM confirms this once more. And maybe Tampa is right, when he sings it’s not worth the tears. From my perspective about these sounds being long gone. They’re clearly here and now. And to relive these times, this is among the best new things to surface, with all its openness emotionally, thinking out loud. All I want now, is more of this!

Despite all the throwbacks, you can find Tampa in all the modern places too, such as YouTube, SoundCloud, Instagram, Bandcamp and Spotify. Do absolutely show your support there!

P.S. If you enjoy discovering new artists and fresh new music you can subscribe to this blog Less Than 1,000 Followers and follow the Playlist on Spotify with all the artists that we have presented here!