Less than six years after their critically acclaimed debut, Hong Kong’s Lucid Express return with Instant Comfort, a shoegaze record that feels grounded rather than nostalgic. With angelic beauty hidden beneath layers of My Bloody Valentine-esque walls of guitars, this pseudo-revival of the previous generation’s shoegaze (which in turn was already a revival in itself) is leaning further into the melodic, as opposed to static.
Without getting into semantics, I think it’s safe to say that shoegaze as a genre has always been easy to flatten into style over substance, texture over teeth. You really can’t go wrong with distortion and reverb as decor. It’s easy to replace feeling with volume. However, Instant Comfort avoids that trope altogether. The volume is dense, but it’s clearly shaped and never turns into distorted mush,
Lucid Express clearly understands the difference between atmosphere and impact, and they’re far more interested in the latter.
Part of what makes this album land so hard right now is timing. Shoegaze has been drifting back into wider view again. Sure, several artists from the first two decades of this century, such as DIIV, The Lees Of Memory, The Joy Formidable, and The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart (whose Kurt Feldman mixed Instant Comfort), bled fuzzy noise into alt-pop. But Gen Z has stumbled on the acts that inspired them, often without old scene baggage.
Heavier scenes have rediscovered what volume and blur can do when used with intention. With the renewed attention has come a wave of bands chasing the aesthetic more than the feeling. Thankfully, Lucid Express sits slightly outside that trend. They’re not trying to modernize shoegaze or dress it up for broader appeal. If anything, they narrow the focus. The band is less interested in reinvention, more engaged with clarity.
That restraint helps the record stand apart without announcing itself as different.
That said, the influences are obvious, and Lucid Express doesn’t bother hiding them. But this isn’t imitation. For example, the tremolo swell that opens “Promise Me” rolls in slowly, like the album easing itself awake, much like a Slowdive track. “Dark Glass” offers up a slight hint of darkness akin to the aforementioned My Bloody Valentine. Yes, we’ve heard such sounds in wide swathes, but Lucid Express hones into the details. The guitars shimmer but keep their edges. The rhythms stay patient and steady, giving everything room to breathe. Even in its softest moments, the record never drifts.
For me, Instant Comfort lands because it has a clear sense of purpose. The tension running throughout delivers a steady balance between lift and weight. That push and pull keeps the record moving forward. Lucid Express doesn’t treat shoegaze like something precious or untouchable. They use it like it was always meant to be used: loud, physical, and direct. The result is a record that reconnects with the genre’s core strengths of scale, pressure, and emotion that hits without needing to explain itself.
Instant Comfort is available on vinyl and streaming at Kanine Records.