Blinking As The Starlight Burns Out
by Paula Kelley

From MadhattanJack 03/25/2026 01:35 | #313633

Paula Kelley is the lead singer (on most tracks) of the Drop Nineteens, the Boston-area shoegaze band who broke up in 1995, but then got back together in 2022. Her solo albums (this is the fourth) are not shoegaze records =per se=, though she's not afraid of a few distorted guitars or angelic harmonies on occasion. They're actually much more pop-oriented, and to be honest, that's a more appropriate style for her voice, which has more of a teen-pop tonality to it and could even be described as "waifish." (That's a nice way of saying she sounds much younger than she actually is.) This is probably her best solo album so far, and unless you're like me and insist that anything shoegazey has to be better than anything non-shoegazey, it's as good (if not better) than any of the Drop Nineteens albums, too. There, I said it.