Shoegaze has always been a genre defined more by feel than form, but what dust suspended on a sunbeam offers in spades is something firm and melodic behind the fog - actual songwriting. Julia Why? is an Australian trio who absolutely nail the tone and texture of classic shoegaze and dream-pop, but without burying their songs under so much haze that you lose the plot. The vocals are soft and misty like Cocteau Twins, but they’re also legible and melodic, floating above the instruments rather than dissolving into them. Pale Blue Dot leans into Kevin Shields’ languid guitar bends, whilst Deep Fake is the album’s most magical earworm, the chorus layering bass, guitar and a double-tracked vocal into a single shifting, lilting, hazy harmony as sharp as anything in the genre’s canon.

Smoke Machine throws a sly wink to The Breeders, Transported shifts towards jangly, bright pop-punk, and Leviathan or Whale slows to a dreamy crawl, letting the guitars stretch and ache in long shimmering lines. This is a band painting in familiar colours but drawing new shapes with them. Not content to just vibe, Julia Why? writes songs with emotional clarity, great riffs, and sticky choruses that haunt long after. A total triumph for fans of the style, and proof that shoegaze still has new terrain to explore. dust suspended on a sunbeam isn’t just a good shoegaze album, but a fully realised, emotionally vivid statement that honours the genre’s aesthetic while pushing it somewhere more melodically and structurally deliberate, and it makes you realise how few modern artists actually write within this genre with such a level of care. The riffs ache, the choruses soar, and the whole thing lingers like memory. Waterfall fully ascends with a stadium-sized chorus crashing down over a stomping, euphoric beat, and despite its cohesive devotion to a particular era, there’s a tremendous sonic range here steeped in confident, memorable songwriting and love for the form. A serious entry in the shoegaze canon that’s absolutely worth your time.