Bodywash

Montreal-based outfit Bodywash fuses dream pop, shoegaze, and trip-hop currents into a seductive sound marked by experimental leanings. Their lavishly designed debut full-length, Comforter, surfaced in 2019, yet the 2023 follow-up, I Held the Shape While I Could, shifted toward denser, more intricate production values and murkier songwriting atmospheres.

The project took shape at McGill University in 2014 after Chris Steward and Rosie Long Decter connected in a campus practice space through a mutual appreciation for shoegaze and dream pop textures. An eponymous 2016 EP, cut with bass player Tom Gould, guitarist Adam Macpherson, and drummer Austin Pine, leaned heavily into dream pop terrain. The founding pair then folded shoegaze and trip-hop elements into the framework for their first album. Recorded by Nigel Ward and mixed by Austin Tufts and Taylor Smith of Braids, that record featured Steward, Long Decter, Gould, and drummer Ryan White; Luminelle Recordings issued the resulting Comforter in mid-2019, by which point guitarist Rian Adamian had become the fifth member.

Steward and Long Decter promptly started shaping material for the next release, with both the writing process and its themes shaped by personal challenges each was navigating. A bureaucratic error stripped Steward of his legal work status in Canada, forcing much of the album to be assembled via transatlantic file exchange. That atmosphere of dislocation surfaced in tormented lyrics and a sonic landscape that favored stormy, experimental hues over the gentler shoegaze palette of earlier work. The second album, I Held the Shape While I Could, appeared in April 2023.