Great stuff from Detroit shoegazers Ether Aura!  Wall of sound textural guitar, silky smooth female vocals, tight rhythm section.  Lush meets early Garbage in Curve's hot tub, with The FLIR serving drinks.
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for those who say they cant any thing good to listen to since the fall of in 1996,i suggest buying this cd.very shoegaze,very etherial.at times reminds me of pale saints,tribe,and curve.i miss the heyday of music from 1980-1996 and this band brings back great memories of warm summer days with friends long dead.thank you.
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This is an excellent album from start to finish. Every song is good. The music has an early 90s feel to it like Curve, Garbage or even Veruca Salt. At times, certain songs & vocals remind me of Cocteau Twins (!), really dreamy & atmospheric. The female singer has a really pretty voice & a good range. The lyrics can seem a little cliche at times (typical relationship stuff) but some of them are pretty interesting & have good song titles. This album shows a band who really has their sound developed & can write good songs & melodies.
Ignore the terrible writing in this review; I really have good taste & am totally brilliant, so listen to me when I say this record is VERY GOOD & totally worth the buy!!!
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I discovered Tony Hamera's band Deathgirl.com when I added them to my radio station "Come On Do It Like She Does" during the glory days of MP3.COM.  I'd been following the band and its most assured successful entry into the big time.  Their cover of "Lucky Star" should have been enough to seal the deal, as it was a thousand times better than Madonna's original, thanks largely to Tony's fantastic arrangement.  Then suddenly and without warning, the band seemingly vanished into the void of "Whatever happened to?"

As it turns out, the music industry and its phony promises are what happened, causing rifts and frustration within the band and making them so disgusted that they disbanded with self-implosive fury.  It was disappointing to see such obvious talent leave the scene, worse so because it was driven to madness by the same selfish industry forces that simultaneously decimated MP3.COM.

Lamenting, I still played their CD from time to time, and even used it as part of my drumming practice while working on my own band's debut CD.  Then an interesting thing happened.  The release of our CD got us a posting on CDBaby.com and there on our page were links to "Other CD's you will love".  I recognized Collide from my old MP3 radio station, but Ether Aura was new.  I clicked to check them out and immediately liked what I heard, purchasing their CD at once.  Then I was shocked and stunned when I learned that this band had in fact emerged from the void of lost bands, and it was none other than the remnants of Deathgirl!  The name "Ether Aura" took on even more significance.

Resurrected with Tony and former drummer/bandmate William King, joined by bassist Brett Haupt, and introducing Kate Hinote on vocals, Ether Aura is decidedly different than the former incarnation, delivering an airy sound that's much more inspired by bands like Curve, Slowdive, and Cocteau Twins.  Indeed Kate's vocals are quite similar to Toni Halliday's and there are more than a few instances where you could swear that Dean Garcia must have popped by their studio to offer his trademark guitar sound.  But no, Tony and his mates are just prodigious disciples.

From the moment their debut album "Crash" begins with a drum intro that charges out at you then swirls down to Kate's subtly erotic verse vocals in "All Doves Grey", you know you're in for a treat.  Their gentler shoegazer foundations arise in songs like "About You" (complete with the Garcia guitar sound), the sweet and dreamy title song "Crash", the extremely beautiful breeziness of the Cocteau Twins inspired "Falling" and "I'm All You Need".

For long-time fans, the classic power pop Deathgirl sound comes bursting through in "6 Days Yesterday" and "Why", only they are enhanced by Kate's somewhat more subtle vocal delivery.  Whereas Deathgirl's pop hit vocals tore you to shreds like Madonna in one of her pissed off moods, Kate's pop vocals hold back just enough to let you envelope yourself in the power of the music.

You'll pick up hints of other bands that inspired them in the other tracks as well, and the fact that such musical influences are sometimes quite obvious doesn't detract from the album's originality in the least.  In fact, Tony revels in the comparisons, much like Monet took pleasure when his works were mistaken as works by Manet, of whom he was both a protege and friend.  It is a tribute to the band that they have mastered the art form of the masters they so admire.

If you enjoy the ethereal sound of shoegazer bands like Cocteau Twins, Lush and Slowdive and also love the aural excitement of bands like Curve and Garbage, Ether Aura offers you the opportunity to revel in the marriage of both, and their debut album features plenty of songs to get "stuck in your head"... something actually that our band is particularly fond of.
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