Quivers - Golden Doubt [IMPORT BLUE VINYL] - New LP

Quivers’ life-damaged but hopeful jangle pop has returned.

Golden Doubt is carried by shimmering guitars and the harmonizing vocals of members Holly Thomas and Bella Quinlan. Elevated by the production of Matthew Redlich (Holy Holy, Husky, Ainslie Wills), the record explores what comes after grief, and how we throw ourselves back into love. As Nicholson explains, the album tries to bottle “the rush of feelings and fears when you give in to falling for someone. It’s also an album in love with other albums, and the other bands around us.”

Before each take at Woodstock and The Aviary studios in Melbourne, Australia, the band would imagine a scene together (a waterhole for “Laughing Waters”, an overgrown carpark for “Videostores”) and then dive in to capture live group takes.

Quivers need to get words on the page and sounds out to keep moving on. Both Sam and Holly lost their brothers, and there’s a shared vulnerability in the band that runs deep. Golden Doubt is also a love letter to playing music as a band and processing it all together rather than just carrying things by yourself.

Quivers stretched out in making Golden Doubt once they nailed foundational band recordings, adding walls of violins (“Hold You Back”), a nine-person choir to “Chinese Medicine”, and a broken Farfisa organ anywhere it would fit. On the striking “Nostalgia Will Kill You,” Michael Panton's guitar channels Santo & Johnny; with a fresh take on 50s group vocals, Sam, Bella, and Holly sing in wrenching stop-and-starts, “you can’t go back everywhere you want to go / nostalgia will kill you.”