A Shoreline Dream’s music has been variously labeled shoegaze, post-rock, and prog rock, but it’s really a seamless amalgamation of each style, all cloaked in a cinematic, atmospheric haze.
This distinctive sound has attracted the attention of several noteworthy artists, who then requested to work with the band. As a result, A Shoreline Dream have created songs with Ulrich Schnauss, Engineers, and Chapterhouse – and now, on their eighth studio album, Whitelined (released in September via Latenight Weeknight Records), they’ve added one more significant collaborator to their list: Ride vocalist/guitarist Mark Gardener.
Gardener met A Shoreline Dream frontman Ryan Policky when Ride performed in Denver, after their mutual publicist arranged an introduction. Policky immediately seized the opportunity to suggest that they should work together.
After that, “We had a couple Zoom meetings, just to see if we kind of vibed off of each other, as far as how we work, what kind of music we like, and where we’d like to take our art to next,” says Policky, calling from his Denver home. “That’s really what established the fact that this seemed like a really good connection because we’re in the same ballpark.”
For his part, Gardener admits that he wasn’t terribly familiar with A Shoreline Dream’s music before this – but, in his opinion, that is a benefit. “To be honest with you, I like to be unfamiliar with projects because I like to be fresh to things,” he says, during a Zoom video call from his studio in England. “Otherwise, you start to imagine, ‘What people might like?’ Or you get preconceived ideas.”
Once he started listening to the tracks that Policky was sending, though, Gardener was immediately intrigued by what he calls their “ambient, out-there music – it’s really atmospheric; it’s kind of like a soundscape. It really is widescreen in that way.”
Still, Gardener admits that it isn’t always easy to see how he’s going to put his stamp on someone else’s work: “That’s always a challenge – but it’s a challenge I like – to marry what are really interesting instrumentals and turn them into songs. It never feels easy at the start, but then suddenly things start to connect, and then you’re just like, ‘Wow, something’s really working, and now I’m feeling really good about this.’”
It helped that Policky gave Gardener free rein to do as he pleased with the material. In the end, Gardener added lead vocals, backing vocals, and/or bass lines to three songs. Policky was thrilled, because he hadn’t expected Gardener to contribute this extensively. “It’s always a surprise when you’re working with another artist because you don’t know what’s in their mind. It was amazing to hear it,” he says.
Gardener remembers being particularly inspired when Policky sent the beginnings of what would become the song “Everything Turns.” “When that came through, I was totally enchanted,” he says. “Suddenly, creative juices were flowing. That one worked out really well, and then I went on to do a couple more.” They would go on to finish the tracks “Written in Dust” and “Hollow Crown” together.
While Policky is proud of the work A Shoreline Dream has done with Gardener, the remaining seven tracks on Whitelined are also impressive. He says that much of the material was inspired by his experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The themes this time around were the confusion and the hope for the future after such a horrible time period of being isolated, being alone, losing friends, having all these huge changes from a pandemic, having the world go through all these crazy times,” Policky says. “A lot of these tracks are tied to that theme of feeling isolated and alone, but seeing a bright light at the end of the tunnel that can help you get through it.”
Policky first became aware of music’s power to communicate shared emotions when he was growing up in Colorado, admiring emotive bands such as Cocteau Twins and Dead Can Dance. But he also adored a wide range of musical styles, including goth, shoegaze, trip-hop, progressive rock, industrial, and even doom metal and death metal.
He learned to play bass and guitar, then started experimenting with doing vocals. He founded his first band – a death metal band named Eternal Fate – when he was in middle school. After that, he joined other bands before finally creating A Shoreline Dream in 2005. With this band, he says, their goal was “to just make huge sounding music, but [which] still had this kind of poetic vibe underneath.”
A Shoreline Dream found immediate success. “We had a sold-out show in Denver, and some media people, national people, picked up on it really fast – I wasn’t expecting any of that,” Policky says. “I think the fact that all these people were behind it and pushing us and like, ‘You are doing awesome – we want to hear this kind of music more,’ really kept it going.”
He’s particularly pleased with the way Whitelined has been received – and notes that this is the first time that A Shoreline Dream has released an album on vinyl, in a limited run of only 200, on 180-gram white vinyl. This and the digital versions of the album are both available via their Bandcamp page.
Gardener is also happy with the way these songs turned out, and says he hopes that when people hear them, they’ll feel “the way that I felt when I had completed the writing of it. It’s a lovely place to go, it’s a lovely soundscape, so it’s a lovely escape. I think great music is transcendental in that way. It takes us out of situations that we maybe want to be taken out of, and I think that’s the wonderful thing about music. We all need some of that, because reality can be pretty harsh.”
Policky is already looking ahead to the next A Shoreline Dream release – and says that he may even invite Gardener to work with them again. “It would be so cool to do more, for sure, because I see the potential there,” he says.
Whether they work with anyone else or not, Policky is certain that A Shoreline Dream will have much more to come – even as he marvels that this band is still thriving after nearly two decades. “I can’t even believe it’s almost at twenty years. It’s insane!” he says with a laugh. “I’m so happy with so much of what we’ve put together. Even though we’re not some giant band making a million a year, I’m just stoked that we created some songs that I think are amazing, and I would put in one of my favorite compilations.”
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