Shoegaze Princess Cryogeyser Takes Stage at Hi Dive

Photos: Anne Burn

The Los Angeles-based Cryogeyser is known for their alternative rock/dream pop-nuanced stylization, one that is sweetly entangled with their emotive and genre-transcending sound. They are currently on tour with their self-titled sophomore album Cryogeyser, a powerful effort that tracks a sense of yearning and heartache, soon transcending into hope. The band took over the intimate Hi-Dive last Saturday, April 26, and initiated the crowd into that transcendence.

The album features the voice of Karly Hartzman – lead singer of Aheville, North Carolina band Wednesday – on the track “Mountain,” which they played that night using pre-recorded vocals. Hartzman and Creyogeyser vocalist Shawn Marom both have voices that are simply immaculate when mixed together, creating an imminent sound of a femme-galore harmony. Unmatched!

Cryogeyser’s lyricism is what made me most ardently fall in love with this band. The elements of prose within their work is complex, yet intimately knowable; the lyrics are reverential, and emote the complex dichotomy of love with incantations made of doubt.

The Hi-Dive is the epitome of dive bar in the Americana trope, with its dim lighting and grungy atmosphere, all that’s missing is the stairway down into a dungeon-like basement. It’s a space that curates intimacy as it almost closes in upon itself due to how small it is.

Creyogeyser took full advantage of that size and intimacy, playing a short and sweet set that intertwined back and forth between their two albums. Opening with “Marie,” they poured out wistfulness and yearning grounded in Shawn’s soft melodic voice. When they played “Leach,” it was a true highlight of the set and the whole night–especially when she sang “I can be a hero in a different time or place,” and then before the trio opined “You could be my savior, I can’t even see your face”–Shawn let out a cute “YA!” as she recognized the crowd was singing right along with her.

Cryogeser always ends the set with a karaoke song, and it’s hard not to love the uncanny juxtaposition of
shoegaze children transforming from the not-moving-at-all and literally gazing throught their eyelids at their shoes, to freaking-the-fuck-out over an All-American Rejects karaoke cover over the course of a single setlist.

After their awesome set, my lovely friend stole the set list for me and harassed me to get it signed. Meeting Shawn was simply charming and reached out their hand for me to follow them as we tore Hi Dive apart to find a pen. Above all, the show was an emulating nature of earnest heartache and a truly captivating revival of shoegaze.