San Franciscans LSD and The Search For God (and with their name and trippy psych-gaze, of course they’re from San Francisco) are one of the more beloved contemporary American shoegaze bands, and to my somewhat surprise they’re still very much an active concern. I first heard of them by way of their 2007 self-titled debut EP probably about 10 or 15 years ago, and kind of assumed that, given they had only that one release to their name, that they’d quietly gone their separate ways like many/most bands do.

It was only when I started hanging out in places like /r/shoegaze that I discovered that they were indeed still going, or at least gigging around the west coast, and that they released a follow-up EP Heaven Is A Place in 2016, meaning their recorded output was actually twice as vast – 10 songs, not five! – than I’d previously assumed.

It seems like rather than release new music, the band keep active by periodically re-releasing new runs of their existing music; from the Discogs listing, it seems like they did a run of records for the initial release, another batch in 2016 – probably to coincide with the new EP – another in 2023 and a fourth rerelease followed this past Spring. Heaven Is A Place has followed a similar pattern, with an intial run in 2016, a repress in 2017, and a new run will be out this week. I mean, if it’s a business model that’s working, why change it?

One new thing that came with this round of reissues, though, was a new video for the song “Starting Over” from the self-title that runs some live footage of unspecified vintage through some unholy VHS on acid special effects filter, which seems about right.