Wednesday’s post sent me down a rabbit hole of tribute compilations that The Blog That Celebrates Itself had assembled over their lifespan and it’s quite impressive – very much the American Laundromat business model. And while most of the releases had rosters of bands I’d never heard of, every once in a while a familiar name would pop up. Like on their 2016 tribute to The Cure – The Cure In Other Voices – which featured Russian shoegazers Blankenberge.

At the time, they’d only just released their debut self-titled EP and their version of the Disintegration classic fit into their aesthetic of the, burying the sand up to its head in crushing distortion and reverb. You couldn’t imagine that within a decade they’d be making some of the most soaring, gleaming dreampop around but here we are. And there they were.

There also exists a live recording of the band performing the song live in St. Petersburg in January 2020, when they’d already moved towards their current sound with the release of More the year before, but sometimes it feels good just to stomp on everything and let loose.