Her Vanished Grace's seductive shoegazer pop recalls
My Bloody Valentine,
Shudder to Think,
Sonic Youth, and plenty of less obvious influences. The husband and wife team of Charles and Nance Nieland (both guitarists and lead vocalists) is the core of HVG; Charles' dense sonic architecture provides a complex bed of textures (including sinewy guitars, sampled noises, Mellotrons, and many other sounds that are less easy to identify) for Nance's pretty but powerful vocals. The key to HVG's appeal is its imaginative balance of beauty and dissonance. At 31 tracks, this double-CD set is a lot of music to get through, but the rewards are worth the time invested. ~ Andy Hinds