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When I first heard that after a 2 decade sojourn into the heart of increasingly acoustic folk rock Neil Halstead was returning to "Shoegaze" - an early 90's style of atmospheric noise-rock pioneered and most perfectly embodied by his former band Slowdive - I was ecstatic. While Rachel Goswell's vocals and Spike's cellos could only be sorely missed, Black Hearted Brother does not disappoint. After an extended astral jam on track 1 which is in keeping with the album's title, tracks 2, 4, and 10 offer a return to what I loved about bands like Lush, Ride, My Bloody Valentine, etc. but in a new way, unstinted by self-imitation.However, after several listens, I realized that this approach to the album (albeit offered by the marketers) was neither fair nor acurate. Black Hearted Brother is not a phoenix from the ashes of a dead end in alternative music evolution. Many of the tracks have little to do with Shoegaze, sounding more like Mojave 3 or really something else all together. BHB is it's own band, it's own clean start; and this first album already makes me excited about what their future might hold for all of us.