B-Side Guys

“Bought a clothesline for the yard / Hang my disappointment from” opens with domestic infrastructure repurposed for emotional display, which is about as Seattle shoegaze as you can get. John Mills fronts Shadowpool with vocals The Big Takeover calls “slightly world-weary,” appropriate for a band that sounds exactly like its hometown: overcast skies, darkness, humidity, the visual art Mills has made for decades translated into guitar riffs that chime and contrast. “Enemies” documents what Mills describes as “the solitude of a break-up and disassociation of individuals,” focusing on internal loneliness rather than external drama.

The song’s central observation arrives in the refrain: “We are enemies / We became.” That past tense does the work, acknowledging transformation rather than inherent opposition. Mills writes about wanting to hurt someone while asking if they feel his pain, which captures the paradox of breakups where intimacy curdles into something weaponized. “Tall grass swallows our pride / Utter pale apologies / You take from me” treats nature as an active participant, the landscape consuming what’s left of the relationship. Lost In The Manor praised the track for “perfectly capturing the feeling of helplessness and what-ifs,” which makes sense when the most concrete action described is installing a clothesline.

The line “There is beauty in the light that doesn’t shine” arrives twice, framing absence as its own aesthetic experience. Mills calls the song reflective, “shades of many feelings,” ending with “positive thoughts on the light to a new step.” But “Enemies” mostly lives in the disassociation period, that stretch where two people occupy the same timeline without actually sharing it anymore. Savoy Trufffle identified “faint unease” in what they called a “genuinely special and beautiful piece of music,” which tracks for a song about silhouettes of love left behind. Sometimes the most accurate thing you can do is hang your disappointment where everyone can see it and wait for clouds to blow over, even if you’re not convinced they will.