Audiopile Review: Deb Googe’s status as a bass goddess is surely undisputed. If all she had done was play in the classic line-up of My Bloody Valentine, she’d still be a legend (hell, all she’d really need to have done was play the intro run on ‘Soft as Snow’). But she’s performed bass duties for Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and The Fall’s Brix Smith, and fitted in a tour of duty with Primal Scream. And Snowpony was a pretty good group, by the way. When Deb started her Da Googie project, it seemed like a bit of fun between gigs. But the project’s first full-length release, ‘The Golden Thread’ is serious business. It’s a collaboration with pianist Cara Tivey, known for her work with Billy Bragg, Blur, and Everything but the Girl. But it’s Googe’s signature bass detonations and vaguely sinister vocals that give this album its distinctive, brooding character. With heavy elements of dreampop and trip-hop, this is a very timely, contemporary-sounding release. But ‘The Golden Thread’ is hardly an exercise in recycling trendy 90s genre tropes. This is an ambitious album that doesn’t sound like anything else out there right now. An absolute must for MBV superfans and shoegaze fanatics, obviously. But this is a remarkable album that deserves to find an audience far beyond any specific cult or genre affiliation.

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Rambling on about the brilliance of Deb Googe and Cara Tivey is no difficult task – spot either of their names on a record’s sleeve credits and you’re guaranteed listening worthy of your time . . . and hard-earned cash!

Deb joined My Bloody Valentine during its ascent to legend, filled a temporary void in Primal Scream, aids in Thurston Moore’s late-period artistic high, formed Snowpony with Stereolab’s Katharine Gifford and plays bass in ex-Fall guitarist Brix Smith’s all-female band.

Cara’s may be best known as a longtime Billy Bragg collaborator, but she’s played with an array of other outstanding artists, among them Everything But The Girl, Blur, Lilac Time, Au Pairs and the greatest living genius of the West Midlands, Robert Lloyd of Nightingales fame. Incredibly, despite decades of stellar work, neither Deb nor Cara has ever released an album under their own names until now with The Golden Thread, their full-length debut, made under the name da Googie + Cara Tivey. The album was wholly recorded in Deb’s home studio and performed exclusively by the duo.

The album is preceded by a video for Dumb, an indictment of the sad state of the modern western world, which serves as a fine point of an entry into the album’s seemingly contradictory sonic elements: thick-yet-minimal soundscapes, the openness of dub put across in a densely claustrophobic style, a bass-driven sound melding effortlessly into moments of delicate piano, and lyrics which convey vast depths of meaning with only a mere handful of words.

Dumb is available on YouTube as a fantastic video (by Deb herself) from absurdities captured in animated (and public domain) footage – a rodent army, ape-like men alongside man-like apes, brainless birds . . . as well as their even sadder human equivalents, captured in film. By the time you read this, a second video, Bad Habits, will likely already have appeared.