“I wanted it to feel like it was swallowing itself whole.” In a recent interview, Luna Kupper of the Nashville shoegaze duo Total Wife was explaining her approach to producing “rest,” a song from the band’s 2023 album in/out. Inspired by bandmate Ash Richter’s lyrics, Kupper attempted to make the song “a steady linear incline,” a procession toward the heavens in which the listener’s perspective gradually blurs together with their environment. On that track, Total Wife build a hypnotic foundation out of an acoustic guitar loop that sounds like the intro to “Cherub Rock” reframed as a Microphones track — a one-chord sonic mantra that slowly, and then quite suddenly, is consumed by a visceral inferno. It’s the kind of sequence that takes your breath away, inspires visions, adjusts the temperature in the room.
