- If you call yourself an Australian music aficionado and you don't know who the undergroundLOVERS are, you're lying to yourself, and everyone you love.

Across their seven, now eight, studio albums, they have consistently created lush, layered, guitar-heavy music that has gathered them a dedicated following. The latest, Staring at You Staring at Me, does not disappoint. Set in familiar surroundings, the album (like many of their previous creations) pays homage to their hometown, Melbourne.

The first single, The Rerun (released in March), is a good idea of what you can expect from the album as a whole. From the mellow beginnings of opening tracks St Kilda Regret and You Let Sunshine Pass You By we head into the rockier The Conde Nast Trap, a punchy commentary on corporate greed. Along with Every Sign later in the album, The Conde Nast Trap hints at something anthemic along the lines of the did-I-just-get-punched-in-the-face Au Pair off their 2013 album, Weekend. It doesn't quite hit it — but Au Pair is a one in a million moment that’s not easily replicated (and doesn’t need to be).

Sharing vocal duties with Vince Giarusso is Phillipa Nihill, whose voice is stronger than it’s ever been. The lead-in to the chorus on Seen It All is hauntingly beautiful and it's a subtle and lovely little dream-pop track.

It’s the Way It’s Marketed is the weak point of the album, never quite reaching its destination, but it does have an interesting psychedelic vibe that returns later on in Every Sign.

undergroundLOVERS are at their best when creating long, sweeping build-ups and moody guitar experimentation and Glamnesia, in all its seven-minutes-and-forty-seconds length glory, provides this in spades. It’s simply extraordinary, and when you catch the band live (please, please go see them live), you’ll witness guitarist Glenn Bennie hunched over his pedal-board creating this signature wall of intoxicating noise.

The album rounds out strong, and then returns to the mellowness of its beginnings with the haunting Unbearable. Staring at You Staring at Me is another varied and beautiful work from enduring shoegaze legends who show no sign of waning.

- Marian Blythe.