They Are Gutting a Body of Water

Fear. Hate. Distrust. Poverty. Exploitation. And in all of this hollowness, where do we find solace? Where do we seek wholeness? In the things most immediate and comfortable to us: brightly colored products on shelves, dopamine-pushing apps or money-making scams, fed to us slowly and methodically to keep us hooked. The hollow promise of having enough money to purchase an unending supply of things that will never truly make us feel complete, the carrot on the end of the stick that we chase forever.

LOTTO, the fourth studio album from They Are Gutting a Body of Water (TAGABOW), captures the sound that made the band a prominent force in the American underground. Menacing riffs, soaring leads, wailing distortion, and in a world of automated robo-calls and pervasive AI content optimized to keep us scrolling, LOTTO is an attempt to capture the sound of four human musicians in a room. LOTTO is undoubtedly a live record on tape. A “touching of grass”.

Hailed by Stereogum as “the most important band in modern shoegaze,” TAGABOW made their name approaching the genre with an experimental edge. Their live show incorporates EDM interludes, drawing on influences like ’90s drum & bass and N64 soundtracks. The band performs on the floor, purposely facing each other. No matter what chaos erupts in the mosh pit around them, TAGABOW looks inward.

TAGABOW began as the solo project of singer Doug Dulgarian, and is now filled out with bassist Emily Lofing, guitarist PJ Carroll, and drummer Ben Opatut. The son of a dirt track racecar driver, Dulgarian grew up in the Hudson Valley before relocating to Albany for court-mandated rehab in 2010. Soon after getting clean in 2013, Dulgarian attended his first house show. Inspired by this community of musicians self-releasing and organizing shows in makeshift spaces, he dove into DIY. “I chased that shit like I chased drugs,” Dulgarian says. “Just being in a band—touring, playing awful fucking shows.”

Their first studio LP since Lucky Styles—a 2022 release acclaimed by the likes of Post-Trash, who noted that “TAGABOW remain one of the most unique and compelling bands in underground music”—LOTTO surfaced from Dulgarian’s self-imposed challenge to put his guitar first. “I just wanted to strip all the shit back,” he says, referencing the Lucky Styles’ abundance of digital production. “All the plugins, the pedals, the vocal effects—everything about it. I just wanted to make a fucking record where the riffs really get stuck in your head.”

By abandoning digital technology and fully embracing the live-band format, LOTTO finds TAGABOW attempting to correct the course in a personal way. “In a world of perpetually increasing artifice, this record is my attempt to surface through the sea of false muck,” says Dulgarian. “It’s rife with perceivable mistakes, ebbing and flowing with the most humanity I can place on one record. “The more I utilized [technology], the softer I got. More fragile. I return again and again to that world because it’s more comfortable than my physical body. The dopamine flooding my brain. Standing in a party filled with people, staring at my phone. And in moments of clarity, I am often very aware that we’re currently watching the homogenization of art right before our very eyes. I am afraid that technology and convenience will cure the world of life.”

Matching its sonic intensity with an equally raw emotionality, LOTTO kicks off with “the chase, ”a gorgeously volatile track that opens on the chime of church bells before bursting into Dulgarian’s confessional account of New Year’s Day 2025. “I woke up that morning rapidly nose-diving into fentanyl withdrawal, and recognized the light in Emily’s face,” he recalls, referring to Lofing (also his girlfriend). “I became aware of the same fact that has presented itself in my life countless times, what becomes the very mission statement of the record: living in truth is a practice, and it’s never too late to get real again.”

Over the course of LOTTO’s ten tracks, TAGABOW bring Dulgarian’s exacting self-reflection to songs like “trainers”—an explosive look at the tragically human tendency to indulge in fantasies of escape, summed up by Dulgarian as “desiring something wholesome while still grappling with the reality presented clearly by my subconscious.” Later, on the stark and moody “rl stine,” TAGABOW wrestle with the impossible complexities of human connection and empathy between people struggling with similar experience. “There’s a guy I see every day outside the bodega near my house. I always buy him a pack of Newport 100s, knowing full well that he’ll trade it for crack,” says Dulgarian. “I wonder sometimes if it’s the addict in me enabling the addict in him, or if I just fully understand his struggle from a personal perspective and have some empathy for what he’s going through.” A glorious swarm of otherworldly vocals and unrelenting drumbeats, “american food” muses on numbing out as a coping mechanism, unleashing a barrage of uncomfortable truths (e.g., “The benefit of believing you’re bad is that you get somebody to blame”).

Since 2021 (the same year TAGABOW cemented their current lineup), Dulgarian has also headed up his own record label with the groundbreaking Julia’s War. To date, the label has released music from countless artists, including early releases by Wednesday, MJ Lenderman, Feeble Little Horse, and Glixen, proving that Dulgarian’s influence on the scene is not confined to his own musical output. Praising the influence of Julia’s War, The FADER writes that Dulgarian’s taste and philosophy have “inarguably helped shape the sound of indie rock music right now.” Over the years, TAGABOW’s extensive DIY touring has earned them a cult following, with fans driving hours for shows and sneaking cell-phone pictures of their pedal boards.

“In this world of burner accounts and deep fakes, I’m not sure that I’m trying to highlight some sort of solution. I’m not sure there is a one size fits all solution for the way things are going… To me LOTTO is the realization that some shiny colorful winning lottery ticket, some fucking viral video, some thorough tech that will make my life more convenient in some way, is never gonna save me.”