Northern Pennsylvania’s The Stargazer Lilies have bestowed upon the world the best kind of blissed out melodrama. Released on Graveface Records , home to magical pop gems, Casket Girls and former home to the tripped-out psychosis that is Black Moth Super Rainbow, Door to the Sun is in good company. Drawing from shoegaze standard bearers like Slowdive/My Bloody Valentine as well as psychedelic pop, there’s an eclectic sense of timelessness to it.

“Golden Key,” the album’s opening track, introduces listeners into a rapidly unfolding soundscape, crafted as a fuzzy, psychedelic dream. The track is contemplative, melodic and atmospheric vocals affixed to a background of driving ambient noise. It’s undoubtedly gorgeous, a utopian vision in its own right. However the album offers a great deal more than sun-drenched wonderland. It is many ways contradictory, introspective in presenting the ebbs and flows of the drama of an insular world. The tracks manage to really move, while also lingering and floating. Lyrically, we get stripped down love songs, and the staying power of singular images.

The album is able to strike a balance, the anxiety of ambient noise teetering on edge with an elemental sense of wonder. “Heaven and Hell” manages to be achingly beautiful, its melodic lines soaring against an eerie, layered background. The final track, “A Beautiful Space” is a menacing triumph of abstraction. We get something like the weird duality of summer days, sweet dollar store candy mixed with the acrid taste of chlorinated pool water. Door to the Sun takes us on a deep dive, light and effortless beauty floating alongside the weighty and the dissonant, an album for taking shelter in the quiet seclusion of a dark room, or for stepping out into brilliant, unapologetic sunshine.