Downward formed while Richardson and Pugh were still at school, Downward evolved quickly from what the former terms a “kind of shitty in a cool way” shoegaze band into the band who captured themselves on Downward II—a dark, paranoid and lugubrious reflection of reality that seeps into your bones from the moment opener “Request Made” kicks things off. Beautiful yet simultaneously unsettling, these are songs that, on paper, should offer some kind of soothing comfort, but which instead combine to make you question your entire existence. In a cool way.