Austin-based one-man shoegaze project Xoe Haze has always thrived in the margins—blurring genre lines with an intimate blend of distortion, atmosphere, and fragmented vocals. With his latest full-length album Runner, he steps deeper into the industrial-tinged shadows hinted at in his earlier work, emerging with a sound that is more immersive, more daring, and more emotionally raw than ever before.

From the first seconds of opener “The Still”, it’s clear this is not just another lo-fi shoegaze album. The track breathes slowly, like a living thing—layered with heavy exhalations, cold metallic textures, and dissonant riffs that expand into something both meditative and unnerving. It's ritualistic, not just in sound but in feel. Runner thrives on dualities: warmth vs. coldness, beauty vs. abrasion, connection vs. collapse. This tension becomes the emotional anchor for the entire record.

“Dead Dog” pushes that idea further, marrying glitchy, crushed beats with a wall of distorted bass and ghostly, fractured vocals. The influence of earlier releases like Faceholes or Self Harm Pop is present, but the sonic palette has grown darker, heavier, and more avant-garde. What was once dreamy has now turned haunted.

Xoe Haze has a unique ability to bend genres without losing his cohesive identity. On “Makeshift Cure”, he seamlessly introduces warped hip-hop textures—reversed vinyl scratches, sensual lo-fi basslines, and elastic guitar loops—into a shoegaze framework. The vocals on this track are among the most emotionally piercing: cryptic yet vulnerable, delivered like a late-night voicemail you weren’t supposed to hear.

Even the interludes (“Tape 1” and “Tape 2”) offer more than ambient breathers. These pieces act as connective tissue, lacing bird sounds, vintage piano loops, and disembodied voices into moments of sonic decompression. They help make Runner feel like a fully-realized soundscape, not just a collection of songs.

As the album unfolds, its emotional landscape becomes more focused. “Chasing Planes” paints a vivid portrait of isolation—shoegaze strums fading into glitchy cuts, layered under vocals that sound like they’re being sung from another dimension. Even in its most abrasive moments—like the churn of “Broken Bones” or the hip-hop-inflected “Bit Off”—Xoe never loses control. Every element is placed with intention: the sudden appearance of acoustic guitar, the collapse of phased riffs, the quiet just before the storm.

But it’s the title track, “Runner”, that delivers the final blow. A slow-burning meditation of spectral guitars, deep pulses of bass, and whispered confessions, it closes the album on a note of aching vulnerability. There’s a ghost in this machine, and Xoe Haze isn’t afraid to let it speak.

Runner is the kind of record that doesn’t beg for attention but earns it through sheer emotional precision. It’s lo-fi, but never lazy. It’s distorted, but never directionless. Every track feels hand-built and haunted. If earlier releases were sketches of inner turmoil, Runner is a full-length portrait of depression, desire, and dislocation—crafted with care and steeped in sonic detail.

For a one-man project, the production is impressively rich, layered, and clean where it needs to be. And while shoegaze remains the album’s backbone, Runner flirts boldly with trip-hop, industrial noise, ambient, and post-punk. The result is something that feels entirely its own—introspective, strange, and deeply human.

Rating: 9/10