Alison’s Halo unearths unreleased tracks for ‘Skywide’ EP

Memories kept in the sleep
I’m sealing with the antidote
I’ve given to pure intent
In the kindest dose
I hope your hope is lasting

Thirty years ago, I first heard Catherine Cooper sing those lyrics from “Dozen.” In these very pages, I reviewed their single and likened the soundscape to “a sea of chorus-caressed guitars and tumbling drums” with “reverb liberally applied” and her wispy delivery to “a glazed over refugee from ‘The Stepford Wives’ at the end of her rope, ready to lash out.” I also made the mistake of using the word “trance,” which has since been co-opted by EDM merchants, a faux pas I make even now (I can be pretty stubborn in what I think is trance-like).

I was thinking about what else has changed in the intervening years, dodging a few driverless taxis on my way to meet Catherine and Adam Cooper downtown. Parking is less expansive and more expensive; every club we referred to in our chat has gone the way of the dodo, and the reconstituted Alison’s Halo is about to embark on a co-headlining twelve-city tour with Tanukichan. They scheduled a hometown stop at The Rosetta Room in Mesa, but the big change is that they have been playing to sold-out audiences of largely 15-year-olds. Quite a change from when they literally played “Dozen” to a dozen people at places like the Big Fish Pub or Edsel’s Attic. Or gigging at the Mason Jar, sandwiched between industrial bands.

When the aforementioned “Dozen” was included on the Prestigious UK label Cherry Red Records’ “Still in a Dream: A Story of Shoegaze 1988–1995” box set in 2016, a collection populated with the likes of Jesus and Mary Chain and House of Love, it jump-started the name of Alison’s Halo for a whole new demographic of fans. Fans, you know? That unspoiled rabble who buy merch and go out willingly to shows?

“We’ve done a couple of compilations with Cherry Red,” says Adam. “And I know for a fact, one of the songs that we were up against. was a five-thousand-pound (£5000.00) record. And we spent our money on a four-track Tascam Portastudio and recorded in a garage.”

“It’s validation, sitting there with some heavy hitters,” agrees Catherine. “Over the years. I think our songs just stayed circulating in a lot of circles.”

She also credits the coronavirus as having created a resurgence of interest in shoegaze and dreampop genres from “coronials.”

“During the pandemic, a lot of people were deep diving into all kinds of music they hadn’t heard of before. These fans like finding something that a lot of people don’t know about yet and being the first to rediscover them. And somehow our name just kept coming up.”

That’s how Jordan Corso of Kiss of Death Management approached them a year ago. “He said,’ I’d like to work with you. I don’t know if you’re seeing what’s going on social media, that, you know, I think we could do something,” recalls Adam on hooking up with High Road Touring in the USA and Free Trade Agency in the UK/EU.

“He was willing to take a risk and booked us on a really big tour with a UK band called Panchiko,” says Catherine of another artist resurrected from near-dormancy playing to large crowds. “He had a 20-year gap between making a record, nobody showing any interest, somebody just discovering their record 20 years later, and then blew up.”

Amazingly they were able to recruit the rest of Alison’s Halo on short notice, calling on drummer Roger Brogan and bassist David Rogers, who played on the group’s original singles, cassettes and EPs up through their one full-length album Eyedazzler 1992-1996 released in 1998, itself a collection of demo recordings made for A&R men at major labels that kept asking the Coopers “Send me more stuff” but never did close a deal.

“We had four days to rehearse,” says Adam. “And our first show in almost 30 years was like 1,500 people.”

One smart move was insisting on having all ages shows on the itinerary. “You have to pay the bar extra if you do the all-ages shows,” she continues. “Some bands don’t think it’s worth it. But if you can tap into a whole new generation that’s gonna be able to sing new music for another 20 or 30 years.”

It should be noted that these young fans who approach the Halos have grown up at a time when bands have virtually disappeared from the Top 100, and singers performing to prerecorded tracks is the accepted norm. With a lot of today’s music being made by individuals alone with a computer, the art of interplay between four people playing music must be a mind-blower.

“I have kids come up to me and go,’ I can’t believe you’re singing. You’re really singing.’ Or ‘you guys are really playing.’
And that blew my mind because I-I-I never thought of it from that perspective,” says Catherine.

Although you can see contemporaries of the Coopers at the shows who are there for their infusion of nostalgia, it is doubly rewarding to see young folk who have made a more recent emotional connection to them. Music that isn’t telling them what brands they need to buy and things they need to own, music that just lets them be alone with their thoughts for a while.

That said, has anyone come up to them and said that they made “Slowbleed” their wedding song?

“It’s the gamut,” says Adam. “We’ve had people who say, ‘this record got me through high school because I was bullied,’ or ‘my dad just died, and these songs were the only thing that got us through’. Or ‘and this song is like, all I listen to in the anticipation for my first baby’.”

There is also anticipation for new music from Alison’s Halo, as well, which is in the works for 2026, maybe the only thing we have to look forward to in this chaotic next quarter-century. It should be noted that the Coopers have not stopped writing and recording material in the years between the group’s initial breakup in the late Nineties and now. Maybe if the interest had been in The Pastry Heroes or Insta, two more decidedly pop-infused post-Alison’s Halo projects the Coopers embark on after moving to Chicago and moving back, we’d be talking about Bacharachian-styled music and its effects on younger others.

But this interest in Alison’s Halo specifically has been the impetus behind these tours. The recently-released “Skywide” EP is the result of excavating for bonus cuts for the rereleased “Eyedazzler” album and coming across a group of rehearsal room recording on their trusty Tascam, songs that were either lacking a vocal track or didn’t fit the flow of “Eyedazzler,” including a 1996 re-recording of “Dozen” and the epic title track, which reaches out through a mile of reverb and sustained guitar chords to ask, “Will I ever see yoooou again?” With the pearl anniversary of “Dozen,” the promise of new music and time looking decidedly on Alison Halo’s side, the answer is sooner than you think.

Alison’s Halo plays The Rosetta Room at 7 p.m. on November 5, 2025, with Tanukichan. Doors open at 6 p.m. Tickets are available on the venue’s site.