Tom Leonard releases new album 'What Has Been and What Will Be'
- Richard Blowes
- 6 hours ago
- 2 min read
Manchester musician Tom Leonard's second album What Has Been and What Will Be updates the shoegaze sound for the century's second quarter.
Album: What Has Been And What Will Be
Artist: Tom Leonard
Date: February 6 2026
Manchester is a city built on forward thinking and progress. Shoegaze is a genre built on nostalgia and reverence for a 90s high point. Therefore Manchester shoegaze is ... discuss.
Thankfully reviewing music is not the same as being on a Reddit forum and there is room for nuance; and even the possibility that two seemingly opposing viewpoints can coexist. However at some point, you listen to a Manchester release flagged as shoegaze and, akin to observing whether Schrödinger's cat is dead or alive, a judgement call is required.
The first thing to say about solo Manchester musician Tom Leonard's second album is that he has chosen a canny title. Before listening, he is already alluding to the storied history of shoegaze and simultaneously looking to what it might sound like in the future. And after listening? It's no spoiler to say he has succeeded handsomely.
album closer Fade Away is a mid tempo, melancholically uplifting work of reverb soaked, shimmering beauty without a fuzzbox in sight
What Leonard has done is to update the template - that is if there ever was one in this most shape shifting of genres. As he says in the euphoric Ride adjacent title track "So maybe I'd change a few things / Maybe think a little more / About what will be / Less about what went before." And thus this track is followed by album closer Fade Away which is a mid tempo, melancholically uplifting work of reverb soaked, shimmering beauty without a fuzzbox in sight.
This kind of open thinking leads to tracks such as the excellently titled The Fathoms Deep Pool of Love which starts with an arpeggiated synth line that could evolve into a dark wave banger as easily as its final outcome as MGMT style synth pop. It's an exemplar of Leonard's control of rhythm, melody and dynamics across the whole LP to build and release tension seemingly at will.
Leonard uses his voice effectively to mix up the emotional feeling of tracks across the album. While one of its highlights Stay Gone sees him singing in what sounds like his natural register, with the vocals embedded seamlessly into the backing to deliver an arms aloft anthem, In Circles and Stay Gone deploy a lower register, foregrounded in the mix, which forces you to appreciate them in a different way. The Light Show also fits this mould and the way it builds from its ambient opening to a stunning climax is as good as anything from Spacemen 3/Spiritualized.
As the Arctic Monkeys' debut LP turns 20 and Saturday Night, Sunday Morning celebrates 66 kitchen sink years, whatever people say I am, that's what i'm not could apply as much to the misunderstood and unfairly maligned shoegaze scene as to a gang of Sheffield upstarts or a mardy Nottinghamshire factory worker. And Tom Leonard proves it.
Gas mark: 8/10
Standout tracks: The Light Show, What Has Been and What Will Be, Fade Away
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