What began as a chance airplane encounter between Brian McSweeney and Shawn Rios grew into a yearslong friendship igniting their inevitable collaboration that became Chicago’s MIIRRORS. Initially prioritizing album creation over live performance, they traded the stage for the studio, morphing the duo into a collaborative quintet of veteran multi-instrumentalists as Andre Miller, Patrick Riley and JG Shadid joined forces. Their work shifted, evolved. Waves of cascading textures began blurring the lines between synthesizers and guitars, conjuring My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Grizzly Bear, Broken Social Scene– songwriting still at the core, Rios’ atypical rhythms anchor these moments while McSweeney’s voice ascends above the band’s expanding colors. Five become one.
