Shoegazing - 10 years on from it's peak. The Verdict?

So rather than the warhorses, I will mention the likes of Windy and Carl, Flowchart, Mirza, Light, Bethany Curve, Polar and Silvania as fine avenues of investigation, not all of which are 'classically' shoegaze but either take inspiration or have a sonic connection. And Study of the Lifeless as well, and Air Formation. Ecstasy of St. Theresa deserve a mention too even though they were around the whole time. Pedals! Gaze! Bliss! Etc.

To sound less belligerent, I was about yer age, David, a bit younger, and though off in LA I followed all the bands mentioned by you fairly religiously, and if you've been lurking here a while you know of my MBV worship by now. Caught as many of all those bands' touring appearances here as I could -- but I've no wish to go back in time, I've discovered so much more music since then and each year brings new possibilities. :-)

Makes great music to program by or in my case avoid programming.

Not a fan of Ride, though I tried to be for a time. Now, when I think of Ride I see Rob Newman standing on stage dressed in knee-length shorts and long-sleeve t-shirt, long 'air and bobbing and weaving his head around, vacant expression on his face while he does his Mark Gardener 'impression'. Silly arse.

Was all that really a decade ago? How time has stole past! The Cathedrals Of Sound, however, reverberate still.

In America, there never was a shoegazer backlash. It either got absorbed, however crudely, into grunge or taken up by latecomer indie mimics like the Lilys, who even aped Ride and Lush with an embarrassing Britpop phase! Even they couldn't spoil my the appetite for that crazy shoegazin' noise.

Then there's the artier offshoots, like Flying Saucer Attack, Amp, Windy & Carl, who just keep plugging away as though there never was a backlash. No Britpop makeovers for them. They're also harder to keep straight which are American and British than were the poppier shoegaze bands.

Best new bearers of the torch I've heard lately: Mahogany Dream of a Modern World

I love loads of the records, will try to reply better at later date.

The legacy of shoegazing? For a few years, music got "all swirly". Then it stopped being swirly.

Frozen E.P. - Curve

Holding our Breath E.P. - Slowdive

The first Lush E.P.'s

Only have one good shoegazing album (MBV don't count obviously), it's Medicine's 1st album (cue Ned with "Whaahaaha...Medicine sucks...AARGH." ;)

Flying Saucer Attack's - "Further" is a classic mid 90s shoegazing record. Didn't Simon Reynolds refer to it as the best guitar album since Royal Trux's "Cats And Dogs" when it came out?

Anyone remember The Charlottes "Liar" EP from 1990?

First two Bleach EPs had great moments. The Pale Saints "You Tear The World In Two" stands out however as some sort of towering colossus early 90's shoegaze moment. Although "Little Hammer", from the same album, sounds like Aled Jones!!

The shoegaze scene received a lot of slagging because of it's middle classness. It could never shake off MM's "The Scene That Celebrates Itself" tag. I guess for indie kids born in the late sixties/early seventies, shoegazing was the first instance of a rock scene emerging out of a group of bands the same age as themselves, hence the large post Surfer Rosa initial following in noise bands. It was very college orinetated, particularly in the Home Counties or so we were constantly led to believe according to the press. A regular accusation thrown at it was that the music lacked "pain", "grit", "resolve", that the bands hadn't experienced working class hardships to make it authentic enough etc. Grunge was held up as the real thing, borne out of "real" experiences blah blah. At the very least Shoegazing got kids (me included) searching out the great records from the past that had inspired all this beautiful noise. After all they did tend to namecheck a lot in their interviews!!

Thank you.

If I had ten pounds, then I would be out, rather than skulking around the nether regions of this here interweb...

I wonder if Mr Gunnip went to the next Chapterhouse gig at the T&C - which can't have been more than about two months later - when the decidedly non-shoegazing Thousand Yard Stare were the support act. Half the audience moshed to them and then left and C/house probably got a third of the audience they had from their previous gig, even though they were playing exactly the same set.

MBV, though - we saw them at T&C on the Saturday before Xmas '91 and were completely floored. When it came to the extended mid-section wigout of You Made Me Realise, most punters stood stock still like cigar store Indians. We tried to get a bit of movement going but no one else was having it, not even the terrified-looking members of Lush who were also present in the audience.

Wonky Alice - Lunar Adam
Sweet Jesus - Sisterfly

Sweet Jesus -- now there's a band that I'm surprised anyone remembers. Er, besides me.

*clears throat* Even I bought a copy of High Ball Me! before you did.

Wonky Alice! Wow, now that's a band I'd completely forgotten about. I saw them open for Weaveworld (ex-Chameleons) once. Bought their tape at the gig, still have it, (but all the way across the country where I can't get to it). They were wacky and charming, but I'm not sure I'd call them shoegazing. At least the way they sounded at the time...

Sweet Jesus does ring a bell. Can't place them at all in my mind, though. I'll have to look them up and refamiliarize myself.

Uh, yeah -- we're not talking about Moose, Elvis, there really was a band called Sweet Jesus, which AndreNYC had mentioned before, see.

Around circa early 80's , only notable for having Shriekback's Carl Marsh in their ranks.

and this thread has made me remember Revolver's Heaven sent an angel, I'm not sure if that's a good thing

Autohaze
Autohaze
Autohaze.....

Honey...why is there a Bentley parked inside my living room? And why the fuck is Mark E. Smith my driver?

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,2135023,00.html

Alan McGee, the man who signed Ride, My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive to Creation, is its most vehement critic. "Bloody nonsense. My Bloody Valentine were my comedy band. Ride were different - they were a rock band, really, a fantastic rock band - but My Bloody Valentine were a joke, my way of seeing how far I could push hype."

u mad

Why is he doing this?

Alan McGee OTM :)

no.

Time for a Is Alan McGee a tosser poll?

He's been doing this for years. Just shrug it off.

When is the last time he was connected to a band I should care about?

I'm as shocked by that quote as I am somewhat delighted to hear him say it.

"We had no chance after grunge," says Gardener. "We were the opposite of greasy smack-takers from America. We were nice boys - and nice boys on the wrong kinds of drugs."

OTMFM

wow, what a dick.

not Gardner.

McGee's right though isn't he? You're not telling me MBV were serious? I thought they always thought of themselves as a kind of novelty band, in the grand tradition of English joke acts like Stump and Splodgenessabounds.

I'm actually a little bit embarrassed by how twee Schnauss is in this article!

Not that I'm much better about this kind of music lol.

Well I took McGee's attitude as being laugh-at, not laugh-with, and I thought it was a shitty thing to say about any band you've signed, regardless of quality.

Yeah it'd be fair enough if Sheilds had said it or something but McGee? Still, he always struck me as the type of person who'd say this anyway.

I can see why he'd say it. Didn't the cost of making Loveless nearly cause Creation to go belly up? I also think McGee's ideas about what is and isn't rock are reactionary and too conventional.

McGee is right. MBV were just a bunch of pointless noise. Too bad he signed them at all.

We did this last week on another thread... but then it just degenerated into flirting.

maybe he got mixed up and is actually talking about Oasis

Hayooo!

Im kind of surprised that Geir doesnt like MBV. I know theyre noisy and all but they were always REALLY melodic, in that complex way that Geir likes. Now I don't know what to believe.

I know theyre noisy and all but they were always REALLY melodic

How do you know? I mean, there may be tunes somewhere, but they are impossible to hear as the vocals are mixed way too low.

Play it on a stereo.

The vocals are situated in the middle.

You're not telling me MBV were serious? I thought they always thought of themselves as a kind of novelty band, in the grand tradition of English joke acts like Stump and Splodgenessabounds.

You have a strange sense of hearing if you associate MBV with Stump, or indeed if you think tunes like You Made Me Realise or Soon are novelty and/or comedic.

I mean, there may be tunes somewhere, but they are impossible to hear as the vocals are mixed way too low.

this may have been discussed elsewhere, but do you reckon only vocal lines can carry melody?

Stump were not an English joke band. Mainly because they were Irish.

For a few years there I found it mystifying that people younger than me sometimes seemed so confounded by My Bloody Valentine -- describing Loveless as formless noise, wondering if something was wrong with their copies, and so on. These days, though, I'm starting to think of that as evidence that it's kind of the real deal: somehow, that sound hasn't been normalized, and still confounds a lot of people, which seems to bode well for how it'll age in the future.

I also understand why some people are confounded, coming to it now: I think hearing it in the early 90s meant having a bridge that helped you jump across to what they were doing, since it was the endpoint of an aesthetic that was floating around near a lot of different acts. (It certainly felt like a bit of a challenge the first few times I listened to it.) Once you burn off that initial distance, though, it is all SO MUCH a pop record, which I think is part of why it's easy to get defensive when people listen to it now and don't hear that.

Plus this: there may be tunes somewhere, but they are impossible to hear as the vocals are mixed way too low

This would make sense to me if the vocals were inaudible, but they're not -- they're mixed such that the lyrics tend not to register, but it feels strange to me that anyone could miss the melody, or really need it to be ENTIRELY front-and-center to respond to it. (But hey, this may be part of the "bridge" I'm talking about -- at the time I first heard this, people were surely more used to dropping vocals back so they swam around in the instruments, something that may not feel as natural right now? Though I can think of plenty of acts that do the same these days.)

this may have been discussed elsewhere, but do you reckon only vocal lines can carry melody?

A solo instrument may. Not the bass though.

The bass doesn't. The "noise" (I don't actually like calling it noise, because all of the strange swirly sounds on that record are totally controlled) is what typically carries the melody.

Too many voices to carry a melody. A melody is typically being carried by one voice at a time.

"typically"

haha geirpants

Geir is OTM about 95% of the time, but he's so *NOT* OTM here it's ridicuslous

ridiculous, even

"too many voices" = 1 or 2?

seriously, this allegedly amelodic quality people are trying to pin on the vocals basically consists of "not enough consonants," which is one of very few differences between the vocals here and on other things

A solo instrument may. Not the bass though.

This is mentalist crap, I have heard the bass carry melody BRILLIANTLY many times and is one thing I love about slightly gothy 80s post-punk music for starters.

This is mentalist crap, I have heard the bass carry melody BRILLIANTLY many times and is one thing I love about slightly gothy 80s post-punk music for starters.

yes! the bass "groove" plays an absolutely critical role in most (if not all) excellent music that is commonly tagged "post-punk"

Vicar, I was kidding. Nabisco, Stump were Anglo/Irish.

maybe he got mixed up and is actually talking about Oasis

Yeah, I'll give you that. I'd rather he said it about them or Bobby Gillespie/Primal Scream.

Shoegaze is alive and well, it's just called something else now.

Example: Alcest - a one-man band from Avignon, France. Started out as black metal, but has now signed a 5-album deal with German neofolk/experimental/metal label Prophecy Productions. The result is a very impressive first album, but it's the Loveless sound, isn't it?

http://www.myspace.com/alcestmusic

Too many voices to carry a melody. A melody is typically being carried by one voice at a time.

Um, Geir, doesn't this make, say, Bach not melodic?

seriously, this allegedly amelodic quality people are trying to pin on the vocals basically consists of "not enough consonants,"

Vowels are more melodic than consonants! Ban this sick percussive sibilance from our music!

Too many voices to carry a melody. A melody is typically being carried by one voice at a time.

I think you mixed up "melody" and "solo."

Add to upthread McGee being provocative for the sake of it, big surprise. Tons of Creation artistes complain about having to wait for bills etc to be paid because AM had just dropped another wodge on Loveless-related bills.

A solo instrument may. Not the bass though.

what about Disintegration!?!?!?

Not to mention Mick Karn.

http://archivedmusicpress.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/whatever-happened-to-shoegazing-part-1-12th-september-1992.jpg
http://archivedmusicpress.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/whatever-happened-to-shoegazing-part-2-12th-september-1992.jpg

http://archivedmusicpress.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/reading-festival-special-cover-of-the-melody-maker-12th-september-1992.jpg?w=418&h=572

shoegaze is back and it's shoeier than ever!! : )

http://archivedmusicpress.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/loop-on-the-cover-of-melody-maker-12th-november-1988.jpg?w=418&h=563

Hahahha. Oh my god, Pfunk, I think you need a chill pill.

There was a full-page shoegaze retrospective in some supplement I was reading at my parents' house yesterday. Either yesterday's Times or last week's Sunday Times I think. It wasn't very good, but since you raised the subject...

I remember reading the bit about Chapterhouse going metal with dread, of course when the album came out I then wished that they had.