POLL: Best Shoegaze Band

;_;

NO APPLESEED CAST?!!!?!?!?!??

from this list:

1. My Bloody Valentine
2. Loop
3. Pale Saints
4. Lush

I like a number of the other bands but these are the only ones I really still think about. I was totally blasting Loop on my drive to Coachella - still addicted to that standing-next-to-a-jet-engine sound.

Who considers Loop, The Lilys and The Telescopes to be shoegaze? You might as well include The Chameleons, Sun Dial and Spacemen 3 at this point. And if you're going to include obscurities like Springhouse then you need to include Blind Mr. Jones, Bark Psychosis, Silvania, Sianspheric, Alison's Halo, hell even the Cranes.

Shit poll choices #74481 in a series.

If I just have to pick bands from this list then I'd pick (in alphabetical order)
Bailter Space
Curve
Loop
The Telescopes
The Verve

that was a great rant, until you picked curve.

who the fuck are springhouse?

all of the above bands had their ups and downs. i've probably listened to lilys the most of all of them over the years tbh

recently re-listened to the 'sarah sitting' 45 by the swirlies. goddamn they were great on that record (and the pop narc 7"). never quite so again.

nu-shoegaze omission: GUITAR

that was a great rant, until you picked curve.

Bah! I'll defend Curve all the way up to (and including) the "Perish" single

on that list, the only bands i have liked/loved and listened to a lot are catherine wheel (and mostly just chrome which is definitely one of my fave albums of the 90's), faith healers (i love everything they did), kitchens of distinction (they lost me later on, but love is hell is one of my fave things ever), MBV, and slowdive (love them but never heard the album after souvlaki sad to say).

i should listen to more of those bands. i like loop a lot, but i don't own any loop. i've never heard moose. i have the first ride album (i think) and it's okay, but it never knocked me out. i liked bailter space, but haven't heard them in years. i just sold my shot forth self living vinyl on ebay for good money. um, the rest i can probably live without. i don't wanna listen to lush in 2008. though i did like those first EPs.

oh and i still need to hear pale saints! i only heard their latter-day sucky incarnation when they sucked.

springhouse! i heart jack rabid.

did you know lots of metal bands have been namedropping swervedriver in the last couple of years?

the lilys always made me snooze a bit. swirlies used to swirl live. but kind of forgettably. i would cross their name out and put in a vote for my fave all natural lemon and lime flavors.

anyway, one more vote for My Bloody Valentine!

who the fuck are springhouse?

Mostly notable as Jack Rabid's (The Big Takeover's main guy) band from 1988 - 1993 or so.

never ever heard the name before. will seek out.

i don't wanna listen to lush in 2008

early lush sounds better than ever in 2008! but then i hadn't listened to any since the 90s

springhouse video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anClMq_pYv4

they were okay...

lowdive (love them but never heard the album after souvlaki sad to say).

Godamn man, track down a copy of it pronto. It's the only album of theirs I listen to now and one of the few that manages to interestingly link up post-shoegazer with what the Too Pure crowd was doing.

imo all the pale saints you need are the debut and the mrs dolphin comp. in ribbons is kind of a bore.

did you know lots of metal bands have been namedropping swervedriver in the last couple of years?

i believe this. also cregg from the vines used to talk them up a lot too

I have nothing to say about this poll, except to suggest cutting Stephen some slack; if I were his age looking back on Ye Olden Times of Gaze, I'd probably come up with an equally idiosyncratic list, which I think is a good thing that reflects personal taste, knowledge and perception rather than something set in stone. None of these groups formed with the idea 'oh hai we r shoegaze,' they were just lumped into something at the time and then set in amber for the following years.

The very fluidity of what constitutes shoegaze, as Chris indicates, is also one of its strengths. Hell, you could call the No Age album that just came out shoegaze, in fact I'm going to partially argue that in my OC Weekly review, from the point of view of it being often quite disorienting as opposed to 'just' being sculpted blissout.

Glaring omission #4080: Secret Shine

Barring MBV's unfair advantage, I'm going with The Pale Saints.

Ride is the ONLY CORRECT ANSWER HERE. Pale Saints a close second.

What?? Loop are in here? BAHAHAAHA who the hell said they were shoegazing? LOL

*Pauses to actually read the entire thread before posting*

Telecom OTM re:Loop etc.

ESOJ disses In Ribbons! Oh the horror. It's the THIRD album that was the bore, mate. :)

Still at the end of the day, Ned OTM for defending Stephen.

the third album is even more of a bore

Pale Saints = all about the EPs. Come to think of it, the same can be said for a lot of these bands.

"Who considers Loop, The Lilys and The Telescopes to be shoegaze?"

AMG for one:

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=77:2680~T1

probably lots of people.

The first Lilys LP is the most direct rip of MBV's sound in existence (which is fine by me). It doesn't get much more 'gaze than that.

these are the lists i love:

http://rateyourmusic.com/list/albatross38/new_shoegaze_music

never heard of ANY of these bands.

top 50 old school:

http://rateyourmusic.com/list/TheScientist/top_50_shoegaze_albums__atease_version_

would i like M83?

They're all right but overrated. Will depend on your tolerance for the Mogwai/Godspeed style.

there's some totally wonderful obscure stuff in that albatross38 list. although i think the fleeting joys album is really overrated - sounds beautiful but the songs themselves aren't terribly substantial

My favorite neo-shoegaze band remain A Sunny Day In Glasgow - except they're more like tweegaze, or music made by ghosts in an attic.

their vocals trouble me

the JPS Experience's Bleeding Star (or, ha, the more recent Shocking Pinks stuff, esp. live) are better Flying Nun shoegaze picks than Bailter Space.

Out of all the bands on this list, the only thing I've really listened to in the past few years'd be Lush's cover of "Demystification". Wouldn't mind digging out Chapterhouse's "Pearl" & seeing how it holds up, though.

my favourite NZ 'shoegaze' stuff is the first loves ugly children EP on FN. dreamy.

altho the JPSE do that sound very nicely

"Will depend on your tolerance for the Mogwai/Godspeed style."

thanks, i'll pass!

Hahaha, I knew that would be your reaction.

the third album is even more of a bore

Electricsound once again confirms he is a sane man! Cheers.

But seriously folks, Loop shoegaze? That fucking pushes my buttons. If you call Loop shoegaze in a bar with me you better be prepared to step outside, mate. That gets to me almost as much as calling Killing Joke goth does to Alex in NYC I'm serious.

When Loop fucking started there was NO FUCKING SHOEGAZE OKAY? THEY WERE FUCKING PSYCHEDELIC STONER ROCK LIKE SPACEMEN 3 ONLY HARDER EDGED AND THEY HAD 60's LOOKING ALBUM COVERS MADE FOR PEOPLE WHO DID ACID AND THIS WAS BEFORE ANYONE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD HAD CALLED ANY TYPE OF MUSIC ANYWHERE "SHOEGAZE" OKAY????

They opened for fucking Nirvana okay?? Do you think any shoegaze band ever opened for Nirvana???

Okay I'm calm now. Incase anyone was wondering.

springhouse has a new album, but i don't know if they have put it out yet. they played in brooklyn a couple of months ago.

All Natural Lemon & Lime Flavors/Ifwhen are better than all of these bands save for MBV. And MBV probably should've been taken out to give, I don't know, Ride a better chance.

Bimble, a band can have a generic status conferred upon them in retrospect just like La Dolce Vita was really about the late 1960s counterculture before it even existed.

i think that Ecstasy of St. Theresa album on the 2nd AMG list is pretty awesome. would like LP copy pls.
did people consider Flying Saucer Attack to be shoegaze?

Said EOST album is very awesome.

FSA -- they were definitely lumped in tangentially at least at the start. Dave Pearce was none too fond of the 'new MBV' tags that he got, though -- he felt he was coming from a much different direction (and he was). Still for a while there the putative Bristol scene that he and a variety of other folks (3EF, Movietone, Light, Amp -- nearly all of which were interrelated) were supposed to stand for definitely was seen as post-gaze fallout.

they tended to fall more into the spacerock side of things with the artists they were associated with, but the sounds are pretty gazey

xpost

ah yes! the first loves ugly children ep is fantastic, the 7 inch too, but then they went pretty crap pretty quickly.
bleeding star is alright but it's a bit of a snooze in spots. the second stereo bus record is pretty shoegazey but not so great, at least not as nice as the home recorded debut.
moose were rotten shoegazers, much better as a country band.
slowdive is best though.

Chapterhouse isn't best band on the list, but I thought that they should get at least one vote if only because "Breather" is one of my favourite songs ever. It's better than "Pearl" for which they're usually remembered.

These in about this order:
Pale Saints (for The Comforts of Madness)
Ride
Lush
Slowdive

I can’t bring myself to vote for MVB as part of a shoegaze poll.

My Vloody Balentine. (Some DJ somewhere is going to use that as a name.)

Ride is the ONLY CORRECT ANSWER HERE.

I recall listening to a Mark Gardener solo show several years ago where he introduced "Leave Them All Behind" with "who wants to hear some shoegazing?"

As far as I know, this is the only time I've heard anyone from this era take on the shoegazing moniker even if it was probably in jest.

Anyway, the one band that really should be on this list that isn't is A R Kane. 69 is the album that kicked most of this off...

Please someone tell me you remember that riff.

i do cuz i used to watch the video a lot. had it on an old homemade vhs mtv 120 minutes tape i'd made at the time.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=7qc_pXs22ug

We just watched the video for that on Youtube, we were looking up old Chart Show Indie Chart specials. I first heard loads of this stuff like Spacemen 3, Spiritualized, Drop Nineteens on that show. It was only on every 3 or 4 weeks for about 10 minutes.

were there any shoegaze videos that were not incredibly boring?
i kinda like 'de-luxe' and 'mesmerise' but weren't the rest really dull?

"Arc Lite" has a good riff, but it's not Loop's best. That would be "Burning World"--and then we're talking the bass. Or maybe "Collision"...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQvkNaYveRQ&feature=related

I'm going through a big Kitchens phase right now...

I've gone for the Boo Radleys by default.

-- the next grozart

all because of those three EP's.

even though they have no business on this list, my vote is for Loop. Slowdive would be a close second.

Chapterhouse's incessant use of "When the Levee Breaks" proved highly ironic.

I put in my vote for Kitchens as I think most of my other favorites (MBV, Ride, Slowdive, Faith Healers, Loop, Swervedriver) are gonna get enough love. I do really like Bailter Space though, I hope they do alright here...

The questions is, which band(s) will get 0 votes?

i'm glad someone other than me is voting for the kitchens. probably for the same reason -- a kinda sympathy thing -- but, you know, that band and the 19-year-old me ...

last minute MBV vote because everything else I had tried bored me

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Duh.

Poll Results

My Bloody Valentine 31

...boring.

I'm surprised by the number of votes Loop got. I definitely have to listen to more of their stuff (read: "I've only listened to one song and can't even remember how they sound").

the Boo Radleys gets six votes, YEAH. Moose at five is great too considering they change everything and got so much better. Swervedriver and Pale Saints at four with the Telescopes and Catherine Wheel getting three a piece. very nice work, like always, ILM!

Pale Saints deserve better.

OTM, such a good band.

Kitchens fans unite! All 7 of us!

Someone really voted for The Swirlies over My Bloody Valentine? That was an accident, yes?

the swirlies were fantastic. highly deserving of more votes than loop in my mind but you know they don't have the cool cache. good thing the dead c weren't in this poll.

over 100 votes cast, that's got to be one of the more popular polls recently?!

and yes - GO KITCHENS! If I could have had two votes then I think Pale Saints would have edged it for second choice (obv. huge MBV love but such a foregone conclusion); "A Thousand Stars Burst Open" comes round on my walkman far more frequently than shuffle should allow and it is is still absolutely incredible. I always loved the way that Pale Saints managed to bring a little blues to their sound, when most others were just piling on whooshing noises.

Ride 8
Kitchens of Distinction 7

really. i'm shocked. not unhappily.

It'd be interesting to see how this poll would've turned out at the height of shoegazer/scene wot celebrates itself era.

OK, how many of you lot voted for bands you were in?

I think that if the poll had happened in '91 Chapterhouse might have had more than one vote. Anyone else excited about the "Blood music" reissue? No? Didn't think so.

Catherine Wheel 2

This makes me sad ^

I absolutely adore this band -- Ferment, Chrome, Adam & Eve all fantastic records; I can't find more than a couple bands on this poll who have *three* great records to their name. Slowdive, Loop, Kitchens... that's it.

Fair warning: sometime later this year, after we do the 2009 albums/singles poll and the 2005-09 albums/singles poll, I'm probably going to conduct a "best" shoegaze/dreampop albums poll (first wave and all waves since included). Just letting ILM know in advance (because the '70s album poll that just wrapped up was pretty fun).

This is probably my own obsession, but I'd love to see an all-inclusive poll of "bands that started out shoegaze, and then dropped it and went off in a radically different direction." E.g. lilys, jennyanykind, ride, boo radleys, etc. For whatever reason, that particular subset of bands were often really brilliant.

Early Verve is way too underrated for my liking. Majestic and pretty much the epitome of "shoegaze."

I was thinking of doing an alternative 90's poll, with a radically different voting system, namely no nominations process, and 200 points allotted to each voter, to do as they please with. If you think Loveless deserves all 200 then go for it. Except Loveless won't be getting any points at all because it was in the first poll.

Wondering if Catherine Wheel's Adam And Eve counts as a shoegaze album, because if it is it'd be my favourite. As well as my favourite mainstream rock album of the decade. It's like one classic alt anthem after another.

My favorite is definitely The Swirlies. They're my favorite band overall.

that glittering salons album would definitely be in my top 10, maybe 5

(of shoegaze, not the decade overall)

Yeah same here, except it would be decade overall, since I love it and is barely a shoegaze album!

'Shoegaze' is definitely a stretch, but it's also a broader church than it's often given credit for. It'd possibly be in my decade top 25 overall. The SONG 'Two Girls Kissing' would have a great chance of making a 90's ballot of mine.

I'm going to leave Shoegaze & dreampop definitions up to interpretation. I mean, I'm not going to accept any votes for Dr. Dre or Iron Maiden, but it'll be pretty loose.

Yeah they really broke free of the "derivative of MBV" write-off with that album, but many people still frustratingly say that about them. Even Blonder Tongue is way ahead of its time for 1993; it doesn't sound dated at all to me.

Swirlies that is.

yeah it's definitely an album that's hard to place, and hard to compare other things to. an original vision. perhaps it'll sidle up my overall list; it's certainly a varied and exciting blast from start to finish. some pretty great songwriting too!

I wonder whether a singles/EPs poll might work better? From memory there were piles of great debuts, but a lot of these bands never got as far as an album (InAura), didn't really manage a definitive work (Adorable), or by the time they did were no longer 'gazers (Slowdive).

We've got MONTHS to sort it out.

i'm looking very forward to this. it's funny because i went out with old friends just last night and i was telling them that i think this time period was the best time of my life. i saw most of these bands live and have a lot of stories that i will share when this poll happens later this year.

^^^^^^^^

What Ever Happened To Shoegazing?

Melody Maker 1992 article, parts one and two

They sure had Ocean Colour Scene's number.

Do you think the parody of a Scene kid - the mimsy, Keats-reading, middle-class undergrad mummy’s boy called Quentin with spots, a blue-and-white hooped t-shirt and a copy of “Isn’t Anything” under one arm – is in any way accurate?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhE-0IDpkiM

what track is this?

duhhh.. read the youtube title you idiot..

I need this record..