| Shoegaze | |
|---|---|
| Stylistic origins | |
| Cultural origins | Late 1980s, Ireland and United Kingdom |
| Derivative forms | |
| Fusion genres | |
| Blackgaze | |
| Other topics | |
Shoegaze (originally called shoegazing and sometimes conflated with "dream pop") [10] is a subgenre of indie and alternative rock characterized by its ethereal mixture of obscured vocals, guitar distortion and effects, feedback, and overwhelming volume. [1] [11] It emerged in Ireland and the United Kingdom in the late 1980s among neo-psychedelic groups [2] who usually stood motionless during live performances in a detached, non-confrontational state. [1] [12] The name comes from the heavy use of effects pedals, as the performers were often looking down at their pedals during concerts. [13]
My Bloody Valentine and their 1991 album Loveless (1991) are widely regarded as defining the genre; [14] [15] other prominent shoegaze groups include Slowdive, Ride, Lush, Curve, Pale Saints, Swirlies, Chapterhouse, and Swervedriver. A loose label given to the shoegaze bands and other affiliated bands in London in the early 1990s was "the scene that celebrates itself". [16] Most shoegaze artists drew from the template set by My Bloody Valentine on their late 1980s recordings, as well as bands such as The Jesus and Mary Chain and Cocteau Twins. [1]
In the early 1990s, shoegaze was sidelined by American grunge and early Britpop acts, resulting in relatively unknown bands breaking up or reinventing their style altogether. [1] Since the late 2010s, a renewed interest in the genre has been noted, namely among nu gaze and blackgaze bands.
Shoegaze combines ethereal, swirling vocals with layers of distorted, bent, or flanged guitars, [6] creating a wash of sound where no instrument is distinguishable from another. [1] The genre was typically "overwhelmingly loud, with long, droning riffs, waves of distortion, and cascades of feedback. Vocals and melodies disappeared into the walls of guitars." [1]
In a 2016 article for HuffPost Andy Ross claimed he coined the term "shoegazing" at a show on 3 September 1991 which featured Chapterhouse, Slowdive and Moose, because the bands' members seemed to be in "a state of trance by the footwear lurking semi-motionless beneath their low-slung guitars". [17] Alternatively, The Guinness Who's Who of Indie and New Wave Music (1992) claimed that the first use of the name was in a concert review for Moose, published by Sounds , in which the author referenced how singer Russell Yates read lyrics taped to the floor throughout the gig. [18]
According to AllMusic: "The shatteringly loud, droning neo-psychedelia the band performed was dubbed shoegaze by the British press because the band members stared at the stage while they performed". [1] The term was also used by the British music press to describe dream pop bands. [19] Slowdive's Simon Scott found the term relevant:
I always thought Robert Smith, when he was in Siouxsie and the Banshees playing guitar [on the 1983's Nocturne live video], was the coolest as he just stood there and let the music flood out. That anti showmanship was perfect so I never really understood why people began to use "shoegaze" as a negative term. I think if Slowdive didn't stand there looking at what pedal was about to go on and off we'd have been shite. [...] I am glad we were static and concentrated on playing well. Now it is a positive term. [20]
However, to some, the term was considered a pejorative, especially by a part of the English weekly music press who considered the movement as ineffectual, and it was disliked by many of the groups it purported to describe. [6] Lush's singer Miki Berenyi explained:
Shoegazing was originally a slag-off term. My partner [K.J. 'Moose' McKillop], who was the guitarist in Moose, claims that it was originally leveled at his band. Apparently the journo was referring to the bank of effects pedals he had strewn across the stage that he had to keep staring at in order to operate. And then it just became a generic term for all those bands that had a big, sweeping, effects-laden sound, but all stood resolutely still on stage. [6]
Ride's Mark Gardener had another take on his group's static presentation: "We didn't want to use the stage as a platform for ego... We presented ourselves as normal people, as a band who wanted their fans to think they could do that too." [12]
"All I Wanna Do", a song from the Beach Boys' 1970 album Sunflower , was retrospectively viewed as a precursor to shoegaze, and was one of many influences on both the shoegaze and dream pop scenes of the early 1990s. [22] [23] [24]
Post-punk acts Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Cure were formative influences on shoegaze. [25] Slowdive named themselves after the Siouxsie and the Banshees song of the same name and took inspiration from the group at their beginnings, while their contemporaries Lush were originally called "The Baby Machines", a line from a Siouxsie Sioux lyric. [26] During early and mid 1980s, the English alternative rock and neo-psychedelia scenes produced several bands whose exploration of sounds and textures would impact shoegaze. [25] Those bands included the House of Love, Spacemen 3, and Loop, the latter two of whom were notable influences on shoegazers Ride and Slowdive. [27] [28]
American underground bands Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., and Pixies were also cited by various shoegaze bands as touchstones for their respective sounds. [27] [28] [29] [30] Proto-punk band the Velvet Underground also proved very influential for many shoegaze acts. [27] [28] [31]
According to AllMusic, most bands drew from the music of My Bloody Valentine as a template for the genre, as well as groups such as Cocteau Twins and the Jesus and Mary Chain. [1] British dream pop duo A.R. Kane have also been credited with producing a template for the genre in the late 1980s. [32] [33] My Bloody Valentine's Loveless is referred to as the genre's defining album . [15]
After garnering some local popularity with their 1987 twee/noise pop single, "Sunny Sundae Smile", My Bloody Valentine started to move their sound more and more into experimentation with noise and complex series of effect pedals—as seen in their 1988 breakthrough: the You Made Me Realise EP and album Isn't Anything . [34] Michael Azerrad's book Our Band Could Be Your Life cited an early 1990s Dinosaur Jr. tour of the United Kingdom as a key influence. [35]
Whereas contemporary alternative rock movements of the time period were extremely male-dominated (Britpop, grunge), My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Lush, Cocteau Twins, Pale Saints, Curve and many other popular shoegaze acts had at least one prominent female musician who contributed key vocal elements and/or integral writing components to the music. In the 2014 film Beautiful Noise , Kevin Shields noted that there were as many women as men in the shoegaze community. [36]
The Scene That Celebrates Itself was the social and musical scene in the early 1990s within London and the Thames Valley area. The term was coined by Melody Maker's Steve Sutherland in 1990 in a near-contemptuous gesture, focusing on how bands involved in the scene, rather than engaging in traditional rivalries, were often seen at each other's gigs, sometimes playing in each other's bands, and drinking together. [37]
Bands lumped into the 'scene' by the press included several of the bands that were branded with the shoegazing label, such as Chapterhouse, Lush, Moose and other (mainly indie) bands such as Blur (prior to the release of their single "Popscene"), Thousand Yard Stare, See See Rider and Stereolab. [37] [38] A prime example were Moose, who often swapped members with other bands on a given night. Moose's Russell Yates and Stereolab guitarist Tim Gane would often trade places, while "Moose" McKillop often played with See See Rider. [39] Gane and his Stereolab colleague Lætitia Sadier even played on the 1991 session by Moose for John Peel's BBC Radio 1 show. [40]
The bands, producers and journalists of the time would gather in London and their activities would be chronicled in the gossip pages of the music papers NME and Melody Maker. The most famous club and focal point was Syndrome, which was located on Oxford Street and ran weekly on Wednesday nights. The NME, in particular, embraced the scene, and the unity of the bands was probably advantageous to their careers, because when one band had a successful record, the other bands could share the publicity. The scene was extremely small and revolved around fewer than 20 individuals.[ citation needed ]
The first stirrings of recognition came when indie writer Steve Lamacq referred to Ride in an NME review as "the House of Love with chainsaws".
The shoegaze genre label was quite often misapplied. As key bands such as Slowdive, Chapterhouse and Ride emerged from the Thames Valley, Swervedriver found themselves labelled shoegazers on account of their own Thames Valley origins, despite their more pronounced Hüsker Dü-meets-Stooges stylings. [41]
The coining of the term "The Scene That Celebrates Itself" was in many ways the beginning of the end for the first wave of shoegazers. The bands became perceived by critics as over-privileged, self-indulgent, and middle-class. [6] This perception was in sharp contrast with both the bands who formed the wave of newly commercialized grunge music which was making its way across the Atlantic, as well as those bands who formed the foundation of Britpop, such as Pulp, Oasis, Blur and Suede. [12] Britpop also offered intelligible lyrics, often about the trials and tribulations of working-class life; this was a stark contrast to the "vocals as an instrument" approach of shoegaze, which often prized the melodic contribution of vocals over their lyrical depth.
Many shoegaze bands would either disband or change their sound during the mid-1990s. Ride disbanded before the release of their fourth album, Tarantula , which would shift to a more contemporary alternative rock sound. Slowdive's third album, Pygmalion , would shift to a more experimental sound that was stylistically closer to post-rock than shoegaze. Slowdive would be dropped from Creation Records just a week after Pygmalion's release, [42] and Tarantula would also be deleted from their catalogue a week after its release. [43]
Lush's final album, Lovelife , was an abrupt shift from shoegaze to Britpop, which alienated many fans; the 1996 suicide of their drummer Chris Acland signaled Lush's dissolution. Following a long gap from My Bloody Valentine since Loveless, aside from their 2008 reunion tour, the band released m b v in February 2013. Shields explained their silence by noting, "I never could be bothered to make another record unless I was really excited by it." [44]
Several former members of shoegaze bands later moved towards dream pop, post-rock, and the more electronica-based trip hop. [12] Neil Halstead, Rachel Goswell, and Ian McCutcheon of Slowdive would form Mojave 3, while guitarist Christian Savill would form Monster Movie. Adam Franklin of Swervedriver released lo-fi albums under the moniker Toshack Highway. [45] The use of electronic dance and ambient elements by bands such as Slowdive and Seefeel paved the way for later developments in post-rock and electronica. [6]
While shoegaze briefly flared and then faded out in the UK, the bands of the initial wave had an immense impact on the development of regional underground and college rock scenes in the US. [46] In particular, a Lush and Ride tour of the US in 1991 [47] directly inspired the spawning of American shoegaze groups including Drop Nineteens, Half String [48] and Ozean. [49] Columnist Emma Sailor of KRUI in Iowa City opines:
The insularity and introversion of British shoegaze was an intention[al] backlash against their country's mainstream. But when the shoegaze sound was exported to America, it arrived unattached from the cultural context that originally prompted its gloomy moods. The result? American indie bands gave shoegaze an entirely new image. Where the sound once was tightly linked with introversion, it was now attached to summery, outward looking songs with a focus on celebrating youth. [50]
About DC-based Velocity Girl's 1991 single "My Forgotten Favorite", Sailor goes on to note, "Could anything be more different—and yet so similar—to [Slowdive]? The hazy [production] and dreamy, high pitched female vocals are there, but the outlook is entirely different." Other notable American shoegaze influenced bands of the early-to mid-1990s included Lilys, Swirlies, The Veldt, and Medicine. [51]
A resurgence of the genre began in the late 1990s (particularly in the United States) and the early 2000s, that helped usher in what is now referred to as the "nu gaze" era. [12] Also various heavy metal acts were inspired by shoegaze, which contributed to the emergence of "post-metal" and "metalgaze" styles. [52] [53] Particularly in the mid-2000s, French black metal acts Alcest and Amesoeurs began incorporating shoegaze elements into their sound, pioneering the blackgaze genre. [54]
In eastern Asia the genre has become increasingly popular with bands such as Cocteau Twins influencing the creation of new "art school" shoegaze. [55] Bands like Tokyo Shoegazer and For Tracy Hyde have increasingly adopted western elements, with some bands combining Indie music with shoegaze and psychedelic rock. [56] Further, since the late 2010s, some artists began prominently incorporating emo themes into shoegaze, with albums like Weatherday 's Come In (2019) and Parannoul 's To See the Next Part of the Dream (2021) being examples. [57] [58]
In the early 2020s, shoegaze became popular among Generation Z people and on TikTok, with bands such as Julie. Multiple outlets described this as shoegaze's "revival" or "resurrection". [59] [60] [61] [62]
My Bloody Valentine are an Irish-English alternative rock band formed in Dublin in 1983 and consisting since 1987 of founding members Kevin Shields and Colm Ó Cíosóig, with Bilinda Butcher and Debbie Googe (bass). Their work is characterized by warped, distorted guitar textures, subdued androgynous vocals, and unorthodox production techniques. They are widely cited as a pioneering act in the shoegaze genre.
Dream pop is a subgenre of alternative rock and neo-psychedelia that emphasizes atmosphere and sonic texture as much as pop melody. Common characteristics include breathy vocals, dense productions, and effects such as reverb, echo, tremolo, and chorus. It often overlaps with the related genre of shoegaze, and the two genre terms have at times been used interchangeably.
Cocteau Twins were a Scottish rock band active from 1979 to 1997. They were formed in Grangemouth on the Firth of Forth by Robin Guthrie and Will Heggie (bass), adding Elizabeth Fraser (vocals) in 1981. In 1983, Heggie was replaced with multi-instrumentalist Simon Raymonde. The group earned critical praise for their ethereal, effects-laden sound and the soprano vocals of Fraser, whose lyrics often eschew any recognisable language. They pioneered the 1980s alternative subgenre of dream pop and helped define what would become shoegaze.
Chapterhouse were a British shoegaze band from Reading, Berkshire, England. Formed in 1987 by Andrew Sherriff, Stephen Patman and Simon Rowe, the band began performing alongside Spacemen 3. They released two albums: Whirlpool (1991) and Blood Music (1993). The group temporarily reformed in 2008 after being asked to join Ulrich Schnauss onstage to perform his cover version of their song "Love Forever" at the Truck Festival in Oxfordshire. The band finished the brief reunion with two gigs in London (2009–2010) and tours in North America and Japan in 2010.
Slowdive are an English rock band that formed in Reading, Berkshire, in 1989. The band consists of Rachel Goswell, Neil Halstead, Christian Savill (guitars), Nick Chaplin (bass), and Simon Scott, all of whom played on the band's early records. Halstead is the band's primary songwriter.
Noise pop is a subgenre of alternative and indie rock that developed in the mid-1980s in the United Kingdom and United States. It is defined by its mixture of dissonant noise or feedback with the songcraft more often found in pop music. Shoegaze, another noise-based genre that developed in the 1980s, drew from noise pop.
Morr Music is an independent record label based in Berlin, Germany, founded in 1999 by Thomas Morr. Most artists on the label fall into the categories of intelligent dance music, electronica and dreampop, but all reflect Thomas Morr's personal taste. This results in a cohesive aesthetic observable in both the aural and visual elements of the label's releases.
Ecstasy is the second mini album by the alternative rock band My Bloody Valentine, released on 23 November 1987 on Lazy Records. Released in a limited edition of 3,000 copies, it was the band's final release for Lazy Records and second to feature vocalist and guitarist Bilinda Butcher, who was recruited in April 1987 following the departure of original My Bloody Valentine vocalist David Conway. Ecstasy followed the noise pop and twee pop standards of My Bloody Valentine's earlier releases for the label, drawing influence from various artists including The Jesus and Mary Chain, Love and The Byrds, and the album distanced the band further from their earlier post-punk and gothic rock sound.
Ethereal wave, also called ethereal darkwave, ethereal goth or simply ethereal, is a subgenre of dark wave music that is variously described as "gothic", "romantic", and "otherworldly". Developed in the early 1980s in the UK as an outgrowth of gothic rock, ethereal wave was mainly represented by 4AD bands such as Cocteau Twins, This Mortal Coil, and early guitar-driven Dead Can Dance.
Pygmalion is the third studio album by English rock band Slowdive, released on 6 February 1995 by Creation Records. It was the group's final album before their disbandment in 1995 and later reformation in 2014, and their only album with Ian McCutcheon, who had replaced Simon Scott on drums.
Quique is the debut album by British music group Seefeel. It was released through Too Pure in October 1993. A predominantly instrumental record which utilises elements of both rock and electronic music, it blends styles including techno, dream pop, ambient, and dub. Guitarist Mark Clifford worked continually on tracks while other members either completed them or provided component ideas.
Big Sonic Heaven is a 24/7 Internet radio station and blog created, hosted and produced by Darren Revell.
69 is the debut album by British band A.R. Kane, released in 1988 on Rough Trade Records and produced by the band with additional co-production from Ray Shulman. Following the release of their acclaimed Lollita and Up Home! EPs, 69 developed the experimental "dream pop" style named and pioneered by the duo, blending elements of dub, psychedelia, noise, jazz, and pop.
Classic alternative is a radio format focusing on alternative music from the late 1970s to early 1990s, with particular focus on the early days of MTV.
Beautiful Noise is a 2014 American music documentary film, written and directed by Eric Green. The film documents three rock bands—Cocteau Twins, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and My Bloody Valentine—and their influence on shoegazing and other alternative rock genres. Beautiful Noise features extracts from over 50 interviews with bands and artists, as well as archival footage and music videos.
The World Is Well Lost is the 2013 debut album by Israeli shoegazing band Vaadat Charigim. It was released on 12 November 2013 through Anova Music and Burger Records labels. Recorded in the band's Tel Aviv-apartment, the album was mixed and produced by Kyle “Slick” Johnson, who is known for his work for Modest Mouse and Wavves.
The Factory Incident was an American post-punk band from Washington, D.C.. From 2000 to 2005, they released two EPs and a split single on the Washington, D.C.–based label Postfact Records.
Spunsugar is a shoegaze band from Malmö, Sweden. It consists of band members Cordelia Moreau, Elin Ramstedt and Felix Sjöström. The trio describes themselves as 'an alternative rock band with shoegaze influences'. Their music has a higher tempo than that of their peer shoegazing bands. The room for guitar riffs and the use of a drum machine further define their sound.
Rev Rev Rev is an Italian shoegaze and psychedelic band formed in Modena in 2011 by Sebastian Lugli and Laura Iacuzio, then joined by Andrea Dall'Omo and Greta Benatti.
The dream pop bands were lionized by the capricious British music press, which later took to dismissing them as 'shoegazers' for their affectless stage presence.
The full extent of their pioneering guitar manipulation – responsible for a whole scene of "shoegaze" musical admirers, stand up Ride, Moose, Lush etc., etc., ...
...the recent trend for combining metal's sense of threat with the immersive idyll of shoegazing is undeniable, and only one aspect of the ongoing cross-pollination taking place in extreme music. For his part, r views the 'metalgaze' movement as less entropic than cyclical.
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