Gazin’!
The Jesus and Mary Chain – Just Like Honey
Part 1 of 3
THESE POSTS ARE MEANT TO BE PLAYED LOUD.
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What IS “shoegaze”?
Briefly, it’s a subset of psychedelic music. It is generally based on a traditional rock band setup (though electronic-rock hybrids and purely-electronic variants exist), but it often de-emphasizes intelligible lyrics and guitar riffs in favor of multi-layered guitar tones and warped or distorted instrumental textures.
If all that sounds too arty or obscure, relax: many popular (or semi-popular, or formerly-popular) artists, such as Smashing Pumpkins, Garbage, Coldplay, Mazzy Star, The Cranberries, Sigur RĂłs, and early Radiohead draw heavily on the form.
Maybe you’ve heard shoegaze and didn’t even know it!
There are sometimes quite strong and beautiful melodies, but these may be buried in a dense wall of sound. You can find precedent in the Velvets, Can, Neu!, Phil Spector, Brian Eno, Big Star’s “Kangaroo”, Bowie’s “Heroes”: basically, music which foregrounds overwhelming density, feedback, oscillation, texture or drone as intentional compositional element.
To re-create such an effects-heavy sound on stage, the musicians are often manipulating an array of foot pedals – hence, they gaze at their shoes whilst performing.*
It was a originally derogatory term, applied to a wave of such bands (mostly from the UK) in the late 80’s/early 90’s. The movement paralleled the electronica explosion occurring in dance clubs around the same time; a generation tired of the old rock tropes, looking to expand the musical vocabulary and listeners’ minds with more experimental sounds.
You may also see it called “dream-pop” (this is impressionistic music, mostly concerned with internal states) or “noise-pop”.
Though I’ve talked about the earlier precedents, to my mind the proud mama and papa of the genre are two Scots bands: The Cocteau Twins, and The Jesus and Mary Chain.
Cocteau Twins – Carolyn’s Fingers
The Jesus and Mary Chain – Never Understand
These bands represent the two opposing-yet-complementary poles shoegaze moves between – the Cocteaus: shimmering, light and “feminine” (though they still could be harsh and dissonant, particularly early on); and the JAMC: abrasive, dark and “masculine” (though often quite melodic and pretty underneath the din – “Never Understand” sounds like a Beach Boys record being played on a table saw).
(We’ll return to gender-expression in shoegazing later in this post).
These bands, plus some UK touring by American indie rockers experimenting with the proportions of “noise” and “melody” in a pop song – HĂĽsker DĂĽ, Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. – lit the shoegaze fuse.
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Before that happened, a few interstitial steps.
Close Lobsters were another Scots band, who opened for the Mary Chain in 1986. They were generally a jangly indie-pop band, but that jangle that descends from the Byrds also often intersects with shoegaze; linked by the use of sustain/reverb, which shimmers and elongates and affects the listener’s perception of time; the way an un-damped bell keeps on vibrating long after it’s struck.
In 1987’s “Mother of God” (hey, there’s that male/female dichotomy again) they take a simple chugging Velvets-like groove, and at around the 4-minute mark start to stack sound on top of ringing sound until it reaches the sky; then punches right through it, heading straight for the titular deity:
Close Lobsters – Mother of God
This is probably controversial (and not representative of the band’s usual chiming style); but in retrospect, the droning/sliding chords and heavily-effected, wildly-oscillating guitars of the Smiths’ 1984 track “How Soon Is Now?”* seem to prefigure shoegaze pretty clearly:
The Smiths – How Soon Is Now?
The House of Love were sort of a “Stone Roses before there was a Stone Roses” – heavily influenced by 60’s rock, fronted by a druggy shamanistic type. They had a handful of pretty-great tracks.
One of those, “Christine”, catches them closer to the JAMC (particularly that doomy, gothy drum/bass sound on the chorus):
The House of Love – Christine
Loop and Spacemen 3 are sometimes seen as predecessors to the shoegaze scene; while certainly more than capable in the use of distortion, these bands often created their lysergic effects less from the layering of guitars, and more from the hypnotic use of Stooges-like repetition:
Loop – Collision
Hold on a second, I smell burning:
Spacemen 3 – Revolution
If that doesn’t make you want to riot in the streets, I don’t know what will.
Or, we’ll just decide to have a bed-in with Boston’s Galaxie 500. Drawing deeply from the Velvet Underground, G500 were also linked to the so-called “slowcore” scene, along with Low, Bedhead, Codeine, Seam and others. Their guitars are not so much “layered” (usually just one, either liquid, or blaring), as they are “reverbed to the moon and back”. If I could afford it, I’d buy the G500 box set for everyone here; the otherworldly alchemy between Dean Wareham’s guitar tones, Damon Krukowski’s jazzy drumming and Naomi Yang’s Hooky bass is magical.
As a child of the 80’s, I used to think this beautiful, unsettling song was about nuclear winter, but it’s probably just about a regular old snowstorm.
And probably also about being really, really stoned:
Galaxie 500 – Snowstorm
(You can stream and/or purchase digital copies of all of Galaxie’s albums at Bandcamp. You can, and you should.)
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Moose were reputedly the first band to have the term “shoegaze” applied to them (though the lead singer claimed it was actually just a taped-down lyric sheet on the stage that was the object of his attention, it was too late, and the deeply-stupid term stuck).
One boy:
Moose – Boy
And one girl:
Moose – Suzanne
Ride’s debut, Nowhere, is considered a classic of the genre. However, I don’t really care for its production (too thin & harshly-metallic) and the songs are mostly too samey.
But it does have “Vapour Trail” (hey, I should have included this track when we did the “Cello!” post):
Ride – Vapour Trail
Personally, I prefer their next album, Going Blank Again , and the pop sugar-rush of “Twisterella”:
Ride – Twisterella
I mentioned Garbage earlier. I quite like Version 2.0, and Garbage wrote more varied songs, but they owe more than a little to Curve, not just in the way they fuse dance beats and guitars, but for pretty much swiping Toni Halliday’s vocal tone:
Curve – Horror Head
I haven’t run the numbers, but I am pretty sure that shoegaze tends toward a higher-than-average-number of female players and singers, than does rock music in general.
Among other things, shoegaze can be a way to use shatteringly-loud guitars in a less-stereotypically masculine way than usual. Heavy metal and punk guitars often have the volume, and sometimes the texture, but are utilized like ugly metal bars installed over the window of a boys-only treehouse; they are meant primarily to repel or overwhelm, rather than envelop.
To get all Freudian for a minute, shoegaze often brandishes loud guitars as avatars of the womb as well as the phallus.
Shoegaze can be both loud as hell, and lovely as heaven. It’s “noise” that’s not afraid to be “pretty”; it’s beauty, contrasted and enhanced by scars of feedback.
Plus, there’s always just something nice about an ethereal female vocal floating above the racket.
Lush – Sweetness and Light
I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of that song.
Even when the singer is male, vocals may often tend toward a more androgynous tone:
Pale Saints – Throwing Back The Apple
Not coincidentally, shoegaze is often WAY better makeout music than most punk or metal is.
If I’ve named the Cocteaus and the Mary Chain as shoegaze’s thesis and antithesis, then Ireland’s My Bloody Valentine are the synthesis.
Both beautiful AND brutally loud, the band’s music not only seems to me to share the best traits of both its “parents”, it often also suggests the act of love itself.
The coed coital coos of Kevin Shields and Bilinda Butcher being a prime example:
My Bloody Valentine – Only Shallow
My Bloody Valentine – To Here Knows When
My Bloody Valentine – Swallow
MBV’s 1988 LP Isn’t Anything made them into de facto scene leaders; then 1991’s game-changing Loveless went off like a bomb, and its effects rippled far outside the UK.
Here’s some Czech shoegaze from 1992-1993:
The Ecstasy of St. Theresa – Fluidum
The Ecstasy of St. Theresa – Swoony
And the good ol’ US of A:
Swirlies – Jeremy Parker
Part 2 next week!
*There is additionally somewhat of a tradition of “anti-performance” amongst shoegaze bands, and this also played into the term – they often just didn’t interact much with the audience. In the JAMC’s early 20-minute sets, they played with their backs to the seats (and prompted a riot on more than one occasion). Later, they’d face the audience, but wreathed in dry-ice fog, with blinding white spotlights aimed directly into the audience’s eyes.
Many bands at the height of the scene were far less confrontational, but embraced a democratic, ego-less ethos (or affectation if you prefer) that saw them downplaying rock traditions like “a frontperson” or “moving around” – there will be no windmilling power chords or stage banter here. Shoegaze is not about a single personality, it’s about a vibe, a sound, a feeling; it’s all about the music, man.
Buncha neo-psychedelic hippies.
**The Smiths’ frontman, Morrissey, also generally avoided the use of gendered pronouns in his song lyrics, so that the songs could be applicable to anyone.
Ah, now this is a good way to kick off a new year.
The analogy I use with myself for shoegaze is that it sounds like music played on the other side of a thick curtain. You can hear the voices and the chords and you know that, where those people are, they sound intelligible… but from this place, they sound mumbled.
Your analogy of the womb is even better.Report
It might be 2014, but around here it’s been sounding a lot like 1991 lately.Report
We’re due.Report
One thing I struggled with: where does U2 fit in this history?
Particularly by the time of Eno (who later worked with Slowdive and repped for MBV) and the Unforgettable Fire, the washes of ambient sound and heavily-treated guitarscapes in place of “riffs” have to be considered an influence or predecessor. Not to mention, I see Radiohead and Coldplay as shoegaze-derived; but you don’t get to those bands without U2.
Ultimately, I left U2 out because A.). Their rhythm section is often more prominent, in that postpunk-Joy-Division-inspired way, than in most shoegaze, and B.). In Bono, they definitely have a “frontperson” that doesn’t fit well with the (theoretically) ego-dissolving shoegazers.
But it doesn’t feel right to ignore them, even if they wouldn’t be acknowledged by the shoegazers.Report
Is this the type of thing you have in mind?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xv-9PVvhoMYReport
Yep, exactly.Report
Now that makes me think about the new Foals album, Holy Fire (note: it’s really good). I wouldn’t really consider them particularly shoegazey, but they are definitely post-shoegaze. (Warning, I guess: if you want to look up their song “Inhaler”, you should know that it’s not particularly safe for work.)Report
RE: “post-shoegaze” – In my mind, I definitely divide up guitar rock into lumps like “pre-VU, and post-VU”, and “pre-Psychocandy, and post-Psychocandy“, and “pre-Loveless, and post-Loveless“.
Some records or sounds are just sort of atomic game-changers, and the stuff afterwards can’t help but sound different, if only due to the lingering background radiation. Shoegaze strikes me as something like that; it introduced textures and compositional approaches that are still being mined today.Report
Very nice. I love JAMC, most of the more ethereal stuff not so much.
If that doesn’t make you want to riot in the streets, I don’t know what will.
“Anarchy in the UK” still works for me.Report
Psychocandy is the bomb. I do wish that JAMC would have never introduced a drum machine on the later records; IMO a live drummer, no matter how rudimentarily cavemanlike, works better on the more “rock” end of shoegaze (though drum machines can work quite nicely in the more ethereal/dance/electronic end).
And I would have thought that S3 song would appeal to a libertarianish guy like yourself (no politics!)
http://www.lyricstime.com/spacemen-3-revolution-lyrics.htmlReport
And don’t worry: The JAMC/abrasive/less-ethereal end will be well-represented in the next two posts as well.
I strive for balance!Report
Psychcandy is great, but I like the songs on Darklands better. After that I find their albums more hit and miss (for my own idiosyncratic tastes).
Looking forward to lots of distortion in that future post!Report
Darklands IS pretty great, and weirdly the drum machines on that one don’t really bother me too much; either the songs are just that good, or the drum machines sound less artificial than they do on Automatic for some reason?Report
This is a genre I only dig *when* I dig it, and then I dig it very much. So tonight is not the right night to listen to these videos, but since I know (and love, when I’m not busy being fickle) most of these bands, I can tell what an excellent post this is even before I listen to them.
Very much looking forward to the rest.Report
I go through phases myself. I’m in one now.
But boy, if I could get back all the money I spent on mediocre shoegaze records…
For a while there, I would just pick up ANYTHING, hoping to replicate the “hit” of some of the earliest records, and it’s pretty rare to find that, though finding at least one good song (that’s how they get you) isn’t all that unusual – in this way, shoegaze is a little like the garage/psych rock that is its distant ancestor.
One day there’ll be a “Nuggets” comp for shoegaze.
The downside of shoegaze is: it can get samey, and a wealth of (now-probably-easier-to-create) effects can sometimes (at least partially) cover up a paucity of songwriting ideas.Report
As I think I once noted, I used to be in a shoegaze band (though in the mid-aughts, the unfortunate term-de-arte was nugaze… ’cause we were new…get it?). And regarding the anti-performance thing, we definitely did this at times. (Lots of actual shoegazing, lots of being hunched over, often in front of an amp).
There was a particularly on-point example. Our drummer got us booked into a show, and we realized about 2.5 seconds after showing up that we just did not fit the line-up, the venue or the crowd. It was all hard rock/pseudo-metal bands (kind of Nickelback-esque, but not that bad), and there seemed to be a gathering of the jocks from the local college (we were decidedly not college age and three of us were very much not jocks).
So, we decided before we went on that we wouldn’t talk to the crowd. Our singer may have said “goodnight” at the end, that was it.
Our final song ended with an extended instrumental section… which led all of us to leaning over in front of our amps for a minute or two. The crowd was not into it, and with our apathy and disdain for the show, crowd and venue* we didn’t care… in fact we reveled in our disdain.
My wife was less impressed with our openly surly performance, as she had to stand there as we ignored the audience and played with our asses facing the crowd. She was quite annoyed with us.
*Before we went on, a girl vomited right in front of the stage… one of the staff put a cloth over it in lieu of actually cleaning it up.Report
re: “nugaze”. I forget who said it, but back when “chillwave” was a thing, someone snarked that, after years of effort, journalists might have finally come up with a stupider term than “shoegaze”.Report
worse than intelligent dance music? (as tongue in cheek as its origins may have been)
anyway, this: ““Never Understand” sounds like a Beach Boys record being played on a table saw).”
great description.Report
This!
Seriously, MBV and Lush kept me sane as young thing who didn’t know she was trans — and not surprisingly a lot of girls-like-me have similar experiences. (Well, second to the number of us who were uniformly into Kate Bush — but that’s a whole nother chapter.)
The Shoegaze gender hack was really deep and interesting, and not so much in your face, so it could slip in when I was more resistant to blatant gender-bending (since one’s unconscious mind must work hard to hide stuff, when in the closet).
But yeah, in my heart I knew this was where I belonged: dreamy, churning, and girlish.Report
Oh thank god. When I was writing this (as I may have mentioned, I pull all these music posts pretty much directly out of my rear – I have only a tiny bit of any formal musical training, and none at all in gender theory) I was really hoping that I wasn’t getting that part totally wrong. I hoped/feared you’d set me straight (no pun intended) if I was.
But yeah, it makes sense to me that music which is deliberately turbulent/androgynous would appeal. (That particular androgynous characteristic of the music also probably has some roots in the particular club/drug scene of the day; but that’s another story).
This seems apropos:
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Forgot to add: people forget that MBV started out as a crappy goth band. Glam begat goth, and we know that both those scenes are OK with gender-bending.
I also read an interview with Lush years ago, where they mentioned that they had started out as a riot grrl band, before discovering that they just weren’t very good at it. Again, I assume some of those politics carried forward with them (no politics!)Report
OMG I love Lush. Like, I won’t say they are some high point in musical form. But I can disappear in them.Report
yeah, I dug ’em too.
I was partial to the ABBA cover:
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