12 votes

~music Listening Club 24 - Intro to Shoegaze

So, it's time to switch things up a little as discussed in the last thread. We're going to have multiple records a week from now on and follow themes rather than the alternating weeks we've had until now.

The first week of our new format is the beginning of a genre introduction series that I'm running: Intro to Shoegaze! We will likely have several different themes switching off each week, and I'll kick off a few over the next couple weeks. These aren't intended to be tailored for genreheads (at least not right now), but rather a way to have a conversation about the all-time greats of specific genres, scenes, labels, etc. while also having something fresh that those already into that kind of music might not already be familiar with.

Shoegaze

Shoegazing (or shoegaze, initially known as "dream pop") is a subgenre of indie and alternative rock that emerged in the United Kingdom in the late 1980s. It is characterised by its ethereal-sounding mixture of obscured vocals, guitar distortion and effects, feedback, and overwhelming volume. The term "shoegazing" was coined by the British music press to ridicule the stage presence of a wave of neo-psychedelic groups who stood still during live performances in a detached, introspective, non-confrontational state with their heads down. This was because the heavy use of effects pedals meant the performers were often looking down at the readouts on their effects pedals during concerts.

Most shoegazing bands drew from the glide guitar template set by My Bloody Valentine on their early EPs and 1988 debut Isn't Anything. A loose label given to the shoegazing scene and other affiliated bands in London in the early 1990s was The Scene That Celebrates Itself. In the early 1990s, shoegazing groups were pushed aside by the American grunge movement and early Britpop acts such as Suede, forcing the relatively unknown bands to break up or reinvent their style altogether. In the 2000s, there was renewed interest in the genre among "nu gaze" bands.

Essential Album: My Bloody Valentine - Loveless - Listen to it!

The shoegaze genre has a pretty much univerally agreed-upon "Big 3" records, the most prominent and influential of which being My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, which is undoubtedly the #1 starting place if you're looking to check out shoegaze for yourself. It's the darling of the genre and of internet music nerdom in general for a reason.

Loveless is the second studio album by English-Irish rock band My Bloody Valentine. It was released on 4 November 1991 in the United Kingdom by Creation Records and in the United States by Sire Records. The album was recorded over a two-year period between 1989 and 1991, with vocalist and guitarist Kevin Shields leading the recording sessions and experimenting with guitar tremolo techniques and tuning systems, samplers, and meticulous production methods. The band cycled through nineteen different studios and many engineers during the album's prolonged recording, with its production cost rumoured to have reached £250,000.

Preceded by the EPs Glider (1990) and Tremolo (1991), Loveless peaked at number 24 on the UK Albums Chart and was widely praised by critics for its sonic innovations and Shields's "virtual reinvention of the guitar". However, after its release, Creation Records owner Alan McGee removed the band from the label, as he found Shields too difficult to work with, a factor alleged to have contributed to the label's eventual bankruptcy. My Bloody Valentine struggled to record a follow-up to the album and broke up in 1997, and Loveless was their last full-length release until MBV in 2013.

Since its release, Loveless has been widely cited by critics as one the greatest albums of the 1990s, a landmark work of the shoegazing subgenre, and as a significant influence on various subsequent artists. In 2012, it was reissued as a two-CD set, including remastered tracks and a previously unreleased half-inch analogue tape version, and peaked on several international charts. In 2013, Loveless was certified silver by the British Phonographic Industry.

Minor Album: Vyva Melinkolya - Vyva Melinkolya - Listen to it!

This one is a shoegaze record which lies a little more on the dream pop / ethereal side of the genre than Loveless, and is my personal album of the year for 2018 so far by a longshot. I would suggest this for anyone who wants to to live in that wonderful dreamy yet noisy middle ground. The artist is also nonbinary, and while I can't speak for everyone, I find that this speaks to gender dysphoria in a way that only the best shoegaze can.

Here's the place to discuss your thoughts on the records, your history with them or the artists, and basically talk about whatever you want to that goes along with Loveless and Vyva Melinkolya! Remember that this is intended to be a slow moving thing, feel free to take your time and comment at any point in the week!

Again, if you'd like to stream or buy the albums, they can be found on most platforms here (Loveless) and here (Vyva Melinkolya).

11 comments

  1. [3]
    Whom
    Link
    One more thing, we need a way to put these together in the future. I'm willing and able to do this myself for as long as is necessary, but I think it's a lot more interesting for everyone involved...

    One more thing, we need a way to put these together in the future. I'm willing and able to do this myself for as long as is necessary, but I think it's a lot more interesting for everyone involved if these are crowdsourced somehow. Do we make a chat somewhere in which anyone can join and help plan for the next week? Do we do in-thread suggestions? Possible contributors, I'd appreciate hearing your thoughts.

    2 votes
    1. [2]
      cfabbro
      Link Parent
      Unofficial discord #listeningclub? As loathe as I am to recommend discord, at least most people involved in listening club seem to be using the unofficial server already so it would admittedly be...

      Unofficial discord #listeningclub? As loathe as I am to recommend discord, at least most people involved in listening club seem to be using the unofficial server already so it would admittedly be pretty convenient.

      1 vote
      1. Whom
        Link Parent
        I might do that just for now and also allow encourage contributions in the thread because I don't really feel comfortable pushing people toward something like Discord anyway.

        I might do that just for now and also allow encourage contributions in the thread because I don't really feel comfortable pushing people toward something like Discord anyway.

        1 vote
  2. Cleb
    Link
    Yes! I very much love shoegaze so I'm just going to turn this into somewhat of a loose nerdpost for anyone who is curious and has not encountered very much shoegaze. Shoegaze is rock music that...

    Yes! I very much love shoegaze so I'm just going to turn this into somewhat of a loose nerdpost for anyone who is curious and has not encountered very much shoegaze.

    Shoegaze is rock music that heavily employs the use of guitar distortion, drowned out vocals, feedback, and sometimes other things like noise or post-punk influence. Many would describe a good chunk of shoegaze as something like a "warm hug" or something "fuzzy", and I often find myself searching for things that have fuzzy guitar tones.

    Loveless is often considered by many to be THE seminal shoegaze album that nearly every shoegaze band since has taken influence from. It's a very meticulously put together album, Kevin Shields went through many recording engineers (or whatever your preferred nomenclature for them is) during the time he and the rest of the band took in putting it together, and also took a very long time on the album that came after it, m b v. This is an album where you'll be able to feel yourself getting lost in the thick layering of each individual piece on most of the tracks. It is one of my favorite albums ever put together and I've personally never really been able to put together my feelings about it or the feeling that my favorite shoegaze albums give me into a description that I feel does them justice. It's a masterpiece of a work. I came back to it after initially dismissing it as something decent that I wouldn't really get anything more out of, and my relationship with it has been developing for the last 2 or 3 years since that.

    Vyva Melinkolya, on the other hand, is a direct opposite of Loveless in terms of where it came from. It's not a seminal album of its genre, it didn't receive critical acclaim and it does not have a cult following around it, but it is a wonderful record in its own right. Some people often say that shoegaze died out in the west for a long time, with very few bands popping up after the initial boom of the 90s bands (Ride, MBV, Slowdive, Catherine Wheel, etc). It's true, you do have to dig to find things in the later 90s and throughout the 2000s that are not Japanese in origin, but shoegaze in the current decade has kind of been going through more of a revival thanks to bandcamp and more prominent new shoegaze (aka nu-gaze) bands such as Nothing, and Whirr, and the reappearance of the original bands from two decades before. Anyway, out of bandcamp comes Vyva Melinkolya, which @Whom actually showed me herself and it is an absolute gem of a record. Gorgeous fuzz. Drowned out, heart-wrenching vocals. The climax of Eclipsing. It's something that gives me the satisfaction of an MBV-like layering, combined with the weight of listening to an A Place to Bury Strangers song, but without the feeling that the album is going to burst through my headphones and beat the absolute shit out of me.

    I love them both. Gorgeous records, amazingly put together, showing the "birth" of shoegaze and a very good example of how it still stands today.

    2 votes
  3. Whom
    (edited )
    Link
    Describing these albums for this naturally meant putting some emotions in it, but I actually have a hard time writing anything meaningful down about these, especially Loveless. The reasons I love...

    Describing these albums for this naturally meant putting some emotions in it, but I actually have a hard time writing anything meaningful down about these, especially Loveless. The reasons I love it are pretty standard...Kevin Shields' revolutionary guitar work. The rich, dense texture and warm blanket-like feel, plus all the buzzwords that pop up every time. It sold me on comforting and relaxing noise that I can always let wash over me, opening me up to styles of music that I couldn't really approach before. Though I was into music that appeals to the music nerds long before I heard Loveless, there's no doubt that it kicked off a massive shift in how I thought about and approached music and I appreciate the hell out of it for that.

    The album has found its way into that very special level of love that just never goes away, records that were part of your life for a period of time and were so consistently important to you and were such mainstays of your taste that they're just permanently burned in. They take on a form that is almost not about the music anymore, so looking at them musically again always feels like a strange rediscovery, like when I forget how much I've heard In utero and the mythology around it and just listen to the sounds in front of me. Shit's amazing. It's like it's completely beyond the possibility of burning out.

    I'm curious what albums other people have that kind of relationship with, or if their interactions with long term favorites are different. I know I have some where it's essentially the same as here, but I'm so familiar with every moment and confident that I love all of 'em that I don't really listen that often.

    2 votes
  4. [5]
    cfabbro
    (edited )
    Link
    It's been a few weeks since I have been able to find the time to participate in the listening club, but since I had never even heard of this genre of music before and Whom's write-up along with...

    It's been a few weeks since I have been able to find the time to participate in the listening club, but since I had never even heard of this genre of music before and Whom's write-up along with Cleb's love-affair with it intrigued me, I made sure to set some time aside this week to listen to both albums. I am glad I did but unfortunately neither was really my cup of tea and I suspect neither is the genre if these are exemplary of it.

    Loveless had amazing distorted guitar riffs, very reminiscent of what we now regularly hear in almost all modern indie rock, which is especially cool to hear considering the album was released in 1988. My Bloody Valentine was clearly way ahead of the game in that regard. However my biggest issue with the album was that the vocals were "whiny depressing mumbling" to my ears. That combined with the incredibly repetitive nature of all the tracks made the album pretty underwhelming to me. The only stand out track for me was Touched, since it reminded me of a Nintendo JRPG track but combined with experimental/glitch music, all three of which I like. Too bad the track ends rather abruptly at 56s though, since I wanted to hear more. :(

    Vyva Melinkolya I liked a heck of lot more since the tracks on it had much more traditional structural progression to them instead of just mindless repetitiveness like Loveless, however the vocals still really irked me. Thankfully unlike Loveless though, the vocals here were clearly seen as significantly less important than the guitars, drums and synths, often to the point where they were just dreamy echos in the background, largely drowned out by everything else. I particularly liked Flowers in the Void and Black Starry Eyes since they took the dreamy quality of the music to its maximum potential while still having some progression to them, whereas my least favorite tracks were Eclipsing and Ghosting since they lacked that.

    Overall, interesting and I suspect the original shoegaze artists were clearly very influential, even outside their genre... but as I said before, unfortunately not my cup of tea.

    2 votes
    1. [4]
      Whom
      Link Parent
      See, this is very strange to me. "Depressing" isn't a word I would ever even think to use to describe this album, so I can't relate there at all. Funny how that goes sometimes, where it's not even...

      the vocals were "whiny depressing mumbling" to my ears.

      See, this is very strange to me. "Depressing" isn't a word I would ever even think to use to describe this album, so I can't relate there at all. Funny how that goes sometimes, where it's not even about disagreeing on liking / disliking different elements, but seeing what they are entirely differently in the first place.

      the incredibly repetitive nature of all the tracks

      Yeah, it takes a bit of a re-framing of what you're listening for. A lot changes and morphs throughout each track, but it's not the foundational melody or anything working off of it. The changes are either deep in the layers and come up when you're familiar with the more prominent parts, or are in the texture of the sound.

      Of course, that isn't for everyone and it's understandable how that might not be universally compelling.

      If you get a chance, I would still try out the other two of the shoegaze "Big 3" when we get to them, as they're all quite different, with my favorite of the bunch being both much cleaner and "progressive," at least to my ears.

      1 vote
      1. [3]
        cfabbro
        (edited )
        Link Parent
        Not the album, just the vocals. The instrumentation was upbeat but the vocals felt that way to me. Although perhaps depressing is the wrong word... depressed, moping, apathetic or passionless...

        "Depressing" isn't a word I would ever even think to use to describe this album

        Not the album, just the vocals. The instrumentation was upbeat but the vocals felt that way to me. Although perhaps depressing is the wrong word... depressed, moping, apathetic or passionless might be more accurate I suppose, like they couldn't be bothered to put any effort into singing. But even bands that I would put in that same general category of dispassionate vocals (e.g. The xx) at least still put some effort in, unlike the shoegazers.

        The changes are either deep in the layers and come up when you're familiar with the more prominent parts, or are in the texture of the sound.

        Yeahhhhhhh... definitely not my thing. I prefer traditional song structure progression rather than barely perceptible (to my ears) texture changes deep in the layers. If your song is only 5 chords repeated the entire way through, you will lose my interest no matter how many filter changes you make throughout. :P

        1. [2]
          Whom
          Link Parent
          Yeah, I don't know how to bridge that gap! To me, the vocals are passionate to the point of being extremely sexually charged. I hear desire, warmth, and passion, not a hint of distance or apathy.

          Yeah, I don't know how to bridge that gap! To me, the vocals are passionate to the point of being extremely sexually charged. I hear desire, warmth, and passion, not a hint of distance or apathy.

          1 vote
          1. cfabbro
            (edited )
            Link Parent
            Heh, me either... musical interpretation is a funny old thing, ain't it? For me, passionate, sexually charged desire would be something like Chet Faker - Gold or Childish Gambino - Redbone.

            Yeah, I don't know how to bridge that gap!

            Heh, me either... musical interpretation is a funny old thing, ain't it? For me, passionate, sexually charged desire would be something like Chet Faker - Gold or Childish Gambino - Redbone.

            1 vote
  5. poweruserplus
    Link
    just wanted to thank you for this thread. been putting off shoegaze for about a decade, and listening to loveless now, this is fantastic. anyway cheers.

    just wanted to thank you for this thread. been putting off shoegaze for about a decade, and listening to loveless now, this is fantastic. anyway cheers.

    2 votes