The Shoegaze Genre
 

Lately I've been getting into a lot of Shoegaze, and I wanted to sort of chronicle the expanding of my knowledge of this genre by reviewing each album I give an extensive listen. Yes, that means I'll eventually be reviewing Loveless and Nowhere, which are albums that have probably been mentioned on this forum at least twelve thousand times each, but that's irrelevant.

So I'm going to stop lollygagging and get to the point. Here's the first album:


This might compete for the most purely beautiful album I've ever listened to. "Machine Gun" might just be one of my favorite songs of all time.

There are a few words or phrases that are going to be repeated several times in all of these reviews. Here's one of them: this album is a landscape of beautiful sound. The two opening tracks is arguably some of the greatest shoegaze ever recorded. This record is pleasant and easy to approach for someone that's new to the genre (while Loveless is a little more mature and a bit harder to chew). Rachel Goswell's voice is brilliant for shoegaze -- haunting, yet beautiful.

Slowdive's Souvlaki benefits from the creative and production input of Brian Eno, resulting in a dreamy and placid aesthetic which attains a similar emotional texture to Loveless - except whereas Loveless achieves its ends through murk and noise, Souvlaki's production is crisp, clear, and distinct. In this respect it represents the other side of the shoegaze spectrum, and it would probably have done a lot better had it been released a little earlier and had time to make a creative impact before the emergence of Britpop caused the Scene That Celebrates Itself to drop off the commercial radar.

Regardless, this album is among the juggernaut albums of shoegaze and is a must-listen for anyone that even thinks they enjoy the genre.

Good review. Slowdive are one of those bands that never realized their true potential. Though Souvlaki is one of the best albums in the genre, if it hadn't been plagued by delays and poor distribution we may have seen something even better. I played the hell out of this album when I first heard it, so I don't play it much anymore, but I definitely put it on for people who are curious about shoegaze.

This being one of my favorite genres, I have shoegaze albums coming out of my ears. Let me know if you ever want a recommendation.

It's an okay album. Just For A Day is way better. Were you alive yet when Souvlaki was released? Just curious.

No sir. I was -1 at the time. Does this fact affect anything?

From an emotional standpoint, yes absolutely. Just For A Day accompanied my confused, hormone-infused teenage emotions. I had no idea who Brian Eno was at the time and by 1993 shoegaze was irrelevant to me.

Souvlaki is an okay album though. I guess.

I can understand that. I try to be as objective as possible though. I don't really have immense emotional connections to any shoegaze albums, which is why I thought it'd be a good topic to try and cover and review. It would be different if I decided to review The Antlers discography or something, because I'd give them all 10/10 because of the emotional connection when objectively probably only Hospice deserves that lol

Yeah, man. Say what you want, it'll be a great thread. I love a portion of shoegaze, like, LOVE it, so please keep going but do expect my subjective rants to arise occasionally.

Alright, and that's all good man. Subjectivity is really the most important thing about music!

You know, this album is criminally underrated. It's overshadowed by My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, and Ride's magnum opuses, and people very rarely point to "Chrome" and say, "now that's one of the greatest shoegaze albums." But really, it is among the best shoegaze albums. Catherine Wheel released one album before this and three albums after this, and none of them really reached this level at all. Which is disappointing. They had such potential.

Rob Dickensen and Brian Futter do in this album what makes shoegaze such a great genre -- they create a towering wall of overwhelming, roaring guitars and they do it extremely well. However, what makes this record great where many other shoegaze records fail is in the harmonies and melodies that this band created. Many shoegaze albums resort to sheer guitar squall, which is fine and all, but Catherine Wheel uses it to enhance the music and the haunting beauty they are trying to craft.

It's really a powerful record that should be in any shoegaze collection, without a doubt.

It's an entertaining album, but it never grabbed me like the other albums you mentioned in the post. There are moments where I felt like it was really going to take off, but it never got there completely.

I'll admit, I just got this very recently (yesterday). I thoroughly believe that this is a record that simply came out at the wrong time. 1991? Yeah, that's a bad time for ANY album to come out if you want it go be getting recognition. We're talking Nevermind, Ten, Loveless...there's not much that can compete with those albums.

This album is very solid though. It doesn't feel like a cohesive masterpiece that blends together into fifty minutes of bliss like Loveless or Souvlaki, on the contrary, it feels like a collection of really good individual shoegaze works. "Breather" contains something I don't often hear or take notice of maybe: an acoustic guitar! Highlights include "Autosleeper" and easily the closing track, "Something More," leaving the listener wanting exactly what the song says, "something more".

Actually if you were a member of the record-buying public in 1991 you'd know how wrong this statement is. You can't really think that everybody only paid attention to those bestsellers you mentioned. There was a lot going on in 1991.

Anyway, I love Whirlpool. I probably like it more than Loveless, I certainly put it on more often. I've been listening to it since it came out - I think I just listened to it a week or so ago. It's definitely one of my favorite shoegaze albums. I really don't mean to come in here and disagree with everything you say but, to me, Whirlpool is definitely a cohesive shoegaze work as an album. 20 years later and I still don't think I could name a single track because I always listen to it all together - I think it flows rather well.

What I meant is that Whirlpool is certainly one of the under-appreciated Shoegaze albums (it's overshadowed by Loveless, Souvlaki, Nowhere), and that can be attributed in part to all the ridiculously awesome stuff that was being released in 1991.

I guess it's under-appreciated now - I don't hear much talk of it. My post didn't really communicate this but it was popular in 1991. Loveless, Nowhere, Whirlpool, and Just For A Day, among others, were all kind of in the same boat back then.

Will you PLEASE stop just quoting what people have said without putting any comment in yourself? This is clearly a tactic to up your post count so that you can post your spam. You will not succeed: you have been reported.

great thread

i've been just getting deeper into the sub-genre meself

wut

He's caught on to my nefarious plot to make insubstantial posts for a few years until the count reaches 2000, at which point I'll start commercially promoting myself.

:laughing: Self-appointed MusicBanter Police posts are always hilarious to me. Thank You to whichever mod deleted the spammer's post but left his up.

I've said a million times before if you respond to a spammers posts it makes you look like an idiot after it's deleted and doubles the amount of crap that needs to be deleted.
Do people listen?
Do they bollocks.

So now I just leave it up and let them deal with the confusion & ridicule.