I think bands like Pavement, Daniel Johnson, GBV, Royal Trux, Sebadoh etc were rooted more in college radio and the alternative music of the mid-late eighties, whereas a lot of the bands now are more influenced by punk and noise rock. You do of course have bands like DDD who are more indie pop, but overall i think the new wave of lo-fi acts are a bit more aggressive and immediate.

Thats taking nothing away from the precursors, in fact Pavement, Sebadoh and GBV are three of my favourite bands and i'd place them above bands like Wavves, No Age and TNV in favour, i just think this new batch of noiseniks have breathed fresh life and a bit of fun into what i personally thought was a pretty stagnant few years in music.

They all became college radio staples for sure. But let's look at just Pavement: Their earliest recordings were pretty much drug-fueled catharsis through noise. Definitely closer to punk than anything college-rock. Royal Trux was similar - heroin junkies with rockband equipment making noise. The indie/college rock tags came a bit later with their more polished music. I'm not saying all the new bands are straight ripoffs, though. Some seem to have something to offer, I just haven't caught on.

I actually really enjoy Wavves and No Age.
but what a stupid name ****gaze is.

I've only heard Times New Viking, but I did get the "noise for the sake of noise" feeling from them.

This was a while back though and I'm more open minded towards music, maybe I should give shitgaze another try.

There's only so much of this noisy, fuzzy music I can handle. From the couple of songs I've heard from Psychedelic Horseshit, it really didn't have an impact on me. But I do like No Age, Times New Viking and Wavves. Haven't heard the others ones yet though I shall soon.

MOSTLY true actually. But No Age are at least one exception. The noises they've created by messing around in the studio actually happen to be quite rich and interesting. Have u heard Nouns?



Oh, and nobody mentioned Japandroids! Though I'm not sure they really fit in with the rest, as they're more of an outright explicit garage punk band. They just record it noisy. They also benefit from not being pretentious at all, which seems to be a problem with a lot of these other sh!tgaze bands.

I really like a lot of these bands but what a stupid name for a genre.

most of these bands are simply playing loud, fun garage punk/rock music. what exactly is pretentious about that?

i've seen Times New Viking live, and it was possibly the most fun i've ever had at a gig. no pretense about them whatsoever, just good fun rock music with an awesome vibe and atmosphere. i've never left a gig as satisfied and surprised at how much i enjoyed it.

Yeah i'll do it this evening.

I completely condemn this 'sh!tgaze' tag and the person who coined it. Now that shoegaze is in vogue we have every sort of shoegaze-associated genre i.e. metalgaze (Nadja) and of course nu-gaze. I really like Wavves and Eat Skull but i would just class them as lo-fi indie