from the LP The Word & the Flesh, Restless Records, 1990
The weather peoples are predicting (hoping?) that the mountains around here will see between 1 – 2 feet of snow in the next 36 hours, which always seems to happen one last time in May before Jack Frost officially leaves the building; thankfully, this year I waited to get our sprinklers going, so I don’t have to be concerned with freezing pipes or anything like that. I know you all care so much about my menial chores---ahem. So, it is with this coming behemoth of a storm in mind that I post a maelstrom of layered & distorted strings by the oft-overlooked NYC crew, Band of Susans, one of the closer musical approximations to a genuine blizzard that you can find. Losing former guitarist Paige Hamilton (as he went on to form Helmet) right as they were gaining ground could have been disastrous, but instead the Susans used it as an opportunity to deepen their sound and fine-tune their attack, coming up with a joyous clatter that falls somewhere between early-mid Sonic Youth (ala Sister) & My Bloody Valentine, metronomic rhythm section and UFO guitars soaring all around.
from the CD Bright Channel, Flight Approved Records, 2004
At my age, when I go to a show I typically expect that most opening acts (particularly of the local variety) will mostly suck, and I’ll be damned if that hasn’t often held true at concerts across this glorious nation, for decades; that’s why my pal & I were taken by complete surprise upon witnessing Bright Channel’s opening set for Dinosaur Jr. in Boulder a few years back. There we were, readying ourselves for bottom of the barrel suckage, nursing a pint of Guiness and wondering what non sequitur paths of shouted conversation would ensue during the opening set, when suddenly---WHAM, the thundering steely rhythm section of Shannon Stein on bass & Brain Banks on drums literally almost made me spit out my sip of stout. Indeed, these individuals were not fucking around, and both my friend and I exchanged bewildered glances followed by a heartfelt “fuck yea!” in unison, leaving us freed from our pessimistic expectations and liberated to cut loose (see: chugging said beer and rocking out). Bright Channel preceded the shoegazer revival by a few years, so it wasn’t surprising when I learned that none other than Steve Albini himself helmed the boards for this album. The lyrics are cryptic as fuck, matching well with the edging-towards sinister vibe their sound espouses, “…empty structures touch the sky, shiny new castles made of mirrors; it's more than just a fantasy, this is the end staring patiently…”
from the EP Scar, 4AD Records, 1989
Lush’s glittering experiments in melody and sound were never short of awe-inspiring, volatile & capricious in all the right ways, inviting you deep within their forest of densely layered guitars and airy vocals, leaving your head spinning from all the unexpected twists and turns in harmony which they take along the way---it’s not easy to fuck with melody and time signatures in this manner, gently bobbing between 3/4 and 3/5 time while deconstructing the minor chords just enough to keep things feeling mildly inebriated. Although the sonic atmosphere feels slightly sinister, guitarist & vocalist Emma Anderson’s lyrics are a happy psychedelic mess, “…I need purple veins and scenic greens, they can make me soar and touch extremes; I just fell down from whitest skies, and now I start to realize, and all the colors talk to me…now you're times nearly through, colors are dripping down red and blue; I'm standing in the middle of a great glass ball, I'm told that I've nothing but I'm having it all…”
from the LP Loveless, Creation Records, 1991
Damage to your eardrum has never been more acute or enjoyable, in my humble opinion, than when it’s happening care of Ireland’s noisy answer to the Jesus & Mary Chain, and, by proxy, the Beach Boys; at the beginning of their recent reunion gig for the All Tomorrows Parties festival, My Bloody Valentine’s techs were tossing out thousands of earplugs for the audience…how thoughtful. Though their style had changed frequently in the years prior to this LP, catchy melodies had always been heavily involved with MBV’s sound, whether they were right upfront or buried in the mix; Kevin Shields, the central songwriter and crux of the group, took painstaking measures in perfecting the layered vocal and guitar parts on this album, which proved to be such a wearying & meticulous job, in fact, that he has yet to release another LP since. I could literally compose a post for almost every single song on this album, so I’ve chosen this one mainly ‘cause I like the “Strawberry Fields”-inspired coda at the end of the track, nice balance.
from the CD soundtrack to The Crow, Atlantic Records, 1994
As popular as the shoegazer trend seems like it must have been, looking back, it barely made waves above the underground over here in the States upon its initial onslaught, garnering much more attention across the pond; thus, here in America there were only a small handful of bands carrying that banner, Los Angeles-based crew Medicine being one of the better acts. Their first album in ’92 was every bit as loud & dissonant as the majority of British shoegazers, but they continued to ease up on the noise-level seemingly with each successive release, eventually winding up closer to the dream-pop sound they perfected for this song. Released on the soundtrack to the movie The Crow (the one where Brandon Lee, Bruce Lee’s son, was accidentally shot and killed during the making of the film), the band were also featured briefly in the movie, in the scene where this song plays in the club---they are the band onstage.
from the LP Lazer Guided Melodies, Dedicated Records, 1992
True to its name, this track categorically glistens like the sun dancing atop some crystal blue alpine lake, reflections splayed across the sky like the memories of dreams, the waves of guitar and organ caressing your skin and warming your soul like the rays from some cosmic supernova; honestly, I would expect nothing less from Jason Pierce, the man who brought us Spacemen 3 (if you’ve never heard them, the very title of their album Taking Drugs to Make Music to Take Drugs To gives you some idea). Where his former band had made the manipulation of dissonance & distortion the basic goal, burying melodies deep in the mix or not at all, Mr. Pirce’s work as Spiritualized actually gives us some catchy and even memorable harmonies---though the fuzz is never far away, like some Soma’s washed down with Champagne…
from the LP Ferment, Fontana Records, 1992
Critics never could determine which end of the spectrum the Catherine Wheel fell into: were they epic alt-rockers or were they noisy shoegazers? That refusal, on the band’s part, to court any one genre within their sound is exactly what makes their music so gratifying for me; just when you think you have their influences all figured out, they’ll throw a song your way that you never saw coming. This particular track, off of their debut full length, reveals an obvious love for the Cure along with the usual suspects like My Bloody Valentine or the Jesus & Mary Chain. For many Americans, the Catherine Wheel and basically everything else going on in the alternative rock world sort of faded away while Nirvana and the “grunge” fad ruled the roost, but looking back now this stuff has aged better than the vast majority of Seattle’s slacker brigade.
from the LP Distance, Domino Recording Company, 1994
Lying somewhere out in the ether between the psychedelic, noise, and shoegazer scenes was Flying Saucer Attack (FSA), a duo from Bristol, England. Their music ranges quite a bit in intensity and focus, and this track is fairly representative of only one kind of theme they worked at. Taken to its logical yet extreme end, the shoegazer aesthetic really consisted of three primary tools: 1) skull-splitting layers of distorted guitars, 2) underlying pop-friendly melodies, and 3) words which are mostly spoken or hummed rather than being sung proper; whether FSA liked the label or not, if the shoe fits…I apologize for that awful pun. At any rate, if you pushed Dave Pearce’s singing any further to the back of this mix he would disappear altogether, but the sonic assault upfront is enough for me, transfixing my mind and body into paralyzed bliss.
from the LP Nowhere, Creation Records, 1990
“Wall of sound” is a phrase that’s tossed around quite a bit in the music world: Phil Spector’s recording studio techniques, the Grateful Dead’s touring setup from the mid-‘70s (care of the flipped out mind within Owsley “Bear” Stanley), and in more general terms, to explain the density of noise emanating from your speakers. In this case here, the track is literally a relentless wall of sound from the moment it begins; layers upon layers of delayed and distorted guitars, repetitive droning bassline, drums ablaze…all of it combining into a trenchant mass of sonic waves, a tsunami even, which makes the minimalist album cover-art very apropos. Ride were a short-lived, much-hyped UK band that fell into the subgenre dubbed ‘shoegazer’ by the British press; most of the bands labeled as such (My Bloody Valentine, Lush, Ride, Chapterhouse, Slowdive, et al) fervently fought the pigeonholing of such a contrived term, supposedly dubbed ‘shoegazer’ due to the habit of most band members staring at the floor while they played. Whatever you want to call this, it’s fucking BAD – ASS!! Into the vortex of sounds the listener falls, hearing all kinds of influences within the maelstrom of guitars and feedback: Velvet Underground, Jesus & Mary Chain, Spacemen 3…shit, you can even hear the Byrds. Throughout the thick hullabaloo, the commotion clears for brief enough spells to hear some singing, “my eyes are sore, my body weak…you gave me things I’d never seen, you made my life a waking dream…” The two guitarists, Andy Bell and Mark Gardner, sing some pleasant minor-chord harmonies here, simplistic but somehow hovering above the mix. Though the lyrics are mostly standard, druggy, esoteric prose, their delivery invokes pressing and dramatic emotional swings; “…my words are dead, falling like feathers to the floor…but we are dead, falling like ashes to the floor…” In a seeming posture to the press’s attempts to define their sound, they offer a dreamy epithet, “…definitions confine thoughts, they are a myth, words are clumsy, language doesn’t fit; but we know there’s no limit to thought, we know there’s no limits…” The whole shoegazer scene/sound, never as popular in the States as in the UK, was (like everything else) pushed aside by the whole “grunge” phenomena, and only over the past few years has it seen its just & deserved resurgence of sound and influence.
from the LP The Word & the Flesh, Restless Records, 1990
