Big Tea Blog

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The Return Of Shoegazing

There is a theory that popular music moves in approximate twenty year cycles, that the trends of one moment in time will become, two decades later, an evolved and opaque reflection of that which went before. Added to this is the idea that musical trends never really go away, they simply lurk in the underground until the kids of twenty years ago, the A&R men of today, sign their teenage wet dreams and reinvigorate faded and almost forgotten scenes. Think back to the stadium rock and punk of the seventies, which twenty years later fused and became the grunge of the early nineties, the punk tendencies of the grunge bands the reaction to the all dominating hair metal of the eighties. Britpop could arguably be post punk. Club culture in the nineties the disco of its day. Nu rave bands the offspring of rave culture in the eighties. It’s not always going to work, but there is a symmetry there that can’t really be ignored.

“Those twenty year cycles are probably more aligned with people’s parental music tastes. We’re all influenced by what we heard growing up,” says Robin Allport at the Club AC30 label. “Those children grow up and create things based on their own tastes - be they in bands, labels, the media, or just chattering on the internet.”

The cyclical trends of music could also arguably be contrasted with the current political and economic situation, the uncertainty that the current global recession engenders being similar to the difficult times when shoegaze first appeared. “There is certainly a cyclical nature to musical trends, but I also agree that the political landscape has an impact, even if it’s subconscious, because a lot of bands, shoegaze or not, are not overtly politicised,” argues Nathanial Cramp, whose Sonic Cathedral label have done more than most to help re-energise the shoegaze movement. “When times are hard, as well as angry, it politicises music. People look to music for some form of escape – and the ultimate escapist music. It’s music to be completely lost and immerse yourself in. That’s why the [shoegaze] sound works as well today as it did twenty years ago.”

“There are cycles in music as there are in life,” says Mark Gardener, vocalist and guitarist for nineties shoegazing legends Ride. “The political landscape does affect people so it will affect their music if that is how they are choosing to escape it or deal with it. Despite the recession of the early nineties records actually sold then so it was maybe easier to escape the recession to a certain point if your band started to sell records as Ride did at that time. Looking back when we were recording [Ride’s debut album] Nowhere in London, we had the poll tax riots going on which you could not help but be affected by. That was the crowd noise that we put on at the end of the song ‘Paralysed’ on Nowhere. There was a bleakness and darkness of those times which I think we did all feel along with the normal confusion and growing pains as you say goodbye to your teenage years.”

The escapist nature of music was also a factor for Ride. “Music has always been a sanctuary for me” Mark reflects. “Ride was like living in a great sonic bubble that was also total escapism from the reality that you witnessed out of the windows of taxis and buses when you were on the way to studios and gigs. We created our own world  and environment to a certain extent which we felt that we did have some kind of control over whereas I never felt that I could have influenced much change in the other world outside of Ride.”

And now shoegazing is happening again. Having lain dormant for twenty years, the shoegazing of the early nineties is creeping up, almost unnoticed, but it’s there. In 1991 My Bloody Valentine unleashed the immortal Loveless on the world and blew everyone’s ears to pieces touring a record Kevin Shields firmly believed had to be experienced as loudly as possible, and alongside the Jesus and Mary Chain, Ride and Chapterhouse released some of the other definitive albums of the time – Stoned and Dethroned, Going Blank Again and Whirlpool, whilst Lush provided a more gentle, upbeat and cuddly take on things and Swervedriver a heavier edge. Ultimately shoegazing was overwhelmed by the globetrotting grunge coming out across the pond in Seattle, but this didn’t stop MBV, JAMC, Slowdive and Ride from leaving an indelible and unfulfilled mark, one which a collection of young and exciting bands are now occupying.

“I think it’s been bubbling under for years,” Robin Allport continues. “It’s just that it’s taken the media one hell of a long time to bother noticing some of the bands.  I also think that what was originally coined as “shoegaze”, is shifting and mutating, and many bands that really are not even remotely of that sound are being lumped in.”

There is some definite truth in this. Shoegazing has become a cool tag to label bands with in the past couple of years and press releases accompanying records by acts whose only shoegaze credentials are having once heard My Bloody Valentine or the Jesus and Mary Chain are becoming more and more common place, but often are very ill-fitting.

The Club AC30 label and Sonic Cathedral are leading the way with signings such as Ringo Deathstarr and Team Ghost, raking the ashes of My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive, but there are more, only this time around the scene seems to be developing more Stateside than here in its original home, and the scene is evolving too. Where once before the lyrics and vocals of the shoegaze bands added more of a tone to the music than being the standout component of the song, vocals are appearing slightly higher in the mix, taking some of the limelight from thundering guitars and swirling feedback.

Sonic Cathedral and Club AC30 aside, The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart from New York arguably kick-started this new shoegazing revolution with the release in 2009 of their eponymous debut, an album which took a lot of the dirge of shoegazing but added to it a sense of joyfulness and a vibrancy that had once before been smeared in layers of dense, prickly feedback. Despite their relative youth, POBPAH’s quiet success has had an influence and there are now bands appearing (even on major labels!) in their wake delivering a similar sound, a sister vibe almost. Prominent amongst these is Yuck, whose debut album this year was as uplifting as it was capable of grounding you. Yuck and POBPAH provide the lighter, poppier face of this burgeoning scene, but the heavyweight noisemakers, the true descendants of MBV and JAMC, are just beginning to boil.

Ringo Deathstarr have taken the blueprint of Loveless, the dirge of sound, the never ending bending of the tremolo, the gentle vocals of him and her, the masses of feedback and looping of samples throughout their songs and live sets, and moved it on a level.  They’ve added a more prominent and discernible vocal melody to their sound, in contrast to Kevin Shields and Bilinda Butcher’s tonal contribution, Elliot Frazier and Alex Gehring’s vocals lead the songs from the front (on record at least, live the MBV method applies). The poppier elements of the Pains Of Being Pure At Heart and Yuck are now mellifluously holding hands with the dirge of noise pioneered by My Bloody Valentine and Chapterhouse, most noticeably on tracks such as ‘Tambourine Girl’ or ‘Imagine Hearts’ from their debut Colour Trip. They wear their hearts firmly on their sleeve, but aren’t afraid to break them once in a while either.

But this fusion isn’t the only one. In Texas, a little known band called True Widow have defined themselves as ‘stonegaze’, taking elements of both shoegazing and stoner rock and creating an intoxicating brand of deep, dark and cathartic music. Their second album, signed to Kemado Records, despite its overblown and somewhat pompous title of As High As The Highest Heavens From The Center To The Circumference Of The Earth, is an album built upon more minimal foundations than those of Ringo Deathstarr or Team Ghost. There is little reliance on samples or great swirling waves of feedback and layer upon layer of textured distortion, in its place are more regimented, lethargic chords, allowed to ring and fade before being restored again. The sultry, sometime breathy vocals and harmonies of bassist Nikki Estill and the complimentary deeper tones of Dan Phillips echo the male / female interchange that permeates shoegaze here and there. We don’t really need yet another genre defining moniker, but all the same ‘stonegaze’ goes some way to slotting True Widow into a pigeon hole which they are quite entitled to occupy. Shoegazing’s continued evolution is enhanced by moments such as these.

Across the US in California, things are bubbling away quite nicely there too. The little known Whirr describe themselves simply as ‘loud music from northern California’ but they run much deeper than that. In the UK, their quite sublime Distressor EP arrived via the tiny label The Sound Of Sweet Nothing to very little fanfare. Beyond the occasional play on BBC 6 Music the music press have largely, and bafflingly, overlooked (or simply been too blinkered to notice) them. Their music is dreamy, trippy, and softly distorted; breathy, gentle female vocals in the Rachel Goswell and Bilinda Butcher mode flow between relentless guitar chords and synth textures with boxy drums the heartbeat of the band. It’s droning and uplifting at the same time, the high range of Loren Rivera and Byanca Munoz voices’ a fitting antidote to the mess of distortion that holds the whole thing together. It’s truly beautiful, ethereal and utterly embracing.

No Joy and Whirr are aesthetically very similar but the dense layers of noise that make up Whirr’s sound are more reserved throughout No Joy’s Lush inspired debut record Ghost Blonde. No Joy have adopted a less intense, less brooding sound than Whirr, opting instead for shorter, more direct songs retaining the dream-like female vocals and fuzzy distortion, but softening the drums and the impact of the guitars with more distinct riffs adding more in terms of melody rather than all out thundering noise. Their music flows gently rather than being a full on sonic assault. Like True Widow, they are another product of the intuitive A&R at Kemado.

Over in France, there’s a healthy scene developing there too, and in two very distinct yet ultimately conjoined styles. Team Ghost are signed to Sonic Cathedral and where Ringo Deathstarr have taken the baton from My Bloody Valentine, so Team Ghost have done the same with Slowdive. “That’s my favourite shoegaze band,” says Nicholas Fromageau, “and one of my favourite bands ever. I have to confess, they have a big influence on my music, especially the way they used the keyboards and mixed them with the guitars, it’s fantastic. They taught me something very important too – a good song needs a good vocal melody.” Across their three albums Just For A Day, Souvlaki and the more acoustic tinged Pygmalion, Slowdive were perhaps the fuzziest of the shoegaze bands.  Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell’s multi-layered vocals and harmonies defined the Slowdive sound, their trippy singing sitting so comfortably with the waves of carefully controlled feedback and dreamy distortion that dominated their first two records for Creation. Team Ghost have adopted the vocal stylings, enhanced the delayed guitars and woven into their sound synthesised soundscapes, buffers for the droning guitars.

Alcest offer an alternative. Where True Widow have adopted elements of stoner rock, so have Alcest with elements of metal. The introspection of the more epic moments of Ride and My Bloody Valentine, the lengthy instrumental sections of ‘Leave Them All Behind’ and ‘Soon’, provide the backdrop for long droning chord progressions laced with feedback and soft, subtle vocals which become forceful, angry and much, much more direct. Yet despite these harsher overtones, there’s still a withdrawn vulnerability to what they do which is sometime endearing, sometime invigorating, but more importantly demonstrates just how malleable and adaptable shoegaze has become, even more so if we factor in the American outfit Wolves In The Throne Room, who have taken things even further, and heavier, adopting Scandinavian doom metal and drawing from acts such as Neurosis.

The French aren’t the only European nation getting in on the act either. In Italy, the gently intense and spiralling music of Piaticons, signed to I Blame The Parents Records, are trying their hand at a bit of shoegaze too, taking the warmth of Slowdive with the pace of Ride and hinting at the understated vocals of the Jesus and Mary Chain’s Jim Reid. They verge on the psychedelic at times, but the roots of shoegaze are there throughout their debut album Senseless Sense.

If anything, in the intermittent twenty years, shoegaze has become much more varied now than it ever was back then.

Looking back to the early nineties, there are other similarities too. Rave culture and the emergence of dance music in the late eighties through the invasion of ecstasy led to British music taking on a whole new dimension, of repetitive beats and continuous groove, something that morphed after the baggy culture of the Madchester bands into the drone of guitars, the need for something constant to align the drugs effect’s with. Likewise, we’ve had nu-rave and a plethora of jangly indie bands in the past ten years to contend with, so it’s hardly surprising that a shoegaze revival should follow as the popularity of MDMA, this time in crystal form, has swept through the clubs again.

Is this a factor? “That’s an interesting question,” says Nicolas Fromageau. “In France, one can easily find MDMA powder…I have always thought that there’s a relation between the musicians and the drugs they use. Well, there’s one for me. And MDMA powder works very well with huge walls of sound.”

However as shoegaze and MDMA run their course, will the scene disappear as it did so suddenly in the early nineties? Why did it just disappear so quickly? I ask Nathanial Cramp about this, suggesting the hiatus of My Bloody Valentine after Loveless as a possible factor and simply wondering if shoegaze had simply run its course? In answering he also theorises as to how the US revival might have come about.

“Because it was never that big a scene and, symbolically at least, it was over the moment Chapterhouse had to go onstage at Reading in 1991 right after Nirvana. The music press had a lot to do with it, there was such negativity around the whole thing, the shoegaze bands just became whipping boys, and you had Richey Manic coming out with the quote that he “hates Slowdive more than Hitler”. I think there was a real class issue at work, too. The bands were mercilessly mocked for being middle class by music journalists who were no doubt more middle class than they were, but in denial while pretending to like a Northside record or something. The end result of this negative atmosphere was that bands such as Slowdive went and played in the States and elsewhere quite a lot rather than the UK and sowed the seeds of the shoegaze revival right there - by turning on a whole new crowd to the sound without the baggage. And here we are, 20 years later…”

Only this time, it’s a bit different. The shoegaze bands aren’t gracing the cover of NME, we haven’t had a Loveless or Going Blank Again for the music press to croon over, despite some great music coming out the scene has remained underground at the time of writing. So this finally begs the question of where shoegaze goes from here. With everything that goes around in circles, there has to be a point where the new shoegaze meets its zenith and disappears for another twenty years, or else takes on a whole new trajectory. Can the current underground revival possibly cross into the mainstream, can the public grasp such an introspective and reclusive scene? Do we want that to happen?

“It depends what you mean by the mainstream,” Nathanial continues. “I can’t quite see someone singing ‘Catch The Breeze’ on The X Factor yet! Some bands will no doubt break through and some won’t, but I’m not sure that the scene is that unified. It’s more a case of there being quite a few disparate bands around with similar influences and using the same sounds and techniques. That said, The Horrors’ new record (though clearly less MBV-influenced than the last one) has done pretty well, and there are other big releases such as the new M83 album coming up - and that in turn might help other, similar acts to break through.”

“I would hope that these bands will boil over into the mainstream and start to take the bigger stages at festivals if they’re good enough,” Mark Gardener adds. “There is so much alchemy with people and music and whatever the style certain bands and people really connect at certain times with the public conscience and before they know it they could be on the big stages and redefining shoegaze or any other genres. That’s the real magic of music and acts that it is so hard to predict and in a way that reflects life for me. I just hope that creative people keep on keeping on with music and their arts as I think life is very uninteresting if the karaoke and imitation world and influence of X Factor is not kept in balance with new real and fresh interesting talent, music and art with new ideas.” 

But there is one mystifying thing about this revival: where are the British and Irish bands? The Horrors seem to be carrying the torch almost alone. It seems that the legacy the British and Irish shoegazers gave the world has indeed inspired Europe and the US but deserted these shores, it’s flown the nest and migrated, failing to return. Perhaps we have failed to take notice, or maybe it’s more a case that the rest of the world is leaving us all behind.

Spotify Playlist: Shoegaze Now & Then

With thanks to: Mark Gardener, Robin Allport, Nathanial Cramp, Tilly Kneale, Nicholas Fromageau, Nathan Taylor.

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