Shoegaze is a big genre and this is a big fucking post.

Cut out 10-15 minutes for yourself, and away we go…

Intro

I feel that practically everyone listens to shoegaze in some form or another, but what landmarks or band-families this entails varies surprisingly wildly depending on who you ask. Shoegaze is old and it’s big: 30+ years is easily enough time for successive generations of bed-headed indie fucks and aesthete space cadets to carve out their own fuzzy atmospheres and dish them into the proximity of every single other genre that looks good in mood lighting (and a few that don’t). Back in its ‘90s heyday, shoegaze was panned for being homogenous and turgid, guitar music’s version of an overused slow-motion effect, but it grown so many variants across so many styles that these remarks’ failure to pick up on its creative potential is case-closed moot. 

All of which amounts to quite a lot. How do you navigate it? Who’s the next step if you never made it past My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive? What’s your ticket to mothership if your main exposure is from mayfly albums on the fringes of Bandcamp? What if you’re up to your arse in Deftones and Beach House and still aren’t sure whether real shoegaze is worth the money? Aren’t there any acts who’ve done something surprising or exciting with the genre? Why gaze in the first place?

If only through its sheer size, this blogpost hopefully holds your answers: I’m not going to attempt a full historical account or an encyclopedic mapping of every band ever to gaze, but by the time we’re done, we’ll have parsed shoegaze into all its core elements, examined most if not all of its main susceptibilities, outlined which pairings suit it best, and (maybe!) thrown in a couple of surprises for good measure. We’re breaking the genre down in broad strokes, but there’ll be specific examples every step of the way. Anyone starting out should find this especially helpful, but anyone who knows their way around should hopefully come away with a couple of new finds.

Big thanks to sixdegrees for his feedback and recs (which either ended up here or are cited along the way for further listening) and to MiloRuggles for being a bona fide proofing warlord. And without further ado, let’s take it from the top…

Part 1: Superbasic Genre Fundaments

In case you’ve literally never gazed before, or want to go back to basics for whatever reason.

My Bloody Valentine – “Only Shallow” (1991)

One song to rule them all, one song to bind them. There’s no better starting point than “Only Shallow”, a perfect average of everything shoegaze in one instantly recognisable perfect song. Surging guitars, dreamlike vocals, dizzying layerings, a sense that something vital is being expressed across a muffled netherspace – it’s all right there. The rest of Loveless follows on as such, and it’s understandable that the story of shoegaze pretty much starts and ends there for many people. As anyone who’s trawled Rateyourmusic or similar for more than 5 minutes can allege, a distressing proportion of amateur criticism and genre discussion is rooted in

1) reducing the album in question to a comparison with Loveless

2) swiftly asserting its inferiority, and

3) wrapping up with a begrudging remark about its worthiness.

As we’ll see later with Loveless-influenced groups like Hartfield and Astrobrite, there are many great examples of the definitive shoegaze sound with such strikingly distinct emotional valences these kinds of criticisms are essentially superficial waffle from genre tourists overinvested in the c-c-c-canon. Be on guard if you’re trying to make your own discoveries.

On top of that, there are a load of further groupings and trends and cross-genre pairings and specificities to pick apart, so we’re going to need more than just a perfect average to orientate ourselves around. Here’s a three-track crash course, all of which predates Loveless and offers a more dedicated window into specific genre traits.

(1) My Bloody Valentine – “Cigarette In Your Bed” (1988)

“Cigarette In Your Bed” is a lovely example of shoegaze’s love affair with gossamer dream pop, and an enigmatic sneak-peek at its disposition for ambient soundscapes. The genre’s rep for homogenous dynamics and lackluster songwriting is often deserved, but there’s something subtly mobile and impeccably focused about this track, something which separates it from Isn’t Anything’s otherwise highly comparable and almost-as-wonderful “Lose Your Breath”. There’s something almost uncomfortably tactile about that catatonic soundscape that presents shoegaze’s recurring duality of intimacy and dissociation in clear focus: those “do-do-do”s sound like they’re whispered right into your ear by someone a million miles away. That feeling is a story far bigger than any one genre, but shoegaze captures its strain and yearning like no other.

(2) My Bloody Valentine – “You Never Should” (1988)

Few genres have fuelled more docile bedroom records than shoegaze, but you’ll do well to remember that there’s something bracing and volatile lurking beneath all that fuzz. Where many acts present their guitar warpings as something once raw but largely numbed over, “You Never Should” tears the bandage right off and affirms all shoegaze’s overlap with the Sonic Youths and Jesus and Mary Chains that once prototyped it as ‘80s noise-pop. Even more than “Only Shallow”, the searing guitar track of this track’s untouchable midsection is everything ecstatic and vitalising about shoegaze in its purest form. 

(3) Slowdive – “Avalyn” (1990)

When accused of primitive songwriting or structural stagnancy, Shoegaze’s other great get-out-of-jail-free card is the depth of its cavernous atmospheric soundscapes. That’s “Avalyn” through and through: Slowdive are perhaps the most versatile of shoegaze’s greats and have seen through any number of elegant ambitions, but this early masterpiece was the simple fruit of a spacey jam session. Shoegaze at its best draws spellbinding eternities out of unassuming individual moments: “Avalyn”’s cyclical resistance to any kind of dynamic or structural ‘progression’ is as clear a case as any that the perfect atmosphere has little need for development. My Bloody Valentine have a great example for this in “To Here Knows When”, but “Avalyn” is at once more approachable and just better. Bliss.

Part 2: Vintage dream pop ‘90s stuff 

Now that we’ve pinned down the fundamentals with My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive, let’s hear from other original shoegazers. You’ll have heard of most of these acts, but they’re still held as key names for good reason. 

The theme for now is how they navigate shoegaze’s trademark introversion with outgoing pop songwriting, and the benchmark for this is Slowdive’s “Alison”. This is in part because it’s a perfect dream pop song, but also because because it paints the classic shoegaze mise-en-scene in conveniently vivid lyrical detail: a guy and a girl, cig smoke and bedroom haze, drugs and delirium, all presented as something undeniably romantic but also anxious and dissociated enough to carry heavy nostalgia despite its present viewpoint. It’s euphoric in its aesthetics but strangely insular in its address – that’s a core mood. Let’s see some more…

Lush – “For Love” (1992)

No-one else in the original shoegaze roster could match up to Lush’s pop fluency. They weren’t necessarily the best of the bunch, but they certainly sounded the most comfortable making familiar songwriting motions their own. Case-in-point, “For Love” is above all a tight piece of writing, and the band’s gazey palette is more an extra vehicle for strong hooks than a primary attraction, expansive to a certain extent but somewhat bite-sized compared to the stylings your Slowdives and MBVs were using. Slimline feels for cute shy dream peoples.

Chapterhouse – “Pearl” (1991)

Chapterhouse’s debut is an enjoyably diverse mix of bright earworms, midtempo rockers and churning soundscapes, with a pop sensibility to its robust verse-chorus pattern and bright hooks that tie each of them together. “Pearl” shows this off especially well, supporting its glazed vocals with excitable beatwork and a welcome hint of jangle. Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell steps in for backing vocals, seeing the track off as a summery highlight.

Ride – “Dreams Burn Down” (1990)

If someone took it upon themselves to lay down an OG Big Four for shoegaze, you’d probably end up with something to the tune of: MBV (the densest), Slowdive (the prettiest), Lush (the poppiest), and Ride (the one that sounded most like a regular neo-psych band but happened to be several increments noisier). Although the latter’s iconic debut Nowhere is perhaps the most dated of shoegaze’s founding statements, the highlight track “Dreams Burn Down” offers an electric play-off between piercing bursts of distortion and rainy day dream pop, a genre staple for the ages.

The Verve – “Already There” (1993)

The Verve were by far the most commercially successful band to have started out in shoegaze and pivoted to embrace the UK’s overbearing britpop craze, but you’d never know it from the most comatose selections on their galactically-spaced debut A Storm In Heaven. The gorgeous pairing of “Already There” and “Beautiful Mind” is a mesmeric peak to this end, atmospheres so thick you can practically smell the studio dope on them. Verver supreme Richard Ashcroft brings a strong vocal presence to sparse pieces that would otherwise risk veering into indistinction – much as shoegaze can tend towards washed-out dissociated soundscapes, it pays to have a firm hand at the helm. 

Moose – “Suzanne” (1991)

Quite inventively, the track’s fuzz is confined to an almost danceable low-end churn for most of its runtime, phased-out and chiefly rhythmic until it hits its peak and streaks off the desperate vapour trail of a homemade rocket. All of these are things that you’d better have signed up for by now.

Alison’s Halo – “Torn” (1993)

Alison’s Halo offered an American (AZ) counterpart to the UK’s early ’90s swoon, repping a particularly syrupy take on Slowdive and Lush’s guitar stylings. Their sound is too winter-wonderland kitsch to conjure quite the same mystique, but when they land melodies as gorgeous as the likes of “Torn”, this fares well as a separate attraction. Their spanning compilation Eyedazzler is as satisfying as one-stop discographies come.

Hartfield – “16 Lover’s Rain” (2003)

Six’s pix:  Panda Riot – “16 Seconds” or “Streetlights & You & Me” (2010), Pia Fraus – “You’re Not In Love” (2020)

Part 3: 2cool 4 schoolgaze

Now that we’ve covered vintage shoegaze’s overlap with palatable hooks and structures, how about something a little more oblique? ‘90s indie was the heyday of standoffish cool, and it’s natural that some of its savvier acts would pick up on gaze’s natural affinity with that kind of affect. In the right context, shoegaze is one of the loudest ways to announce an introverted disposition, and this next bunch acknowledge this in a variety of ways, whether indulging it directly or playing on its inner tensions to crafty effect:

Lilys – “Elizabeth Colour Wheel” (1992)

Boasting everything from droning soundscapes to blaring noise pop, Lilys’ debut is a wonderfully diverse microcosm of shoegaze, but “Elizabeth Colour Wheel” is so immaculate that it’s practically an entity to itself. It comes straight out of the “Avalyn” school of timelessly perfect moments suspended above the reach of mundane songwriting “progression”, a woozy reverie packed with scuzz and slurred diction and paced like treacle. This track is an ideal for maudlin bedroom pop, the sound the likes of The Radio Dept would build careers out of. You’d do just as well to soak it up too.

Swirlies – “In Harmony New Found Freedom” (1996)

In and out of whichever overlapping genre territories, Swirlies are just a strikingly Cool guitar band. Even if their debut Blonder Tongue Audio Baton was too restless for gaze proper, it was a model ‘90s indie rock experience, brimming with the artsy-noisy slacker vibes that sustained the empires of your Pavements, Sonic Youths and Built to Spills. 

Their bemusingly titled follow-up They Spent Their Wild Youthful Days in the Glittering World of the Salons is harder to pin down, at once more oblique, more patient, less volatile and less predictable. It also packs more for a dedicated shoegazer to dig into, shown off perfectly by its first track proper “In Harmony New Found Freedom”: the band follow a serpentine progression, repeatedly switching gears and drifting in and out of shoegaze with an almost idyllic zaniness. There’s a good deal of sophistication in that mobility – the gaze here is harder to fully settle into, but it’s all the more intriguing for it.

Yo La Tengo – “Nowhere Near” (1993)

While they fit the ‘90s indie mold to a tee, Yo La Tengo were always shy rather than standoffish. This set the stage for more than a few mumbled non-starters throughout their work, but their best stuff is correspondingly fragile, modest and a little bit precious. They tend to style-hop, but shoegaze comes up as a dominant ingredient, something 1993’s Painful took full advantage of in tastefully subdued form. It’s full of unpretentious slowburners and coy bursts of overdrive, a gift for sweater-clad gazers the world over. “Nowhere Near” is one of the album’s more forthcoming tracks and a lovely emotional centerpiece.

Blonde Redhead – “23” (2007)

If Yo La Tengo are endearingly timid, Blonde Redhead are ice-cold arthouse steel. The depth of their music is often camouflaged beneath layers of enigmatic anxiety and stylistic pastiche, but 23 saw them traverse the full spectrum of dreamgaze, striking gold at every turn. “23” itself is a shoegaze triumph, textbook guitar stylings straining and shimmering under vocalist Kazu Makino’s ghostly breeze of a performance, its instantly tangible momentum winding itself ever tighter over a spellbinding five minutes.

As a side-note, the percussion here is on-point in a way that very little of this list can touch. One of the things that originally set My Bloody Valentine apart was their drumwork – where many gazers sideline the rhythm department entirely, sticksman Colm Ó Cíosóig was constantly innovative in his memorable fills and nods to dance beats in the likes of “Soon” (Chapterhouse are another exception here). Blonde Redhead’s Simone Pace ups the ante further still across this album with a delightfully creative range of beats, and the presence he brings to this track is just the tip of the icy, icy iceberg.

Serena Maneesh – “Selina’s Melodie Fountain” (2005)

Some of these indie kids come with claws and teeth. Featuring a generous amount of grit, overdrive and shitstirring grooves, “Selina’s Melodie Fountain” is out for blood and could easily have fit into the upcoming rock-dedicated section. However, spangled vocal delivery together with the band’s reticence to fully kick off with their jagged riffage keeps their centre of gravity within the indieverse: this one is rife with a feeling that something, somewhere is about to detonate, and shoegaze is one of the many oblique devices that keeps you at a loss as to when. The rest of Serena Maneesh’s self-titled debut is no less intriguing or versatile. See also The Raveonettes’ Lust Lust Lust for a more deadpan, if no less noisy dishing of ‘00s Scandi coolgaze, and A Place To Bury Strangers’ Exploding Head if you prefer your indie-rawk-rock no-holds-barred. On which note…

Part 4: Shoegaze that rocks

The indie tie-ins overhead are all very well, but-but-but how much does shoegaze have to offer those who like their rock as rock, no obliqueness or indie reserve thank-you-very-much? If you’ve found yourself craving something more visceral or tactile, this one’s for you. What counts as rocking is an especially broad category, but the following groups all have the spunk and flair endemic to the vintage good stuff:

Catherine Wheel – “Broken Head” (1993)

Catherine Wheel are perhaps the vintage shoegaze band most frequently and insistently flagged up for underacknowledgement – and for good reason. Their 1992 debut Ferment was a pretty standard showing for heyday gaze, but the following year’s Chrome shifted gears and married their gaze chops to a grungier, meatier rock style. “Broken Head” is one of its hardest slappers, boasting the kind of anthemic chorus and jagged leads that almost call for a more high-octane BPM, but a slightly reined-in pace really allows its wealth of atmospheric textures to thrive. Somehow, the tension between these two separate ends of its arsenal just makes the track even more propulsive, and boy oh boy does it rip.

Starflyer 59 – “Monterey” (1994)

Starflyer 59 were a prototypical marriage between shoegaze layerings and the alternative metal sound that the likes of Deftones would pop zits and soak tissues over in the early ‘00s. They’ve aged surprisingly well as such, and though the product of its influence is instantly recognisable, the likes of “Monterey” still carry something distinctive with their nods to space-rock and their creative choice of tones.

Swervedriver – “Duress” (1993)

A far cry from the delicacies and fragilities that balanced wavering emotions over the knife-edge of crystalline gaze, Swervedriver were a swaggering rock band with the attitude and drive to show for it. Their keynote album Mezcal Head seamlessly fuses shoegaze palettes with rollicking grunge, and though it has more to show in both spacey and high-octane territory, “Duress” is perhaps the most momentous example of the two sides playing off each other.

Medicine – “Miss Drugstore” (1992)

I don’t know if Medicine were ever a ‘rock’ band as much as a loud one, but “Miss Drugstore”’s saccharine vocal hooks and caustic guitar burn are a gritty enough pairing that the distinction hardly matters. This is a top-tier noise pop track, deliciously infectious and a portentous sample of the palette explored throughout the band’s stellar debut Shot Forth Self Living.

Marriages – “Ten Tiny Fingers” (2012)

One of Emma Ruth Rundle’s bands, Marriages essentially took the sound of stoner rock and diffused it through shoegaze into something sparser and more mysterious. It rocks and drifts enigmatically, its intrigue at once hair’s breadth away and well out of sight. Shoegaze is full of lonesome acts, but few have pinned down an atmosphere quite this haunting in a palette this pretty.

Six’s pix: Vibragun – “Supernova Comedown” (2014), Bedroom Eyes – “Supine” (2019), Amusement Parks on Fire – “Venus in Cancer” (2004) 

Milo’s sausage: Failure – something gazy? I swear they gaze every now and again

[editor’s note: Failure are on my list and will get a lot of attention sometime vaguely soon, but I accidentally missed them out for this whoops. Check Shiner.]

Part 5: Heavygaze / sludge gaze

Weren’t satisfied by Shoegaze that rocks? Luckily for you, this section does more than rock (though there’s a fair bit of overlap). These picks have more weight to them, tending towards thicker tones,  lower BPM, fewer riffs, less singalong potential, more atmosphere, and what have you. They are slow and/or dense and they crush. The intuitive distinction is more that I’d be less prepared to queue them up if I were hosting a rock radio show for mixed reasons of density or sluggishness, but don’t read too much into it. Anyhow:

Hum – “Folding” (2020)

Hum are the founding fathers of this arm of the genre, but I have an uneasy feeling about pigeonholing either their ‘90s landmarks as wholesale shoegaze albums (much as a few key songs certainly qualify). Their long-awaited comeback Inlet is another story: at once the heaviest and gaziest thing they’d ever made, it was perfectly in tune with every factor that preserved their relevance through two-decades of near-inactivity. Outwardly hulking and metallic yet inwardly thoughtful and romantic, “Folding” is a wonderful example of the irreplicable daydreaming-giant factor that makes Hum such a magical group. It’s masterful stuff, replete with a droning bliss-out on its tail end lest there be any doubt that gaze is the name of the game here.

Walrus – “Hikari no Kakera” (2000)

Nothing – “Blue Mecca” (2020)

Nothing are an inescapable pick for this stretch thanks to the flurry of acclaim hurled at their oppressively dark opus The Great Dismal. I’d say that record tends a little too far towards alt-rock cliches (ft. 500 coatings of black gloss) to pose quite the contemporary classic some have heralded it, but the nuggets of gold it does strike are coveted currency. The best of these, “Blue Mecca” strikes out into sludge territory, its despair cloying and intoxicating, its abyssal refrain (yesterday is a long way down) a harrowing example of shoegaze’s knack for eking profound affect out of cryptic ambiguity. A whole album of this one, please.

Cloakroom – “Sickle Moon Blues” (2017)

Cloakroom have enjoyed a fair bit of attention lately over their new record Dissolution Wave, itself a solid collection of succinct midtempo rockers for the emo-friendly fuzzgang. On the other hand, 2017’s Time Well is longer, more ponderous, a tad less consistent, but a good deal more crushing and easily viewable as straight-up stoner metal. “Sickle Moon Blues” shows all this at its best, a case study in momentous songwriting that nods to emo and slowcore but ultimately dedicates itself to a fuckoff massive sludgey climax. You can hear Cloakroom dragging the motif that eventually becomes the song’s finale through a myriad layers of mud, but the song is lubricated so smoothly by its gaze stylings that its sluggishness never feels cumbersome. Exemplary stuff.

Holy Fawn – “Drag Me Into The Woods” (2018)

Nu-gaze darlings Holy Fawn are definitely crushing enough to qualify for this stretch, though it’s testament to their appeal and versatility that they could fit into half the subheadings on this list with the appropriate letter of introduction. Mostly-kind-of-warranted associations with post-metal aside, they’re one of the very few contemporary heavy gazers who I feel are playing entirely by their own rules, and this alone should be cause for consorting. Anyway, “Drag Me Into The Woods” should tick all the boxes for anyone looking for a shimmery heavyfix: one of Death Spells most straightforward songs, it follows a patient progression to an explosive payoff with a smart range of tones on display every step of the way. In you go…

Six’s Pix: Petal Head – “Zodiac” or “Daisy” (2015)

Part 6: Dense shit

The real gaze starts here. So far, we’ve mainly been looking shoegaze as a pairing with dream pop, indie rock, rock-rock, metal etc.: I don’t think it’s helpful to view any of those examples as dilutions or what have you, but this installment is committed to soundscapes deeper than death and atmospheres you’ll need a rotary hammer to get through, and you’ll be forgiven for calling it the “purest” example on the list, or whatever. 

A lot of these are still technically genre pairings, but they gaze so damn hard and far and gravely that it’s a fool’s errand to get microscopic with their gene pool. They’re also the kind of thing you really need the right listening environment for – don’t go anywhere close unless you’re in a position to let them wash over you with appropriate intimacy. Most are also ultimately very insular experiences, but you, O dweller of online music blogspheres, should have no trouble with this. So, how much do you really like shoegaze? Let’s see…

Lovesliescrushing – “Babysbreath” (1993)

Lovesliescrushing is the most famous project of Scott Cortez, who is kind of a cult hero for shoegaze’s most aesthetic-heavy territories. Under this alias and with the aid of vocalist Melissa Arpin-Duimstra, he set about pairing shoegaze tones with the even-more-expansive framework of ambient, drone and noise. ‘Distant’ and ‘dreamlike’ don’t even begin to cover it – “Babysbreath” is arguably the project’s most accessible song, and it still sounds like a childhood memory half-remembered through a thousand years’ worth of hazey forgetfulness. Almost three decades on, Bloweyelashwish still sounds remarkably forward-thinking for this style; it’s well worth a little patience.

Astrobrite – “Goddess” (2007)

Another of Scott Cortez’s main projects, Astrobrite is an electric blanket to Lovesliescrushing’s ethereal dreamplane, more akin to good ol’ sloppy noise pop in its structure but no less dense in its layerings. The project’s near-masterpiece Pinkshinyultrablast is an almost stifling bombardment of woozy fuzz, while the followup Whitenoise Superstar opted for a much brighter, washed-out sound with occasional forays into atmospheric drum and bass to waft things along. It’s a good deal less consistent, but the album highlight “Goddess” doubles down on what Astrobrite does best: a couple of great melodies and a shitton of rapturous noise.

Paik – “Dizzy Stars” (2004)

Even compared to the heavygaze we’ve already seen, Paik really like to play things in full flex. Though it runs at just under an hour, their 2004 highlight Satin Black is an absolutely vast album, space/post rock and nauseous shoegaze on the surface, all upheld by grooves that lurch with the pace and force of the earth’s bones grinding against each other. “Dizzy Stars” is a perfect balance between its near-nauseating swells of feedback and earthquake rhythms; it might look like a stretch for the attention span, but Paik’s engrossing gazehaze holds things together so seamlessly that you’ll be treating it as a cruiser several spins on.

The Angelic Process – “We All Die Laughing” (2007)

Weighing Souls With Sand is harrowing as literal hell and feels like being buried alive in a combined mix of every single post-childhood regret, your lifelong browsing history and sloooow-drying cement. It does use shoegaze to provide the occasional (fleeting) glimmer of light, but mostly it’s pure fuzzy punishment and not the kind of thing I feel equipped to describe directly beyond a certain point. Listen if you feel prepared. 

Looking a little more widely, The Angelic Process’ drone metal soundscaping and pacing recalls the more expansive approach taken by Nadja, while its sheer emotional weight has (un)comfortable overlap with lo-fi/post-punk/gaze titans Have A Nice Life. I don’t really consider The Angelic Process the ‘best’ of the three, but they are undoubtedly the heaviest and about as dense as you can get without stepping outside shoegaze’s sphere of appeal and marching on towards harsh noise wall and other estranged territories. 

Xinlisuprime – “Fatal Sisters Opened Umbrella” (2002)

Tomorrow Never Comes sounds like sitting in the middle of a cold puddle of despair and self-disappointment in the middle of a cold room with grey walls. And a grey sky (visible through a dirty fucking windowpane somewhere in said cold room). It’s noisy and depressive, occasionally at piercing extremes— even compared to The Angelic Process, this is some bleak shit. It’s the the pervasiveness of that atmosphere combined with a few overwhelming walls-of-sound that net it a place in the Dense den, and although its late highlight “Fatal Sisters Opened Umbrella” is a prime example of the latter, it’s actually one of the most inviting songs on the album. Its drench of minor chords and searing climax motif are far more melodically forthcoming than the bulk of these tracks, practically a ray of sunshine compared to their sombre chords and clattering beats. It’s another pick that I’d consider essential for Have A Nice Life fans, but anyone interested in shoegaze for gratifying swoonsongs had better grit their teeth for this one.

Six’s Pix: Skywave – “Don’t Say Slow” (2004), They Are Gutting a Body of Water – “Double Apple” (2019)

Part 7: Crossover gaze

Alright, that’s enough purism. For anyone screaming “What if X, but also shoegaze?”, do not fear, all the answers are right here. Maybe. Shoegaze is first and foremost a sound, with limited songwriting specificity and a generous amount of malleability as long as you give it the space and time to, y’know, gaze: no surprise that all sorts have artists have smuggled it into genre domains that would have had had no reason to occur to its founders (although by all means, do not skip Slowdive’s incredible 5 EP). This is where we get weird and wonderful.

This section is too eclectic to have a single core text, but if there’s one poster child record that we’re going to take as read, it’s Sweet Trip’s Velocity : Design : Comfort (2003): that record’s marriage of gaze and dream pop with glitched-out IDM is deservedly legendary and begs no further introduction (which is convenient, because it’s probably the only healthy union that group have anything to do with right now). Beyond that, make sure you give these their due:

Yellow Kitchen – “Toves” (1998)

This album is awesome! Yellow Kitchen were a regrettably short-lived Seoul group, and they did an absolutely bang-up job of marrying shoegaze’s shimmery expanse with IDM, backed by a cocktail of other odds and ends (a hint of trip-hop there, a little techno there, a midway ethereal wave stint because of course). They do share a resemblance to Seefeel with Sweet Trip’s early work, but they’re more geared towards a full-on daydream. It’s like kicking back in a space station (zero grav obviously) and tuning in to disparate bleeps and zoops and just loving life from a whimsical detached floaty perspective. Anyhow, each track on Mushroom, Echoway, Kleidose goes through subtly distinct stylistic motions, but “Toves” is a great starting point.

Bowery Electric – “Inside Out” (1996)

…and while we’re on the topic of great shoegaze/trip-hop crossovers probably inspired by Seefeel, Bowery Electric are a shoe-in. On the face of it, their record Beat juxtaposes shoegaze’s wavering shimmer against trip-hop’s steady gait to occasionally nauseous effect, but there’s something so holistic about it that neither genre feels particularly adequate as a descriptor. Tellingly, the album is equally distinctive when it ventures into straight-up ambient (which makes up a surprising proportion of its runtime) – the atmospheric focus here is strong as anything, and it’s rare to hear a group who can tame shoegaze’s woozy excesses into playing a relatively understated role so seamlessly. Peep the Seefeel breakaway group Scala for a more disorienting complement to this.

Supercar – “Playstar Vista” (2000)

Whether they were dishing out alt-rock earworms, knuckling down to bracing lo-fi bangers, flirting with Shibuya Kei or dream pop, or making the greatest indietronica album of all time, Supercar were friends to shoegaze throughout their idyllic career. 

They rarely made it a primary focus, but “Playstar Vista” fares splendidly as a semi-dedicated gazer. Kicking off their ginormous opus Futurama (likened for good reason to OK Computer), the band stretch their legs over a sauntering breakbeat and sparkling keys before swooning into a guitar attack in lieu of a chorus. It’s the kind of song sunbeams are made of, dated and perhaps even retro in the most delicious way. Wonderful band.

Coaltar of the Deepers – “Automation Structures” (2007)

No-one fits into the oddball gallery as easily as Coaltar of the Deepers. Where shoegaze aesthetics come as a final layer of gloss to many groups, Coaltar essentially put the style at the centre of their compass, taking every other track as a basis for a weird and wild departure. Their discography does pack a handful of “pure” gaze stunners, among which Submerge’s “Natsunogyouminzaka” and Come Over to the Deepend’s “Thunderbolt” come highly recommended, but this band’s joy is their vast range of ways to get you clutching the edge of your seat. Taken from the mystifying Yukari Telepath, “Automation Structures” hotwires the band’s gazehaze to an onslaught of lurching space-metal and foreboding keyboards. It’s warped and wonderful, and boy is there more where that came from…

Boris – “Luna” (2011)

Pick pretty much any atmospherically-inclined realm of guitar music, and Boris can get a look in one way or another. They’ve never made a whole album out of shoegaze specifically, but their alternative/pop departure New Album comes pretty close. Many of the record’s gazier tracks are novelties within the world of Boris but old hat within shoegaze, but the bonus track “Luna” packs something more original: Boris hybridise shoegaze’s wall-of-sound with spiraling electronics and dizzying pacing, laying down something elated, ecstatic and undeniably epic. Its dense palette and cascading beats bring to mind the kind of thing Scott Cortez would likely make if he swapped his dope for stims. Magnificent stuff.

Alcest – “Souvenirs D’un Autre Monde” (2007)

Blackgaze belongs so much more to the wider world of atmospheric black metal than shoegaze proper that I was reluctant to include it here – Deafheaven’s limp attempt at a legitimate shoegaze album last year is a convenient illustration of why. All the same, it’s a big enough niche to demand acknowledgement, and the gorgeous title track from Alcest’s now-(I guess)-historic debut is as flattering a placeholder as any. Like most Alcest, it’s pretty but corny; there’s something deeply interior and reserved about shoegaze that I often find awkward paired against brash metal kitsch, but subgenre MVP Neige does a great job of navigating this here.

・・・・・・・・・(Dots) – “Trinity Dive” (2018)

Rounding off this section, we have the inevitable idolgaze. Japan’s alt-idol scene is stuffed with novelty crossovers, many of which promise a disarmingly excellent time depending on how well you jive with anything-goes spirit of whizzkid producers leaning on their idols’ notoriously tacky vocal standards. The anonymous Dots project was more adventurous than many, rooting its brand of idol pop in shoegaze but venturing into noise, field recordings and kaleidoscopic techno on a series of one-offs. The project has since been rebooted and rebranded as the somewhat less cryptic but equally gazey Ray, but “Trinity Dive” from the untitled Dots debut makes an especially sugary case for the group’s niche.

Part 8: Nu-gaze / Loud dream pop / Twinkly bullshit / The World Is Big

This isn’t really a cohesive category so much as an anything-goes catch-all for particularly notable stuff that happened throughout the Western gaze revival (or as an international complement). Because – shock of all horrors – after getting curbstomped by the ‘90s music press and flitting in and out of subculture like a migratory ghost over the ‘00s, shoegaze’s popularity clawed its way back to arguably an all-time high. Its leading lights past and present now enjoy celebrated platforms and successful comebacks, it has an established TikTok presence, and its antihype has sublimated into meme status – to quote Tobi Valli of Bikini Kill (Nov. 2021):

Can someone explain to my why people who play guitar have decided to revive shoegaze/dream pop and embrace dumb retro shit like Weezer in an era filled with violence, economic inequality, and abortion bans? The guitar pedal industrial complex is not the sound of the revolution.

so there you have it. Shoegaze has anesthetized Gen Z into smothering the revolution in their sleep. Here’s a disparate camp of contemporary(ish) culprits: 

Slowdive – “Don’t Know Why” (2017)

Much as “Alison” was both a stereotype and an ideal of the ‘90s dream pop song, “Don’t Know Why” saw Slowdive sweep back to lay down a similar landmark for the ‘10s. Arguably the poppiest they’ve ever sounded – certainly the most upbeat – this song is a virtual glossary of nu-gaze tropes: the breathless vocal textures, the expansive production, the evasive (yet very much mobile) dynamics, the crystalline melodic tones and delay effects, and the emphasis on reverb over fuzz offer here are all things you’ll see popping up again and again in various guises. It’s also a bloody excellent track, so mark them well.

Candy Claws – “New Forest (Five Heads of the Sun)” (2013)

Ultra-saturated psych pop ft. catchy baroque shit, colossally noisy bass, great two-part vocals and fantastical synthwork? Yes fucking please. Candy Claws are a little too cryptic to be an outright sugar rush, but they’re still one of the most gratifying fixes for anything in or out of shoegaze; “New Forest…” is one of their most upbeat and addictive cuts, a perfect showcase of the watertight songwriting that affords their kaleidoscopic tones such robust form. Ceres & Calypso in the Deep Time is probably some kind of contemporary classic at this point, which is cute, but the real keeper is that adorable seal on the cover art. Yum!

Greet Death – “New Hell” (2019)

Nu-emogaze is such a populated category that it probably warrants its own subheading. It doesn’t get one because 1) I’m generally not a fan, and 2) this is already amply represented within the portfolio of underwhelming Sputnik heartthrob JesperL, where you are welcome and encouraged to read up on your Turnover (not a shoegaze band!)s and your Gleemers. Greet Death make the list in part as a diversity hire and in part because the towering closer from their sophomore New Hell is bloody excellent, bordering post-rock and slowcore as it ekes out a devastating emotional climax amidst rich layerings. It’s as representative and powerful as anything you’ll get from this intersection of milk-sniffing sub-genres.

Tokenai Namae – “Double Platonic Suicide” (2017)

As you’ve probably gauged if you’ve paid attention to the picks so far, Japan caught the shoegaze bug early on and kept it up throughout the Western slump-years of the late ‘90s/early ‘00s. No surprise that it still has one of the most active scenes in the world today; I’m spoiled for choice when it comes to groups to rep here. While they don’t have the same clout as the likes of Luminous Orange, Tokyo Shoegazer, For Tracey Hyde, My Dead Girlfriend etc., Tokenai Namae inch out on top by virtue of being 1) comparatively underrepresented, 2) very good and 3) absolutely something that could only ever have come out of Japan. 

“Double Platonic Suicide” sees twee keyboard melodies played off against thunderous bass, cutesy vocals wavering over drenched-out walls of noise – it’s perfectly manicured in its constituent elements, but deliciously chaotic in their conjunction. Good tones and solid pop songwriting hold it all together: this is as good as gazey sugar rushes come.

Kinoko Teikoku – “Yotaka” (2013)

…and if Tokenai Namae’s tweeness is overkill, Kinoko Teikoku balance things out with a richer, more melancholic sound. Their first two records are packed with shoegaze masterclasses, but none are more bracing than “Yotaka”. The band spread their atmosphere like a night chill, vocalist Chiaki Sato delivering a magnetic performance while the track’s back-and-forth momentum and gazey undercurrent rub against one another with increasing tension. It comes together in a breathtaking climax, a showcase just as much of perfect rock dynamics as of shoegaze textures. Though their debut has a few dirges too many, this is a particularly good band to pick up as a gaze sceptic; their songwriting far transcends genre tropes.

Triángulo de Amor Bizarro – “Barca Quemada” (2016)

This Spanish noise pop quartet owes more overall to exemplary vocal melodies than they do to shoegaze, but their most recent pair of albums frequently set the two in tandem with glorious results. Perhaps the most upbeat song on the entire list, “Barca Quemada” is streaked with blazing guitar fuzz that calls all the way back to “You Never Should” and lands with the same visceral scuzz. They blare out over vocalist Isabel Cea’s deeply haunting melodies about mortality, ancestry and full-throated heart-straining yearning for life. This is one of those tracks where you absolutely feel it, language barrier be damned, and it’s remarkable how Triángulo de Amor Bizarro’s shoegaze stylings, so often a vehicle for delirium or desensitisation, translate into something so emotionally bracing. They have other excellent work in this style, but this is the one to spin on repeat until your ears bleed.

Part 10: The Future-Present: Gazin’ into the ‘20s

…and finally, here’s a few extra names to keep you that little bit more up to date. There’s no meaningful distinction with the previous section other than their release dates, but hopefully if you’ve made it this far, you’re down with the maxim that more [good] gaze is good gaze. One last push!

Parannoul – “Insomnia” (2021)

…so when I wrote off nu-emogaze with Greet Death, I was thinking exclusively of boring drippy US artists and not at all of exciting drippy Korean/Brazilian ones. “Downfall of the Neon Youth” is awesome and probably the most significant shoegaze landmark of the decade so far along with Hum’s comeback. The three contributing artists Asian Glow, Parannoul and Sonhos Tomam Conta all stand tall in contemporary emo: Asian Glow is my favourite, but more concerned with lo-fi and noise pop than shoegaze proper; Sonhos Tomam Conta is the most mercurial and perhaps most creative, but it’s Parannoul’s dual affinity for widescreen nostalgia and introverted melancholy that offers the clearest vision for bedroom-made, bedroom-ready emogaze. 

Their debut To See The Next Part Of The Dream packed a small handful of towering opuses, but its digital-lofi production and heavy reliance on MIDI tones left a fair bit to be desired. Their contributions to Downfall of the Neon Youth haven’t outgrown either of those, but they sound far more polished in confident in their implementation – suddenly Parannoul’s angle has shifted from an anxious bedroom-enclosed POV to the exactly kind of giddy urban panorama conveniently pictured on DOTNY’s citysap artwork. “Insomnia” is a succinct, if particularly twinkly entrypoint, and you’d better believe that things only get bigger from there.

Della Zyr – “Dream II: 저울” (2022)

Speaking of exciting fresh K-gaze, Della Zyr’s debut a couple of months put them straight onto the map. In stark contrast to the Downfall of the Neon Youth pantheon, they place a refreshing emphasis on clean tones and acoustic instruments, along with non-linear songwriting, wistful midwesternisms and mobile dynamics that all pan out as anything from oneiric to innocuously meandering. It’s a little stop-start as such, suggestive of an artist finding their sound without quite mastering it, but the mammoth “Dream II: 저울” is a promising sign that they fare best at their most expansive: its sweeping movements cover the most ground and feel the most rewarding. So listen to them! Mark this page!

Animal Ghosts – “Rehab” (2020)

Droning guitars, shrill synths with immaterial melodies, catatonic vocals, huge melancholy, the feeling of being in a moving vehicle (likely public transport) and staring out of the window without taking in any of your surroundings… yep this is a contemporary bedroomgaze track, and a fine one too! Animal Ghosts’ neon-tinged gloom is perhaps a little indistinct in the wider sea of sadgaze, but that doesn’t make it any less craftful or evocative. Anyhow, he’s also collaborated with Nice Dreamgaze Artist Japanese Heart Software (both artists appear on the second tracks of each other’s Wail and SOFT), so that’s nice. He’s released a slightly antisocial number of albums within not many years, but that’s no reason not to tune in right now.

Split End – “Yahan no Tsuki” (2021)

Split End are wonderful and I love them! They’re a four-piece girl band from Nara and they have the perfect giddy hooks and breathless delivery. Wonderful! They stand out among female-fronted Japanese bands since their roots are firmly in pop rock and power pop, while shoegaze is more of an auxiliary element that’s become increasingly prominent over their most recent material – their sound is more up-front and a certain degree cutesier than your average J-girlgazes. Last year’s “Yahan no Tsuki” shows this off to its best, easily the most wholesale shoegaze song they’ve made so far. It’s unsurprisingly extremely lovely. What’s next?

Kraus – “Fell For It” (2021)

Why bother picking between surging distortion and soothing bedroom soundscapes when you can simply turn the former into the latter. Kraus is like hearing a blaring open-air show from two blocks away and daydreaming yourself into the audience. His washed-out vocals and dense walls of sound have a lot in common with Astrobrite, but he’s a lot less demanding. Last year’s View No Country was a triumph of high-decibel bedroom gaze, one succinct, solid song after another – no highlights, no weak links, just 35ish minutes of excellent loud-shy gaze. “Fell For It” is the second song on the album, which makes it the second good song on the album. Catch up!

The End

…I think that’s it? Everything worth generalising over with (hopefully) enough of the specifics referenced in some ways? Did I miss anything criminal? Let me know below if so! Like I said, this isn’t an encyclopedia, it’s a map: use it wisely or unwisely or not at all, get out and make your own discoveries, or, I dunno, spend the rest of your gazedaze spinning Loveless or The Great Dismal or Sudbather or whatever on repeat. This is just a springboard or a discussion point; it’s your call whether or not you want to make shoegaze your own thing. 

However, if there’s some spanning truth that each of these blurb-threads all draw back to one way or another, it’s that there is so much there to be made. In a similar way to the early post-rock bands, shoegaze has a way of eroding the form of rock music and refashioning it as something abstract, something malleable. In the wrong hands this easily ends up as vacuous or decorative, but, whether it’s a standalone attraction or in an auxiliary role, I think it takes a shrewd artist to turn that into something that lives and sings and shines and soaks up all the patience you set aside for it. A lot of it sounds the same, but the difference between good and bad shoegaze in practice is night and day; some of it is ported over to completely different stylistic ballparks, yet is instantly recognisable regardless. Its saturation with homogenous acts offers vast rewards to an unfussy listener, but anyone picky will find it broad enough to cater to whatever preferences and standards can be thrown at it. So throw them! After all, it’s just a sound.

Happy gazing.