Recommend to me some good Shoegaze(y) music...

Cafe Society
1

…Please.

I have long been a fan of the following shoegaze or quasi-shoegaze bands:
My Bloody Valentine (duh!)
(The) Verve (A Storm in Heaven album is awesome)
Lush
Catherine Wheel
Ride
Swervedriver
Cocteau Twins
Jesus and Mary Chain
Slowdive
Sigur Ros (well that’s sorta Shoegaze)

So, there’s no need to recommend any of those since I’m already familiar. I’m looking for more. It seems there is a shortage of good shoegaze music.

Are there any old shoegaze groups that I don’t recall? Any newer artists that have adopted some noticeable showgaze influence? Specific song recommendations would be icing on the cake.

Dopers been historically been a good crowd to ask for music recommendations, but I can’t search past threads right now for related content. I gratefully thank you in advance for your input. :slight_smile:

2

I’ll be the first and last, hopefully, to say “shoegazing doesn’t exist, it’s just blah blah blah.” We always get replies like that to shoegaze threads.

Now, Foreign Born is the best, or only, obvious shoe gaze band out these days. Don’t listen to “Union Hall” - it’s a cheap rip off of Arcade Fire - but most of their other stuff goes in and out of shoe gaze, sticking mainly to indie pop.

If you mean more along the lines of Jesus and Mary Chain, Magnetic Fields new album is trying to be “more Jesus and Mary Chain than Jesus and Mary Chain” and I’d tend to agree. Distortion

You’ve got most of the old bands covered. There’s a new comp out that’s called, I think, Brit Box that’s essentially a Shoegaze wet dream. Google it.

Do you want long drawn out droning? If that’s all you are after I can be of greater help.

3

Not everyone considers Silversun Pickups a shoegaze band but I think they’d fit well with the other bands you mentioned.

4

Nevermind

5

**Galaxie 500 ** and its partial successor, Luna (and if those aren’t enough, the **Damon & Naomi ** stuff). Start with G500’s live set Copenhagen and Luna’s Bewitched. Galaxie 500’s music may be too stately for many (I prefer it in small doses, to be honest), but they are the godfathers of the whole shoegazer genre.

**Mazzy Star ** – So Tonight I Might See (key song: “Fade Into You”). You may not recognize this song by artist or title, but trust me, you’ve heard it.

Suede (U.K./sometimes called The London Suede) – key song: “The Drowners,” off their best (and debut) eponymously titled 1993 LP. Fair warning: there’s a big drop-off in quality with this band after their debut.

**Mercury Rev ** – I’m guessing they’re sufficiently shoegazerish to satisfy; in any event, they’re a great band and have produced some truly interesting music. You’ll probably end up getting most of their output eventually, so why not start with their debut, Yerself Is Steam? IIRC, when I finally got around to buying this one, it came with a free bonus disc of various shoegazer-ish artists, titled Mint Humbucker, so be on the lookout for that.

6

Are you giving a recommendation or did you decide not to post…?

7

You ever have that moment when you realize you missed out on a whole subgenre of music when you were younger? Shoegaze was apparently at the height of its popularity when I was in high school, but I never heard of it. Until last year.

While exploring the genre I found most of the ones on your list, as well as Curve, Dinosaur Jr, and Bleach. It seems to have only had a small number of bands creating that sound.

This article recommends a few bands that are reminiscent of shoegaze. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and The Dandy Warhols are bands I like too (120 Days and Sigur Ros are nice as well, from the little I’ve heard by them), but they don’t sound terribly like shoegaze to me. YMMV. I think if you’re looking for recent stuff that sounds like that you’re better off with Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s, The American Analog Set, The Appleseed Cast and as HongKongFooey said Silversun Pickups.

8

I thought the first two Blur albums, Leisure and Modern Life Is Rubbish were quite shoegaze-y. By album two they were re-inventing Britpop but there are definitely moments.

9

I realized after posting that I wasn’t enitely certain what shoegaze was and after some quick googling and wiki-browsing, discovered that my definition of it was pretty much entirely wrong. I was recommending the entirely wrong kind of music. “Sadcore”, for lack of a less-lame genre name.

10

Ah, I thought you were offering Nirvana, which again would be an entirely wrong kind of music. No way out! And shoegaze really doesn’t mean anything, besides, perhaps, wall of sound. One can argue it’s a very specific time in UK music, but that’s like saying punk is only mid 70’s NY bands. I can easily see some sadcore bands falling into the general classification, if you want to post them anyway.

11

How about Blonde Redhead? I haven’t heard much of them, but they remind me of Cocteau Twins and My Bloody Valentine.

12

The bands I was recommending were Venice is Sinking, Stars of Track and Field, and Loquat. They’re pretty mellow indie pop and not really fitting in with most of the bands listed in this thread but they do share similarities with some.

13

What the F is shoegaze?

14

I’m going to work with a pretty broad idea of what shoegaze is–I’m not much of a purist–but you should find some bands in here that interest you:
Jesu are an interesting mix of shoegaze and metal, which I highly recommend. There have been a lot of groups that mix shoegaze with electronic elements, like: Seefeel, Fennesz, and drone artists Tim Hecker, Greg Davis. Then there are still plenty of more modern indie bands that have an obvious shoegaze influence: Deerhunter and the related project Atlas Sound, The Twilight Sad, The Brother Kite, Kiss Me Deadly, Paik. I especially recommend the band Sunny Day In Glasgow, and their album “Scribble Mural Comic Journal” which I’ve been listening to a lot lately. I can provide track recommendations upon request.

15

For msmith537: A description of shoegaze music

16

Also, forgot to mention the contempoary band Asobi Seksu, and Serena Maneesh, who probably sound more like conventional shoegaze than the other bands I listed earlier.

17

Uh, no. There are dozens upon dozens of shoegazing bands around these days. Hit up Tonevendor and poke around.

Stuff you may have missed not mentioned on this thread yet:

Moose were one of the original bands from the Scene That Celebrates Itself, but they’ve been forgotten lately, probably because most of their albums are out of print. But XYZ, Honeybee and Live A Little, Love A Lot are all brilliant. Heartbreakingly beautiful albums, but nobody wanted to know.

Chapterhouse again one of the original Shoegaze bands… Whirlpool is a classic of the genre. Global Communication remade their second album into the gorgeous Pentamerous Metamorphosis.

Ecstacy of St. Theresa A Czech band who did all sorts of amazing stuff, but Sussurate is the album you want. They have an EP called fluidtrance centauri which pretty much channels the best MBV had to offer. Their later stuff is more ambient/postrock.

Love Spirals Downwards a Projekt band for fans of the Cocteau Twins. Idylls is gothic, Cocteaulike, then Ardor and Ever step up the shoegaze. Then they went kind of electronic with Flux, but it’s still good.

The Lilys but only their first album, In The Presence of Nothing. One of the first wave of American shoegazers, a la the Drop Nineteens or the Swirlies. Their later albums are all over the place genre-wise.

Bailter Space a New Zealand band, probably wrote the best shoegazing song ever, called simply “X”.

Secret Shine, who released a new album this year after about 11 years on hiatus. Get the comp “After Years” consisting of stuff recorded for Sarah Records in the early 90s. New album isn’t bad either.

Sugar Plant are Japanese and started out as Galaxie 500 imitators. Came into their own when they branched out into Slowdivesque shoegaze. Get the Happy/Trance Mellow double disc set. After After Hours is also great, if more slowcore than gaze.

Rumskib has one album, self-titled. Far and away my favorite album from 2007. From Denmark. Goregeous!

M83 are a bit more ambient/electronic but will bust out the wall of guitars from time to time. They’ve got the spirit of the thing.

And there’s much more… She, Sir have a nice EP, House of Love are more straight pop but much to love for shoegazing fans, more spacerock drone but great are Magnog, Bowery Electric… dreampop stuff like Alison’s Halo, Aberdeen, A.R. Kane. Yo La Tengo aren’t really shoegaze but the shoegazers sure do love them, similarly true for Mahogany. Then you can go really obscure and try Brincando de Deus from Brazil (epic track with great title, “Why Don’t You Kill Yourself on Your Birthday?” I could go on…

18

If the Cocteaus are shoegaze now, I guess anything could be…
anyway, an precursor genre would C-86 - early Primal Scream, The Pastels definitely, you might like The Wedding Present, bands that got labeled also as “twee pop” or “shambling”.