Gazin’ III!
School of Seven Bells – Half Asleep
Part 3 of 3; Part 1 may be found here and Part 2 may be found here.
THESE POSTS ARE MEANT TO BE PLAYED LOUD.
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Despite resistance to the style in its infancy, shoegaze has proven surprisingly influential, durable and adaptable. (An analogy to Impressionism – also originally a mocking term coined by a curmudgeonly critic – could probably be made).
Here are some modern(ish) descendants; these bands either play straight-up shoegaze, or incorporate elements of it into their sound.
Up top: If School of Seven Bells never made another song after the bejeweled, serpentine “Half Asleep” – with its swooping, swooning Cocteau Twins melody, and drums starbursting behind your eyes on the chorus – well, one song like this is enough.* I don’t know if my heart could’ve taken any more. It makes me happy and sad all at once. One of my absolute-favorite tracks of the last decade. Play it again, then again; if you’re not in love by the third time, I’ll never understand you.
Asobi Seksu – Never Understand (JAMC cover)
Speaking of the JAMC, they called, and they want their black leather jackets back:
Raveonettes – Attack of the Ghost Riders
Black Rebel Motorcyle Club – White Palms
What’s interesting to me about “White Palms” (other than that lumbering, incantatory groove) is that the JAMC would have played those lyrics for blasphemy and shock value. But I don’t get that sense from this song. I think there is a genuine religious longing; a prodigal narrator both pleading/begging/daring Jesus to come back (the narrator’ll say anything to get His attention), and simultaneously terrified that Jesus WILL come back, and see the mess the narrator’s in (that heartbreaking little coda, “I wouldn’t come back, if I’d’a been Jesus / I’m the kinda guy who leaves the scene of a crime”).
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Good bands, bad bandnames:
Ringo Deathstarr – Two Girls
This track is VERY Slowdive:
Drone Dimension – Daydream Delay
Whereas this band is the most ridiculously MBV-ish:
Fleeting Joys – Lovely Crawl
This type of music is often meant to evoke altered mental or emotional states, and affect the listener’s perception of time – some shoegaze seemingly moves in slow motion, or is obsessively, repetitively focused around a simple hook(s). This is not country, or folk, or hip-hop – it’s rarely political, and it usually doesn’t tell complete stories. If the music is often maximalist, the lyrics can be minimalist and fragmentary…
Lassie Foundation – El Rey
…”El Rey”‘s chorus – a simple repetition of the phrase “Here she comes (walking right at you)” – is an excellent example of all this; it recalls the intoxication of young love, distilled into one frame; the capture of a single, unforgettable moment; the precise second when the world stops being what it was, and you can glimpse something else.
Good bandname, though I am iffier on the band:
A Place to Bury Strangers – Don’t Think Lover
That photo of twisted metal, nicely suits that rending sound in the “chorus”:
Was that a little much? Here, clear your palate with this lovely little ambient number:
Mahogany – Red Marrow, His Sorrow
Now that you’re relaxed, here’s one of my favorite noisier tracks from recent years.
That oscillating sound gets me GOING. Better than coffee in the AM:
Weekend – Coma Summer
Bringing it back down (how many movie tributes are in here?):
Beach House – Lazuli
And back up (this song gets stuck in my head something awful awesome, and I like that this video seems to hurtle forward at the same speed as the song):
Deerhunter – Vox Celeste
And back down:
Tamaryn – I’m Gone
And back up:
The Fauns – Seven Hours
Yo La Tengo bring the ‘gaze when they feel like it:
Yo La Tengo – From A Motel 6
But all it ever got them was a compulsory trip to The Academy of Rock, and an eye-opening “Intro to Rush” course taught by Professor Bob Odenkirk:
Yo La Tengo – Sugarcube
Well, at least they learned enough at rock school to land a big gig – opening for the reunited Beatles:
Yo La Tengo – Tom Courtenay
(See also: “Deeper Into Movies”; “Decora”; “Blue Line Swinger”; etc.)
The style has been absorbed by musicians approaching from the metal side:
Boris – Farewell
Jesu – Silver
We’ll end our shoegaze series where it began, in Scotland.
(You know, it occurred to me just now that many of the originators and luminaries of this style of music are Scots or Irish; and what traditional instrument do we associate with Scots-Irish?
Yep – the droooooooooooonnnnne of bagpipes!)
Mogwai usually get tagged as instrumental/post-rock, but that trembling, massive wall of guitar owes more than a bit to shoegaze:
Mogwai – Helicon 1
EPIC…and not just the brogue:
The Twilight Sad – And She Would Darken The Memory
* After I wrote this post, School of Seven Bells’ guitarist Benjamin Curtis (also of the Secret Machines and Tripping Daisy) died of cancer. He was 35.
Here are a couple more tracks I like by SVIIB (check the guy in the background at 3:18 in the second video).
RIP Benjamin.
Image by Pendeln via Wikimedia Commons.
Speaking of bad band names, Asobi Seksu is in a class by itself. It’s crass and witless, an offense compounded by their dainty yet lifeless imitation of noisepop music. I hate to think of myself as a hater, but Asobi Seksu’s existence confounds me.Report
Huh, I had no idea that’s what the name meant.
Still, it’s no worse than “Sex Pistols”, is it?
I thought the Citrus album was decent, but it’s the only one I’ve heard…
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“Sex Pistols” is funny. And then there’s the songs.Report
That Mogwai video was great. Most artists would be well advised to stay clear of stock footage of nuclear bomb tests, but it’s almost as if the band is playing to the video, a la Frank Zappa’s “Baby Snakes.”Report
AFAIK that’s a fan-made video, I don’t think the band sanctioned it. But yeah, the editing really works, doesn’t it?Report
I sure hope this post gets some relevant comments to bury my curmudgeonly slagging of AS. They’re terrible, but if I can’t say something nice . . .Report
I’m thinking everybody is all reverbed-out. Maybe three installments was too many.
But who’d I miss?
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there’s some stuff from the metal end but most of them i don’t enjoy too much re: sunnnnnnnn ooooooooooo)))). or blut aus nord or as i call them blut aus bored. ha ha get it?
subrosa is worth checking out, i like that one dreamless album, nadja is ok, pyramids is ok…
servile sect is rueeeaaal good:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OytJ_Ir_wuE
sutekh hexen has moments of being real good punctuated with less so of those moments.
you’d probably really like the angelic process.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfBd7J75L9c
i really enjoy both yoga and murmurre but they are ahem aquired tastes. they’re also more blackened/weird than gazey though i think the connections are pretty obvious.
http://yoga666.bandcamp.com/
http://murmuure.bandcamp.com/
(reincarnate is the bizzness)Report
Yeah, I don’t get the appeal of Sunn O))) either, and I have tried. Which is weird, ‘cos Earth is awesome, and I can’t really articulate the difference. Why is one drone awesome, and another one boring to me? No idea.
I have a Nadja (Radiance of Shadows, and also a Pyramids collaboration), but I don’t care for it too much.
Hey, that Angelic Process IS pretty good, thanks! But boy, as with some of the bands I featured above, that is one bad bandname. I guess all the good names are already taken.
Actually that one, and Servile Sect (is that name a Subway Sect tribute?), along with FSA and Astrobrite, (basically, lo-rez FUZZZZZ) kind of lead into next week’s (non-shoegaze) post.
Also, this isn’t bad:
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I didn’t know most of these artists, so it took me a while to get through them. I enjoyed the whole series, though. The first two in particular took me back.Report
Thanks dude!
I wish there had been better-quality uploads of the “Sugarcube” and “Tom Courtenay”videos available, but I had to include them anyway because they are great songs and hilarious videos.
“If you want to write rock lyrics, you will have to learn about…where the Hobbits dwell.”Report
Number nothing, Indie Rock Club.Report
I don’t know what’s better – Ira taking an eraser to the noggin for his Lou Reed picture, or getting “busted” smoking a clarinet in the boys’ room. The whole thing is basically a Mr. Show sketch.
“Don’t forget The Foghat Principle – fourth album should be double live.”Report