Rock went underground in the 1980s. Yes, there was The Joshua Tree and Appetite for Destruction but, broadly speaking, the decade’s abiding tone was set by gazillion selling pop artists with shiny synths, processed beats, and funky dance routines. But beneath the surface, the guitar backlash of the 90s was gathering pace, in the jangly folk of R.E.M. and the mordant indie of the Cure and the Smiths. A central and enduringly influential aspect of this phenomenon was a strange, psychedelically tinged variant of rock known to some as ‘dreampop’ and to others as ‘shoegaze’. This musical style was first conceived in the early 80s by the likes of the Cocteau Twins and the Jesus and Mary Chain, and its tendrils stretch out in multiple directions, from ethereal goth to baggy Madchester to the embryonic Britpop records of the mid-90s. If we hope to understand the transition from the underground alternative rock of the 80s to the multimillion selling guitar acts of the 90s, then we must confront the lackadaisical, blissed out, shower dodging, dole collecting, daytime TV watching architects of shoegaze, that’s if we can stir them from their lugubrious slumber.
My understanding of dreampop’s genealogy comes almost entirely from the 2014 documentary Beautiful Noise, which profiles many of its luminaries and which posits the existence of a single tradition, or at least of a continuity, between the Cocteau Twin’s Treasure and early 90s British rock bands like Slowdive or Ride. Certainly, the legitimacy of this process of elision is highly debateable, because it isn’t always obvious that we are dealing here with a unified sound. Some of it is manifestly pop music (Heaven or Las Vegas), some of it is gothic indie (Psychocandy), some of it borders on punk rock but with incongruously angelic vocals (Ride’s Nowhere), some of it is proto-Britpop (especially Lush), and some of it sounds like mid-90s American alternative rock (My Bloody Valentine’s loveless).
Overall, though, and in my opinion, there are certain basic commonalities that indeed allow us to speak of a unified dreampop / shoegaze sound. These include, but are not restricted to; swirling and distorted guitars which, though they can be heavy, never sound as sharp or as savage as those on a Guns N’ Roses record; ethereal vocals turned down almost imperceptibly low in the mix, so that they appear as one amongst many musical instruments rather than the centrepiece of the song; and lyrics which are largely or almost completely unintelligible and nonsensical. Dreampop / shoegaze rarely sounds clean or clear; it is characterised by an opaque, wall-of-sound-like quality which, coupled with the gibberish lyrics, makes for a hazy, half-awake listening experience. Of course, there are variations here; loveless is heavier than Slowdive, while Ride’s lyrics make more sense than, say, Kevin Shield’s (which isn’t saying much; so do my four-year-old’s renditions of the Moana soundtrack). But the basic features, the hazy unreality of the listening experience, remains unmistakeable.
Clearly, too, this is a genre that developed in the early 80s, before running out of steam in the mid-90s. Ultimately, shoegaze was beset by the nightmarishly intimidating alliance of Kurt Cobain and Liam Gallagher, grasped by the seat of its (no doubt soaked) trousers, and peremptorily hurled off stage, where it lay whimpering while everyone else got drunk. The historical reasons for this must remain a matter of conjecture, but there’s definitely something dissociative about dreampop, a wilful checking out and refusal to aggressively tackle or meet the demands of reality (though, as indicated by Kevin Shield’s anal-retentive perfectionism and refusal to satisfy his record company by releasing a new album, repressed aggression has ways of manifesting itself). In that sense, dreampop rather neatly fills the gap between 70s punk and 90s grunge / Britpop, musical styles which showed few reservations about tapping into a wellspring of phallic hostility. Perhaps shoegaze represented a temporary return of the wilting feminine to an otherwise muscular musical style.
The budding shoegaze afficionado should probably begin their sojourn into the collective unconscious with early Cocteau Twins or Jesus and Mary Chain records. But here at the wildly successful musicalmindscapes.com, we are done with the 80s, and so it is to the gung-ho 90s that we turn, which is no great loss, because the opening years of this decade constitute both the peak and last hurrah of the genre. In my view, the following four albums provide the most complete and instructive overview of shoegaze at its moment of biggest cultural import.
Heaven or Las Vegas by the Cocteau Twins (1990)
The Cocteau Twins arguably kicked off the dreampop / shoegaze moment with their seminal 1984 album Treasure, but I’m not a massive fan of that record; the songs are too formless, the lyrics too nonsensical and, in my opinion, the surfeit of gothic wailing and oblique references to characters from classical literature frequently verges on self-parody. On 1990’s Heaven or Las Vegas, however, many of these issues were remedied; the songs are tighter, poppier, more conventionally structured, and indeed, almost every track is a proverbial banger; the warm and melancholy opener “Cherry Coloured Funk”; the lively and mischievous “Pitch the Baby”, one of few songs on the album with halfway cohesive lyrics; and the ethereal euphoria of “Iceblink Luck”. Perhaps the standout moment is the jaded, weary, but still shimmering title track, which rather brilliantly posits Sin City as the antithesis of paradise, a living hell of prurient torment. In my opinion, Heaven or Las Vegas represents the most perfect marriage of shoegaze’s hazy, half-awake aesthetic with pop concision and discipline.
9/10
Standout track: “Heaven or Las Vegas”
Gala by Lush (1990)
Whereas Heaven or Las Vegas places the emphasis squarely on the “pop” component of the dreampop formula, Gala brings out the genre’s latent hard rock underpinnings. Yes, the languid shoegaze style is very much in evidence, particularly toward the start of the album – the angelic choral singing of “Sweetness and Light”, the muffled, underwater sound of “Sunbathing” – and the entire record is riven with the jangly, distorted guitars, low, imperceptible vocals, and oblique, vaguely erotic lyrics which are the hallmarks of the genre. And yet much of Gala is surprisingly fast paced, uncompromising, and very much awake rather than dreamy; on songs like “De-Luxe” and “Leaves me Cold”, the driving, sinister bass lines and scuzzy, feedback-heavy guitars are premonitory of female-fronted Britpop acts like Elastica and Republica, while “Bitter” borders on punk. Much like Ride’s Nowhere, Lush points to the subtle links between sloppy shoegaze and the defiant, brattish sound of early Britpop albums such as Leisure. None of which changes the fact that, unfortunately, most of the album is pretty forgettable.
6/10
Standout track: “Sweetness and Light”
loveless by My Bloody Valentine (1991)
If Gala forecasts Britpop’s debt to shoegaze, then My Bloody Valentine’s loveless points to the aetiology of much late-90s alternative rock music like the Smashing Pumpkins and Placebo, as well as ethereal 21st century synth rock such as M83. It might be going too far to suggest that these acts simply lifted their whole sound from this album – but you could certainly build a case for that argument. Once again, for a record that’s commonly considered part of such a languid genre, loveless is remarkably heavy; the guitars are loud, rollicking, fuzzy, the drums stark and driving, the choruses frequently thunderous. But the hallmarks of dreampop are also in evidence; spectral vocals turned down low in the mix; unintelligible, sensual lyrics; warm, pulsing, haunting synths; and opaquely structured songs which point to the dream-like nature of the listening experience. It’s an enormously influential album but, overall, I prefer the clearer, punchier vocals, more cohesive lyrics, and more conventional song structures of the acts I grew up listening to. With loveless, My Bloody Valentine set the template for a lot of 90s alternative rock, but it was Billy Corrgan who perfected it, despite being a massive wanker.
7/10
Standout Track: “Only Shallow”
Souvlaki by Slowdive, (1993)
“We hate Slowdive more than Adolf Hitler.” This was the opinion of Richey Edwards, the acerbic, brainy, long-since vanished lyricist of the Welsh rock band Manic Street Preachers. From young Richard’s perspective, the apolitical naval gazing of dreampop was utterly inimical to the revolutionary rage which, in his view, provided the rocket fuel for all good rock. And, yes, shoegaze is very druggy: as alluded to in the introduction, it reeks of getting high and checking out, of simply detaching from the world and its problems to sit in a room moping, getting stoned or shooting up. And for anyone who does indeed want to indulge in this experience, Souvlaki perhaps provides the perfect background music. The songs are subdued and glacial, with droopy, lethargic bass and deflated, indistinct vocals backdropped by delayed guitars and lush synths. The tone is set on the opening songs – “Alison”, a melancholy tribute to a drug-addled ex-girlfriend; “Machine Gun”, a concussed suicide anthem; “Sing”, an icy, homoerotic dreamscape – and it varies little throughout the rest of the album. There’s certainly no danger of Souvlaki invading Poland – all aggression has been repressed, sublimated, dissipated into a fitful, mournful, slightly pitiful, and rather disconcerting sense of Weltschmerz. In my opinion, this is the quintessential shoegaze album, and one of few that is actually listenable as well as being influential.
8/10
Standout track: “Machine Gun”