Look up 'ethereal' in the dictionary and you should find Lush, the English band whose press clippings introduced that word to an entire generation. Spooky balances layered, effects-laden guitars with the steady hum of pop hooks. "For Love" and Superblast!" are two highlights on this superb effort.
Catherine Wheel's debut combined the effects-laden guitar sounds of shoegazer music with a smoldering intensity lacking in most dream pop bands of the early 1990s. "I Want To Touch You," the almost upbeat "Shallow," and the blistering "Black Metallic" are just a few of the excellent reasons to rediscover Ferment.
If Gish unlocked the door for the Pumpkins, then Siamese Dream kicked it down. When Billy Corgan and Co. unleashed this beast in 1993, it cemented their role as alt-rock superstars, with "Disarm," "Cherub Rock," "Rocket" and "Today" dominating MTV and alternative radio. Reeling from addiction, depression and the pressure of being the "next Nirvana," the band embodied '90s heroin-chic malaise and created one of the decade's finest records, a cathartic mix of dream pop, grunge and prog rock.
An excellent guitar album, Painful is the band's first to get the balance right between their pop and drone sides. "From A Motel 6" is a great head-nodding indie rock jam while "Nowhere Near" shows how easily the band can capture the sound of stark, dimly lit roads. A beautiful take on the Only Ones' "The Whole Of The Law" is another reason to listen to this album.
Given their love for walls of sound, Swervedriver were often associated with the shoegazing bands of the early 1990s. But they had killer riffs and liked to make their guitars squeal, so their music seemed better suited to skidding out in your Camaro than moping around. The production is super clean, and tracks like "Duel" and "Never Lose That Feeling" sound fantastic.
Setting withered, angst-riddled lyrics to soaring melodies, singles "High and Dry," "Fake Plastic Trees" and "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" would go on to be alt radio staples. The fact that they're probably the most downtrodden songs on this album, also gave Radiohead the label as one of the world's most depressing bands. Here, they teeter on the line between the grunge inspiration of their debut and the expansive, nimble and technical musicianship that points to what would come in their future. This edition collects B-sides and live cuts that previously were scattered across singles and EPs.
Released in 1997, Mogwai's debut synthesized the hard rock bombast of Black Sabbath and the wide-eyed surrealism of shoegaze bands such as My Bloody Valentine and Spacemen 3. This 10th anniversary re-issue features a second disc of live cuts, including a 10-plus minute version of famed concert scorcher "Mogwai Fear Satan," as well as four rarities, the best being the sickly sweet "Honey."
Five years in creation, this two-disc album is even more uncompromising than its predecessors. There are no radio edits or anything remotely close to catchy. It's a solid expression of passion and fury, as run through Industrial and metal lifelines. With this record, Trent Reznor has upped the ante once again for fans of despair, electronics and violence.
The inverse to their "we wanna party" ethos from the landmark Screamadelica, this post-rave-era release from 2000 is bathed in anger and violence. Toying with everything from hip-hop to Stooges-punk, the Scottish innovators didn't try for a hit record here. This the album you listen to while tossing Molotov cocktails into Starbucks.
Released in 2001, Christian Fennesz's Endless Summer was an anomaly for glitch music, and not just because it took its title from the Beach Boys. Instead of the austere, clinical atmospheres of his clicks-and-cuts peers, Fennesz conjured a warm, rosy glow out of his CPU by feeding it lithe strands of electric guitar. The result is a real live wire of a record, twitching and spitting sparks, luminous as the phosphorescent tide.
Those who have yet to see the movie may not equate comic genius Bill Murray with swirling, cloud-dwelling dream pop, but it's a match made in music heaven. Reclusive guitar guru Kevin Shields comes out of hiding to join Air and other chill merchants in boldly going where most soundtracks fear to tread.
This 2005 album was rereleased in 2006. Norwegian newgazers Serena Maneesh erupt with adoration for all things My Bloody Valentine, with guitars that moan like monsters and a fluff-on-the-needle featherweight vocal style. This is what you need while waiting for MBV's Kevin Shields to bust out something new.
Yes, Japancakes are covering My Bloody Valentine's masterpiece and no, it's not like one of those Pickin' on the Beatles albums where some guy in a bolo tie hams up British invasion classics on his pedal steel. Japancakes' instrumental offering is more complimentary than corny. The steel guitar and string section beautifully approximate Belinda Butcher's airy vocals and Kevin Shields' innovative guitar melodies. Piano, Mellotron and drums round out songs like "To Here Knows When." Of course it's not as good as the original. It's not supposed to be. It's a tribute -- an awesome one at that.
This trio of hazy dream pop shoegazers is one of Los Angeles' greatest secrets. Made up of former members of Ednaswap and Maids of Gravity, they create noisy psychedelic pop where the drums sound like they're messing with your mind and the guitars are constantly glowing white hot.
As with their previous two albums, Phosphene Dream finds The Black Angels navigating the void between garage-psych revivalism and modern space-rock. Organ-laced brain throbbers like "Bad Vibrations" and "Entrance Song" make it clear the Austin outfit is acutely aware of their Texan forefathers The 13th Floor Elevators and The Red Krayola. Yet they never go all-out retro (which is refreshing). And while they're more song-oriented than, say, Psychic Ills, The Black Angels unleash a shuddering intensity that very much mirrors the world's current psychology, a dreadful mix of panic and weariness.
Pink Playground isn't the first band to worship My Bloody Valentine, and they most certainly won't be the last. That said, Destination Ecstasy (an apt title, no?) proves they just might be the most adroit. The Houston outfit is a recording project first and foremost, a fact that goes a long way to explaining this music's clever shading, fine textures and uncanny mingling of warm distortion and frigid feedback. It's all rather exquisite. Moreover, Pink Playground nail the narcotic delirium that made the original shoegazers unique. The best example of this just might be "I Don't Know You."
This is the kind of music that'll have you holding up a jukebox for your true love. M83's sixth album runs like a relentless reverie set in an '80s cinematic wonderland where synths wiggle, wobble and billow to hair-raising levels. The two discs are meant to act like siblings, and each parallel track does seem to share threads of DNA -- the horn blasts of "Midnight City" and "New Map," the acoustic strums of "Wait" and "Splendor," the seductive female purrs of "Reunion" and "OK Pal." Plus there's the ambient interludes, which come as welcome flashes of serenity amid such cathartic intensity.
This promising debut calls to mind an era when Yuck's members were still yuckin' up diapers. The band have homed in on early '90s college radio as a reference point, balancing elements from shoegaze haze to lo-fi guitar to smooth-sailin' dream pop. Some of the album rocks; some of it rolls: Tracks like "Get Away" and "Holing Out" buzz with the guitar assaults of Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr.; others such as "Shook Down," "Suicide Policeman" and "Stutter" simmer with the girl-guy harmonies and melodic ease of Yo La Tengo. This is '90s revival at its freshest. This edition includes six b-sides.
This notoriously pulverizing noise-rock trio’s third album should come with a black leather jacket, a butterfly knife and earplugs. Hailed as “The Loudest Band in New York,” A Place to Bury Strangers don’t exactly hide their influences on Worship: Jesus and Mary Chain’s monotone fuzz-pop cool meets Suicide’s hellish electric-death squall, basically. Frontman Oliver Ackermann uses his guitar pedals as weapons of mass destruction and his deadpan voice as a fount of excellent life mantras: “Either way I choose the choice is wrong/ So I choose wrong/ Always choose wrong.” Try “Revenge.”
Youth Lagoon's Trevor Powers is becoming a true prince of oddball solipsistic pop. Building much upon the minimalist sounds of 2011's The Year of Hibernation, his second album dives into a chaotic world that we can only guess reflects an anxious, possibly tripping-out brain ("The devil tries to take my mind," he coolly notes on "Mute"). Wondrous Bughouse wobbles in reverb as synths spiral around dizzyingly like a carousel flying off its axle. Every sound feels weightless, yet the overall texture is impenetrable, creating a hypnotic effect like My Bloody Valentine, at a carnival, under the sea.
