Much like the recent
Beautiful Noise documentary I’m reticent to use the (originally pejorative)
shoegaze term to describe a heady period of innovative guitar music that I love.
However, shoegaze works as a recognisable moniker that clearly identifies a
certain time and a certain kind of music, to this day, like a stone dropped
into a pond that ripples out perpetually into the future.
I’ve lived with this
music most of my adult life and it still continues to be exhilarating, affecting,
cathartic and heavily pregnant with untapped potential. For
me, at least, guitar music from the late 80s and early 90s seemed to be pushing
the boundaries and making noises and producing feelings never felt before. This
summation probably has a lot to do with the impressionable age I was when I was
first exposed to these sounds and their associated feelings, but this brief scene
(noise-pop, neo-psychedelia, shoegaze etc.) also seemed to echo back to me the
potentiality of youth, the fervency of life and a landscape of anticipated emotions
and experiences awaiting to be charted. So, here is a list of 10 “shoegaze”
songs that had a profound impact and continue to affect me to this day.
My Bloody Valentine –
Slow
This song is sex. From the opening tremolo arm reverberation
that sounds like the heavens have just opened, repeatedly, to the grinding bass
that crawls all over this track, Slow mimics the action of a slow fuck. This is
even before the lyrics, “lick, lick lick and suck, suck, suck…” spell it out.
Slow and steady this song just grinds into you until you are released, possibly
like no other.
Slowdive – Primal
Slowdive’s immense sound is deeply affecting and Primal
aptly demonstrates their masterly control of seductive and enveloping guitar
effects, which continually crash like cathartic waves on the shores of your
body. I can’t help but feel adrenalized (and touched) by this song, every time
I hear it, especially in the last couple of minutes when the guitars soar
to an overwhelming climax.
The House of Love –
Christine
Possibly my gateway (song) into a world of effects-pedal
trickery. The heavily treated sounds on Christine seem to create their own
world, and a world never really heard before, encircling and confining, full of
wailing reverb and delay with only the release of Terry Bicker’s screaming
“chaos in the big sea” guitar coda near the end. I remember, at the tender age
of 17, first hearing this and thinking, what the fuck was that? I never thought
sounds (like these) could give so much pleasure.
Ride – Like a Daydream
In some ways this is the perfect Ride song. A seamless
marriage of hammering noise beautified with Byrdsian guitar peals, that stops
and starts like the beating of an exhilarated heart. It’s a song that
encapsulates the excitement of youth, both in execution and feeling, full of
life and clambering forward to unknown potentials with confidence and wide-eyed
anticipation. It echoed back the promise of youth to me, while a youth, that
feeling of wavering on a precipice and beginning anew to embrace the joyous
potentiality of life. It still exists as a song that holds all these feelings
and makes me feel very much alive.
Cocteau Twins – Love’s Easy Tears
It’s difficult to write about the Cocteau Twins without
getting wrapped up in descriptions of majestic ethereality, but this track, from
a particularly rich period in their history, has an unearthly chiming intensity
that seems too perfect for this world. The sublime quality of Liz Fraser’s
voice alone projects this song into another sphere, but the added guitar washes
that flow and surge with rhythmic potency throughout transport this beauty even
further into the firmament. Astonishing.
Lush – De-Luxe
This is the sound of pure joy fed through a guitar. If
anything I love this because it is an ecstatic burst of energy bookended
by a perfect building intro and a sublime fade out. It surges in and out like a
passing moment of extreme beauty that feeds into you, delivering a fulcrum of clanging effects that erupt and tumble into one another, to only eventually fade away to leave you beatifically floored and wondering what just happened.
The Jesus and Mary Chain – Never Understand
A feedback drenched howl into the void. I can’t think of
another song that captures feelings of frustrated alienation so perfectly, from
the driving urgency of the bass and drums to the raging wails of distorted
noise accompanied by Jim Reid’s angry yells, it’s an explosive and apt response
to a world that makes you want to scream. A powerful and much needed cathartic
outlet but also a welcome companion that says you are not alone.
Moose – Suzanne
It’s the varied and overlapping surges of noise in this
track that make it so thrilling. The nonchalant vocal delivery is deliberately dispassionate,
contradictory to the emotional strife detailed within, but it is the guitars
that carry all the passion. It’s as if the
singer is coldly recounting turbulent experiences and only the guitars are left
to deliver the feelings, and it is easy to get lost in the intricate and
satisfying turmoil they create. An often overlooked gem from the “shoegaze”
era.
Adorable – Sunshine
Smile
Sunshine Smile works as a consummate exercise in
transitioning from quiet to loud guitar dynamics. It clangs joyously into your awareness like a ringing alarm bell. Banks of
thrashing noise kick in, at ecstatic repeated intervals, which then dissipate to leave a hollow space
for Peter Fijalkowski to solemnly plead, “How does it feel to feel?” - just
before the tension is released again with another supreme wall of guitar noise. How does
it feel to feel, indeed?
Loop – Black Sun
Black Sun is unlike anything else in the Loop back catalogue
and also anything else I’ve ever heard before. The reverberating and constant
tremelo effects sounds like the opening of a consciousness, blinking into
existence into a startling new realm, which gets more and more intense as the
song progresses. A loud and steady awakening that you can (maybe) never return
from.
