The band Lucy Dacus calls “supremely underrated”
Decades on from the inception of the scene that celebrates itself, shoegaze is back. Indie kids can’t get enough of My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive, and budding bands are packing pedalboards as tightly as possible, favouring feedback and distortion over clean-cut guitars. But there’s one dreamy and noisy shoegaze outfit that songwriter Lucy Dacus thinks remain supremely underrated.
Forging musical melancholy as a solo artist and with her Boygenius bandmates Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers, Dacus’ indie folk sound is a far cry from the fuzzy soundscapes of shoegaze. Still, that didn’t stop her from sharing her love for Blonde Redhead during an appearance on Amoeba’s ‘What’s In My Bag?’ series
Declaring the band “supremely underrated”, Dacus noted that she owns several records by Blonde Redhead but elected to pick up their noisy art-rock outing In an Expression of the Inexpressible. The record was released in 1998, slightly predating their ventures into dreamer worlds of shoegazing but no less sonically exquisite and dense.
The album is seamless, blending lyrics into scathing, screeching guitar soundscapes and blending each song into the next, two elements Dacus particularly admired about it. She remembers how the album showed her that music didn’t have to follow a narrative or provide meaning in its lyricism; it could simply find merit in its music.
“I started to like them right around when I was realising you can like music that just sounds cool,” she laughed, “I think I grew up listening to music where it’s like, there were just stories. Where the lyrics were always at the forefront. Whereas, this record just sounds really cool.”
An underrated work of 1990s alt-rock with glimpses of Blonde Redhead’s dense shoegaze horizons, the record certainly does sound “really cool”.
“I can’t remember a single song off of this, not gonna lie,” Dacus admitted, “but I remember listening to it top to bottom on loop while cleaning my room when I was like 16.”
It almost sounds like an insult to imply that no song was particularly memorable, but really, it’s a testament to the band’s consistency. It’s an arty and angry collection of songs, perfect to soundtrack bitter room cleans in your teenage years.
Though this record in particular contrasts with the softness of her own work, it’s easy to see why Dacus was drawn to it and how she might have borrowed from Blonde Redhead’s later ventures into dreamier, indie rock territory. Having proved their capabilities in noisy, arty rock and in dreamy shoegaze, Blonde Redhead certainly do deserve more credit for their contributions to alt-rock.
Listen to In an Expression of the Inexpressible below.
