The modern artists leading the shoegaze renaissance
In the 1990s, a journalist attending a Moose gig noticed that lead singer Russell Yates was looking down, reading his own lyrics from a piece of paper on the floor. In his review of the gig, he coined the term “shoegazing”. Though Moose’s earlier fuzziness wore off to make way for bright, acoustic, guitar, the term persisted as publications picked it up to refer to a new crop of bands who used copious guitar pedals to distort and warp their guitar tones.
Gazing lovingly at their shoes, My Bloody Valentine pioneered the genre with their seminal album Loveless, a torrent of noise and distortion that took three years and £250,000 to record. Slowdive’s Souvlaki and Ride’s Nowhere were similarly celebrated genre-defining releases, and shoegaze, though it was never to gain great commercial success, garnered a cult following and came to be known as ‘The Scene That Celebrates Itself’.
Meanwhile, Britpop and grunge were forging a way for alternative music scenes to break into the mainstream, but shoegaze’s refusal to look anywhere but inwards left the genre trailing behind. While shoegazers gazed down at their shoes, Britpop and grunge had their sights set on wider horizons. Thus the genre was short-lived. As these underground genres gave way to landfill indie in the early 2000s, shoegaze faded away, leaving cult fans to hound after limited pressings of Loveless going for hundreds of pounds.
Remnants of the genre were seen in elements of artists that followed – Sweet Trip’s 2003 album Velocity: Design: Comfort combined shoegaze influences with leftfield electronic. Blonde Redhead’s 23 blended soft, ethereal vocals with warped Kevin Shields-esque guitar. DIIV forged a fresh kind of shoegaze-inspired indie rock. Ringo Deathstarr and Pinkshinyultrablast melded the fuzziness into their idealistic indie-pop. But it wasn’t until recently that audiences have granted the noisy genre a full-force revival.
Perhaps it was My Bloody Valentine’s decision to re-release their entire discography on Domino, or the rise of TikTok exposing Gen Z to a wider range of music, or the pandemic’s relentless monotony – whatever it was, the late 2010s has seen the return of shoegaze. There’s a new roster of artists recelebrating the scene that celebrated itself – but who are they?
The modern shoegaze sound has all the qualities of the original genre – heavily distorted guitar, sonic and aesthetic fuzziness, and vocals that blend into the instrumentation, but modern shoegazers seem to also emphasise the softer, dreamier side of the genre. Combining influences of shoegaze, indie and dream-pop from the likes of internet favourites Mazzy Star, Beach House and Cocteau Twins, the shoegaze revival balances the heavy and the soft.
Perhaps most adept at this blend are Ireland-born band Just Mustard. Their first album, Wednesday, showed their potential to revive modern shoegaze with the stand-out hit ‘Deaf’, a track which combines vocalist Katie Ball’s delicate but detached, repetitive vocals with increasingly fuzzy, industrial noise. Follow-up single ‘Frank’ contains equally gorgeous guitar riffs and heavier moments.
But Just Mustard really proved their place in the movement with their most recent offering, the 2022 album Heart Under. It’s both haunting and beautiful – bending, distorted guitar tones and percussion create a juxtaposition against Ball’s soft voice on tracks like ‘Still’ and ‘Blue Chalk’. Other highlights include the first single ‘I Am You’, which becomes increasingly disorderly and dissonant as Ball pleads, “Can you change my head?” and ‘Seed’, an atmospheric, full track with masterfully placed feedback and blended vocals. Their live performances are just as enchanting as their studio releases, guitar pedals in full force, eyes firmly directed downwards.
From across the ocean, Hull-based band Bdrmm are carving out their own shoegaze-inspired sound. The influence of Slowdive and the Jesus and Mary Chain on Bdrmm has been evident since their first single in 2018. Since then, they’ve only nurtured and widened their sound. Their recent singles, all produced by Alex Greaves, have been fuller, fuzzier, and more atmospheric than ever. ‘Port’, released last year, is a dark electronic track that patiently builds in intensity, breaking into dissonant guitar riffs as frontman Ryan Smith laments, “I don’t know about you, I’m sure you know about me”.
Bdrmm’s most recent track ‘Pulling Stitches’ is perhaps their most obvious and developed ode to the genre. Its bending droning guitars are almost indistinguishable from a Loveless number. Smith recalls recording the track: “I just started playing the first two chords, incorporating the bend as if I was literally winking at Kevin Shields… It’s so obviously the shoegaze adoration within us.”
The shoegaze revival isn’t bounded to the UK, however, and anonymous South Korean project Parannoul combined shoegaze with emo on their 2021 album To See the Next Part of The Dream. The fuzziness is in full force on tracks like the ten-minute-long ‘White Ceiling’, but it’s combined with bleeping electronic tones bubbling below shouting, emo vocals and caustic noise. Parannoul crafting of shoegaze soundscapes paired with relative anonymity has lent them to find a place in niche internet circles.
Similarly, Nottingham-based Panchiko’s blend of dream-pop and shoegaze with electronica has lent them love from music lovers online. Though they formed in the late ’90s, Panchiko gained internet acclaim when their EP D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L was discovered in a charity shop and posted online in the mid-2010s. Since then, they’ve gained a cult following. Though their most recent album veers more into glitchy, soft dream-pop, they’ve become a staple for modern shoegazers.
The alternative scene is increasingly characterised by shoegaze elements, often paired with an assortment of trip-hop, dream-pop, and electronica – from Bar Italia to Drug Store Romeos to Hatchie. Outside of those artists popularised by the internet and underground music scenes, though, there’s a growing scene of DIY artists creating shoegaze in the north of the UK. Manchester-based cruush are both aesthetically and sonically shoegazey, pairing pretty vocals with harsher, fuzzy guitar. Leeds-based Pleasure Centre, meanwhile, create raw soundscapes that are all the more hard-hitting live and neighbours Bug Teeth dip their toes into the softer, dreamier aspects of the genre.
Luckily for those bands choosing to lower their gaze to their shoes, shoegaze appears to have shaken off its reputation as ‘The Scene That Celebrated Itself.’ Instead, it’s gaining recognition from independent, underground scenes and online Gen Z-ers alike. Whether they’ve been drawn to its comforting wall of noise, its relative underground obscurity, or its detachedness from mainstream pop and indie, the genre has found a renewed place in the zeitgeist for fans and artists alike. The shoegaze renaissance is in full force – and it’s in safe hands.
Listen to the artists at the forefront of the shoegaze revival below.
