Shoegaze vs Grunge

I agree, in that grunge was really the last gasp of old-school American hard rock as a major pop cultural force. Shoegaze was definitely an artsier, slightly poppier, more UK-centric sound - musical characteristics rarely to hit big in the states.

The lineage for grunge was pretty clear - early 70s metal/hard rock filtered through a Sonic Youth/Pixies aesthetic.

What is the lineage leading up to shoegaze? Were the Cocteau Twins pretty much ground zero? Like so many sub-genres, perhaps Bowie (Heroes?) is in there somewhere? I can definitely see Sonic Youth as a shared influence for both genres.

 

Pertinent to this thread (and assuming I missed a mention on this thread)... Ride are back together and getting ready to tour.
http://drownedinsound.com/in_depth/4148475-interview--dis-talks-reunions-with-rides-mark-gardener

 

Good point.

 

Grunge had a much bigger impact on youth and pop culture. However, I think it´s musical legacy was very limited. This was probably because since it was basically a blend of influences (Sabbath, american 80´s hardcore and punk, Pixies) executed with pop perfection, it didn´t last much once their major stars started loosing their shine. I mean, no one followed after Nirvana and Alice in Chains masterpieces. Since then, I haven´t heared anything sounding both grunge and new.
On the contrary, shoegaze sounded like nothing before and that´s usually what stands through time.

 

I was a young child at the time and, despite being a huge fan of this music today, I certainly can't claim exhaustive knowledge of the timelines involved in the scene(s), but I always sorta thought Joy a Division and The Cure were the jumping off points for Shoegaze.

Both combined this post-punk / new wave sound and added some atmospherics while slowing things way down (at times).

Then some new guitar pedals came along and the rest is history.

 

If we're going to go down that route: both the ladies of Lush were very fine. I used to watch the video for "Nothing Natural" over and over again in the hopes that, maybe this time, Miki and Emma would kiss.

 

I hear a lot more of the shoegaze influence in the music I hear from the last ten years or so. Grunge maybe because it had such a definitive band like Nirvana and a relatively narrow style, it would be too oblvious to follow.

 

I always felt grunge was an attempt to combine the attitude of punk with the heavier classic rock sounds of Sabbath, Zep, etc. Throw in the sounds of Sonic Youth and the Pixies just a few years before and that was the starting point. Nirvana definitely had some of that punk feel as did Mudhoney but bands like Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains sounded like modern day classic rock to me. Perhaps the most interesting band to come out of this movement was the Afghan Whigs who had an obvious affection for 60s R&B. I enjoy Mark Lanegan's post Screaming Trees work as well.

In another post you were talking about the origins of shoegaze and mentioned the Cocteau Twins and I think it's spot on. I was a huge Cocteau Twins fan when shoegaze broke so I naturally latched onto these bands as soon as they broke.
I agree with shoegaze bands being pretty much faceless. When they performed it wasn't about theatrics, they just played. Grunge had all of the rock star trappings. The guitar hero, energetic front man. Yes in a way it was mainstream rock's last hurrah.

Interestingly enough I checked out a best of the 90s playlist I've been working on. I'm up to about 825 songs and maybe 15-20 could be considered grunge. A paltry number considering how big grunge was. I bet I have 75-80 shoegaze songs so far. It's held up better for me.

 

Hi Dudley,
I was a big fan of shoegaze, bought lots of the records and saw lots of gigs. I tend to agree with the fact that Slowdive were not very popular in the UK compared to other bands. They may have got a lot of press but they were seen as a bit generic and a poor man's MBV.
Likewise Swervedriver never got anywhere here really. I worked in a record store then a distributor who controlled most of these bands stock and they really struggled to shift any units.
It may seem different in retrospect but that was the truth on the ground. A lot of these bands actually were fairly small scale. MBV were on a different level to any other band imo, truely great. The next biggest was Ride, who were fairly successful. Loop and the Pale Saints were very good but didn't sell any records.

The thing with Shoegaze was that musically it was a bit of a dead end, they all wanted to be MBV and it was like a stop-gap movement that never really took off and was sandwiched between two much better movements in the UK. We had the whole Madchester thing with the Mondays, Stone Roses, Inspirals, James etc and when that faded Shoegaze popped up for a liitle while until Britpop came along with the likes of Suede, Blur, Pulp, Oasis etc. Shoegaze was a slight diversion for a little while but had nowhere to go. The shoegaze bands were pretty much abandoned and dead in the water once Britpop came along.

I find this whole resurrection now quite puzzling as it was a very limited thing to begin with, and a little boring after a while (MBV excepted of course).

 

I agree, Slowdive were very low key, an pretty average, I don't understand why they are held in esteem now either. Ride, pale saints, ultra vivid scene, they were the bands with the talent.

 

What an interesting and difficult question to answer. I agree wtih those who talked about a short term and a long term influence. I think short term, grunge probably had much more of an influence, but now 25 years later, it may be reversed. Would also love to see the voting splits on this for North America vs Europe, but alas, that's not worth the time to calculate.

As far as my personal preference, that's tough as well. I have a lot more grunge in my collection and still like lots of it (though not all). But the limited amount of shoegaze I do have, particuly Kitchens of Distinction, I do love pretty intensely. Ultimately, I voted for grunge though.

 

Here's another crucial (maybe the most crucial) influence: Psychocandy. I think most shoegaze bands owe a huge debt to Psychocandy with the dense, discordant wall of sound that many of them achieved. A friend of mine always used to describe shoegaze as Psychocandy on reds.

I think the Cocteau Twins were also an influence, although most shoegaze bands seemed to only hone in on one particular aspect of their sound, i.e. the noise and dense, swirling atmosphere, as opposed to the sophisticated, soaring melodies.

 

My take...MBV were the main influence by far. That band was hugely inflential in the UK, one of those bands where a whole scene sprouts up because of them. And I'm not talking Loveless either, which many people think of as the great influential record. Isn't Anything was the record that kicked it off, and the singles Feed Me With Your Kiss and You Made Me Realise. Those records were huge in UK indie circles.

Sonic Youth as well - I think they influenced MBV and it was around this time they were also getting a lot of exposure in the UK.

The House of Love - huge around this time (Destroy The Heart topped the festive 50 in 1988), and they had that whole early shoegaze vibe going on.

And you can of course throw The Mary Chain and Cocteaus into the melting pot.

From 85 to 88 the UK indie scene was dominated by the C86 type bands, some of which was excellent, I guess you could say it was more of a jangly, slighty twee scene. Music evolves though and by 88 people were wondering where to go. It seemed to split into two - half the bands went dance (inspired by the Mondays and the new drug and rave culture) while the other half, who didn't like the dance direction and inspired by MBV went shoegazy. There were quite a few bands who couldn't make up their mind which side to choose (early Blur for example).

I saw many quite small bands around this time in London (like an early Lush gig where I think there were about 5 people there), and it was quite interesting as you'd see a band one week and then a few months later you'd see them again and they had either embraced dance or the shoegaze type feel.

 

A.R. Kane were kind of proto-shoegaze. As someone said upthread, the moodier shimmery end of post-punk prob played a part, too (Banshees, definitely). That sort of passive drifty mood the Byrds nailed on tracks like "Draft Morning".

I'd forgotten about Pale Saints, "Comforts of Madness" is great, the latter stuff less so.

What are the best bandwagon-jumping shoegaze tracks? I have a soft spot for "Empathize" by The Primitives, some of the tracks on the Darling Buds "Erotica", much of the "For Keeps" album by the Field Mice ("Five Moments" in particular).

 

Yes, the House of Love don't really get their due, Terry Bickers was doing some really transporting whalesong stuff with the guitar, particularly live. Even after he left, "The Girl with the Loneliest Eyes" captures that 'gazey drift (albeit allied to, yknow, actual songwriting). Didn't the NME/Melody Maker describe Ride as "the House of Love with chainsaws" when they came out? This made them sound fantastically exciting, and prob. added to my sense of disappointment when I heard them ("the House of Love with nasal Oxfordshire accents" would have been more accurate, if less enticing).

 

I remember getting the promo pack for A.R. Kane and thinking "THIS is the start of shoegaze?!" I always think of Ride's initial aesthetic being a turbo charged take on the Byrds' "Lady Friend"--they were certainly fans (as well as fans of MBV, HoL, and JAMC--there's a great video in which they happily discuss ripping those three off).

Agreed: First EPs and LP from Pale Saints were awesome--they opened for Ride here in '92. The first few Boo Radleys releases (through Giant Steps) are fantastic, too--similarly schizoid, but in a totally different way. -E

 

Oh yeah. I remember the first time I heard "Feed Me With Your Kiss" - oh man. It was one of those listening experiences where you kind of feel everything changing and can't quite believe what you're hearing. I had the 12" and must've played "Feed Me..." and "I Believe" about 20 times before I could flip the record.

Anyway, influences: For MBV I think it's Cocteaus, Mary Chain, Sonic Youth, and some Husker Du and Dinosaur Jr - IIRC Shields has talked up those two bands as being a big influence. Also, call me crazy, but I think "Hurdy Gurdy Man" by Donovan is, likely inadvertently, a real precursor of the MBV sound circa '88 - the distorted guitar lines, loose drumming full of crashes and rolls, and general woozy atmosphere. Compare it to something like "I Can See It (But I Can't Feel It)" and tell me I'm wrong.

More generally: I think Pink Floyd might've factored into the shoegaze mix, when it comes to atmospheric guitar textures. More than once I've played something shoegazy and someone mentioned that it sounded kind of like Floyd.

 

Which AR Kane album was the promo for? I'd say the "When You're Sad" and "Lolita" EPs are pretty essential, as is the more mellowed-out 69 LP, but the quality drops off pretty quickly after that as they make an ill-advised move into incorporating dance music.

 

Agreed, on all counts.

Even though it's not one of the Pink Floyd (related) tunes that come to mind, I do deeply dig what Slowdive did with Golden Hair.
Turns-out that was the highlight of their live set, for me, a couple weeks ago. I was in tears. Even outdid finally seeing/hearing them do the Pygmalian tunes.

 

Hmmm. I thought it was some kind of U.S. debut repackaging of their earlier stuff, but it was definitely dance-y, so maybe it was a concurrent release of the then-new stuff, and the one-sheet was trading on their previous stuff. It's been 22 or 23 years ... -E

 

Ah yes, the Americana comp - yeah, that's not what you want! Most of it is taken from the album "i" which I thought was a major letdown. Check out the 69 album and the recent Complete Singles Collection for the early EPs. Try before you buy, natch, but with those it's more evident that they had an important early role in the whole shoegaze/noisepop thing.

EDIT: To help in your quest, here's the first song I heard by them back in the day, which totally sold me on them - "Butterfly Collector", from 1987's "Lolita" EP:

 

That's kind of funny, as I was keeping up with the NME and Melody Maker at the time, and while they came in for a fair bit of derision it always seemed like Slowdive was one of the key bands of the scene that emerged in MBV's wake, along with Ride, Chapterhouse, and Lush. Although, as you indicate, in the overall pop scene "prominent shoegaze band" may've been an accolade on par with "world's tallest midget".

 

But even Boo Radleys (Giant Steps got some credit), Catherine Wheel, Pale Saints (due to personnel changes) and Curve (due to Toni Halliday) had higher profiles than Slowdive; I really thought they were the world's smallest midgets--I preferred them to Chapterhouse (an almost meaningless "accolade"), but was under the impression that even CH were a bigger deal (certainly much was made of the implostion of their second record, more than I can recall being made of any Slowdive record other than an early single). Heck, it seemed like even Moose got more coverage just by, apparently, being part of the "Scene That Celebrated Itself" (I love MOose). Really, Swervedriver, Slowdive and Moose all seemed to be in a race to the bottom in the UK, with only Swervedriver having the benefit of at least gaining a toehold in the U.S. ... until the still-inexplicable recent Slowdive comeback. -E

 

Hmmm... whatever common thread that puts those three in the same grouping in the race toward the bottom must be part of what made/makes them my faves of most of the UK bands being mentioned in this thread.
In the L.A. area, Slowdive were playing, and selling-out, the same size venues as most of the other bands.
MBV and Ride were playing slightly bigger places by 1992, I guess, but then both MBV and Ride had/has the appeal of being a bit more rocking than Slowdive.
Though I felt spoiled to be seeing these bands in such intimate venues back then, I'm glad to see them getting bit more of the recognition and appreciation that they deserve.

Anyway, Slowdive gets a higher dose of my respect for having released a record that was more (rather than less) challenging, in Pygmalian
Most bands we're discussing played it safe by either staying virtually the same, or becoming more poppy/commercial-sounding.

 

Swervedriver is just about my favorite band of all time (and, as noted, I love Moose), so I'm just talking about my limited observations of their public profiles in the UK and US--I don't think there is a common thread beyond all three being considered shoegaze bands. I think LA is always a poor barometer of what goes on elsewhere; ditto NYC, although I'd be surprised to hear that Slowdive were playing the same venues Lush, Ride or MBV were. Here in DC, there was only one venue to play at that time and everyone played there irrespective of how big they were in relation to one another (which, at this scale, wasn't that big, although MBV wound up playing a big room in Baltimore in '92). -E