Pitchfork's Top Fifty Shoegaze List

...is up for your consideration. Which given I wrote seven of the entries, why yes I have a vested interest.

http://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9966-the-50-best-shoegaze-albums-of-all-time/

I might have to get one of those Loveless duvet covers!

i wonder what record is #1!

I'm honestly surprised I ended up writing the entry for what's at number two!

Chris Ott is gonna have to take a sick day from work over this

I'd put Lilys higher but it's nice to see some favorites highlighted

I find it amusing that there are three separate entries that begin with a sentence talking about how while Shoegaze was a primarily UK phenomenon, there were a few acts in the US in its early to embrace the sound as well.

On first glance:

- Glaring ommission: Pluramon's 'Dreams Top Rock'
- Blonde Redhead's '23'? Nah...

Why can't this be a singles list? So many great songs are buried in the middle of mediocre-to-bad albums :/

This is an interesting list, but the following paragraph for Drop Nineteen's Delaware was a bit o_0:

In many ways, shoegaze can be considered a quintessentially British genre. Not only was its name coined by the notoriously fickle UK press, but the majority of shoegaze bands share a common geography that informs their sound—not just a cohesive physical scene, but a working-class Englishman ethos.

xp - Also lots of great EPs. I'd like to think that is the only reason Moose didn't make it to the list.

a working-class Englishman ethos

rare picture of ride on the way to the studio with producer marc waterman, 1991

http://www.bbc.co.uk/staticarchive/50e3d9a63738773ee99294888bdc4e0b6ceeadb5.jpg

horny-handed sons of toil rehearsing in their parents' boathouse in Henley

chapterhouse's live at birkinhead ex-servicemen's bowling and social club remains a firm favourite

Just like the ambient list, I don't care about the order of anything and will be happy to hear about good stuff I never knew about. Unlike ambient, my depth of shoegaze knowledge is a lot shallower, for example the lovesliescrushing album at #46 is new to me, and I'm currently listening to it turned up on the big cans in work with a grin on my face. It actually reminds me of Tim Hecker a bit, not bad for a 1994 guitar band.

There are 50 shoegaze albums?

lol

Nice list; wrong Swirlies album

They Spent Their Wild Youthful Days In The Glittering World Of The Salons? Because that one isn't really thoroughly shoegaze the whole way through.

Close enough, surely! And it's one of the best albums of the 90s *carps*

It is a good list with good write-ups though, I have to stress

I agree it certainly is one of the best albums of the 90s. Was just a guess as to why it could have been omitted.

i love that all natural lemon & lime flavors record. it splits the difference between gaze and stereolab.

as much as i love it - and boy do i love it - i never really considered chrome a shoegaze album. it's a big rock move.

tbh i agree. and i feel the same way about pygmalion

and bardo pond

and fsa

whatever

guess there really aren't 50 shoegaze records! ahahaha

well they got the top 3 right, i think

Unlike ambient, my depth of shoegaze knowledge is a lot shallower, for example the lovesliescrushing album at #46 is new to me, and I'm currently listening to it turned up on the big cans in work with a grin on my face. It actually reminds me of Tim Hecker a bit, not bad for a 1994 guitar band.

Very glad that one made the cut. Still remember that blowing my mind across the room upon original release.

I'm just psyched to see Pubic Fruit in there

AND to see Gala in the top 10 (though it should have been top 5)

A little peek behind the curtain -- the rankings were determined by voting, but (at least as a freelancer) I wasn't given the rankings when I wrote up my entries -- just that the entries were in there. Which I think is good; if I had known my section for Souvlaki, for instance, was going to be for the number two entry, I might have been tempted to be a little more grandiose about it.

teenage filmstars definitely one of the great lost shoegaze groups
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZtx2fxx8AM

Teenage Filmstars - Star definitely makes me woozy once I get through it. It puts me in a really weird daze.

ha yeah it gives me that same "brain shake" feeling as some Disco Inferno stuff

great to see Drop Nineteens in there but the real 'Woah!' moment was saved for Chapterhouse, an incredible record that never really got the props it deserved bitd.

It didn't? From what I've seen they don't seem as overlooked, relatively.

Obviously the definition of shoegaze being used here is pretty ... blurry. But it does allow the list to explore various detours and hybrids. Liked seeing Seefeel and Curve in there (Toni is still married to Alan Moulder, right?). Was AR Kane in there anywhere?

Don't think I've ever heard of lovesliescrushing, excited to explore.

is fennesz in this list? makes more sense here than in the ambient list in which he did appear iirc

was nice to see the adorable album in there.

that said, i still think 'ejector seat reservation' is the best swervedriver album.

(lack of love could be due to it getting lost and not getting a full USA release?!)

fennesz is influenced by shoegaze but it really belongs to the grand tradition of laptop farting a la mille plateaux etc

'laptop farting' : haha ..

Fennesz wouldn't make sense on this list imho. It's not shoegaze in the traditional sense, at all. Fennesz is post-shoegaze. Much like the magnificent Morr Records compilation 'Blue Skied 'n Clear', where Morr artists like Schnauss, Manual, ISAN etc take shoegaze into the 21st century by covering Slowdive, Possibly my most treasured cover album ever.

no moose is weird

re Moose: ...XYZ probably doesn't quality and their three EP's is a complication called Sonny and Sam., i can see them not voting for it for that reason. same goes for the Boo Radleys Learning to Walk.

need to digest this list a bit.

Very happy to see A sunny day in Glasgow included!

This is a genre I never really paid enough attention to at the time, so I'm psyched to explore this list.

That teenage filmstars song is dope.

I guess those genre/regions lists are going to pop up a lot now on Pitchfork? I welcome it, it's a very efficient way of discovering new music.

how else will a generation of young web nerds discover Experimental Audio Research now ;_;

web nerds need neds words

Very glad that one made the cut. Still remember that blowing my mind across the room upon original release.

― Ned Raggett, Monday, October 24, 2016 6:01 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I looked at Allmusic for the first time in a long time and just noticed you wrote the blurbs for both Bloweyelashwish and Xuvetyn :) Like a lot of good shoegaze stuff I noticed it works when listened to both very quiet and very loud, but in a totally different way for each.

yeah venera 4 is a good call. and locals pale sun cause i like the album that much.

did a ctrl + f for Fleeting Joys and didn't find anything. Despondent Transponder is a pretty perfect extension of Loveless era MBV. as is the case with all of these sorts of lists, I'd like to see more of what was pushed but didn't make the cut.

Ned's words are awesome, I love them. Thanks Ned. If that makes me a web nerd I'm down with that.

Too kind!

This list goes a long way toward relieving my fear that no one cares about Catherine Wheel anymore.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5Q7CcINC8M

CW didn't even peak with the albums in this list!

You like Be Here Now

is this how it's gonna be

ahahahah

http://66.media.tumblr.com/6a4139b9b5af4ef27f242a77b560f585/tumblr_mw08upqgEV1rijwyno7_1280.jpg

Good on that guy for including Alison's Halo and Sianspheric. I'd include Polar/Con Dolore albums which is definitely dreampop but maybe not quite gazey enough. I'd definitely put on the first Teenage Filmstars album, the next two albums have amazing tracks but tend to go downhill in the second half.

Pluramon's "Dreams Top Rock" is sort of a shoegaze/glitched out electronic hybrid (with Julee Cruise on vocals). Love that one.

That was sort of my only real problem with the list, that shoegaze crosses so many wires with dreampop and honestly, in the case of Catherine Wheel, straight on hard rock without the codpiece and goat horns starter kit.

If nothing else, the list led me to this fantastic Morr Slowdive tribute thing, so it was all worth it. Thanks, Bateau!

Oh hell yes! :D That is awesome.

i am on deck to do ILM's Shoegaze album and EP's and think i will do this next summer if someone doesn't take from me now.

spoiler alert: my number one is Nowhere with, i think, Whirlpool coming in second. some omissions besides Moose are Revolver's Cold Water Flat, Ladies and Gentleman... and have always felt Gish should qualify for shoegaze?

The absence of Smashing Orange (unless I missed it) is insane, as they were actually of the time, played in England (though from America), had great UK reviews, and were great. The correct Swirlies album was chosen.

I would have put Underground Lovers' Leaves Me Blind above at least half of the listed albums. I feel HEALTH should be there too.

Wow, the French guy's list has not one but three shoegazing bands from Texas

The first Pitchfork list where I own 60% of the titles.

Notable omissions:

A.R.Kane - Lolita EP (1987) practically invented the genre
Medicine - Shot Forth Self Living (1992) or Buried Life (1993) arriving at 'gaze from psych
Closedown - Nearfield (1994) an early Slowdive inspired US band
Third Eye Foundation - Semtex (1996) if one wants to play up how 'gaze flows like viscous lava into other genres, in TEF's case claustrophobic drum n'bass
Pluramon - Dreams Top Rock (2003) Mentioned above. Loveless itself was composed on a sampler. Get over yourselves, technophobes.
Fleeting Joys - Despondant Transponder (2006) and Ringo Deathstarr - Colour Trip (2011) not ageless art, but closer to their mark than In the Presence of MBV
No Joy - Wait to Pleasure (2013)
Pinkshinyultrablast - Everything Elses Matters (2015) the last two genre bands I've really dug.

Shot Forth Self Living is number 29 on the Pitchfork list.
Good call on Ringo Deathstarr.

What AltJ albums made the list?

Ah, French guy does have Nightblooms. That's another pretty major omission. I didn't notice if he had Texas Shoegazers Experimental Aircraft on his list, but their "Love For The Last Time" is also probably better than a few things on the Pitchfork list.

Secret Shine's Untouched is a pretty big omission as well.

Speaking of Texans, both Pitchfork and the French dude left off Should's (née Shift) A Folding Sieve, which is amazing.

*coughs* Folks, I love you all. HOWEVER:

This wasn't an infinite list. This was a specific list of 50. That means there was a thing called a 'cutoff,' meaning that Many Different Albums could be and were nominated, but after the votes were tallied, did not in fact make it into the top fifty.

They weren't "left off," they weren't "notable omissions," they *did not win enough votes.*

Clear? Not hard to understand? Very good. I thank you all.

we're just trying to flash our shoegaze cred, it's not about the list

lol at "the french dude"

You'd be surprised given some of the other reactions I've seen!

keeping waiting for some kind of Catherine Wheel reissues, really want Ferment and Chrome on vinyl

Really disappointing to not see Wait To Pleasure in there. One of my favourite albums of this decade so far.

xp they have so many bsides, i hope they do eventually do deluxe versions

Ned, an internet list does not exist until everything left off of it has been listed.

lol

You might be listing a while there.

what's time to an ILXor?

Ok, not to take this overly seriously, but Smashing Orange were probably the first US group to tour as shoegaze, get reviewed in the UK papers that invented shoegaze, etc. It's a little silly, historically, to leave them out, given that they're touring the UK in 1990 supporting Lush and put out a bunch of amazing stuff by 1991. Nightblooms basically ditto but from Holland, substitute 1991 for 1990. I love Flying Sauce Attack to death, and Further is an amazing, incredible album and one of my favorite things on this earth, but it doesn't really belong on this list.

Nightblooms are shoegaze?

I mean, it's not like we're trying to get get Flyying Colours on the list (even if they are great). But you should probably have some respect for history...

xpost: Evan, you've heard their first album and earlier singles, right?

Oh maybe not. I'm a big fan of 24 Days At Catastrofe Café though.

I love that album too. Like top 10, actually. The one before is shoegaze to the max (I saw them touring it) and also very good, in a different way. Check "1000 Years" as a nice compromise between their pop and noise instincts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=12&v=dC0v-yOuEUA

Thanks! By the way the strongest attribute of Catastrofe Café for me is the guitar heroics. Kind of like how they're almost at odds with the shy indie pop side.

That was a very unexpected strength of that band. Like MBV had Brian May on guitar, but nobody knew...

CW didn't even peak with the albums in this list!

― imago, Tuesday, 25 October 2016 21:44 (two days ago) Permalink

Agreed! May "Adam and Eve" beat "OK Computer" on some future top 50.