ILM's Best Shoegaze / Dream Pop / Post-rock TRACKS poll - RESULTS THREAD

More Youtubes

Low, Transient Waves & Piano Magic - Sleep at the Bottom
My Bloody Valentine - Cupid Come (live at London, 1989)
Cranes - Starblood
Mogwai - Mogwai fear Satan (Pt. 1)
My Bloody Valentine - Loomer
Bardo Pond - Tommy Gun Angel

Ok I'll do this: For the next batch of songs I'll post one song every 15 minutes or so and instead of embedding youtubes I'll post a link to the video.

Poll countdowns with youtube embeds aren't nearly as bad as threads just stacked with them. Just post the video with each placing track and hope for some discussion between them

that's true, actually - once you get the first fifty posts up (halfway there already!) the thread'll never get too youtube-heavy after that

Only one so far for me, but I'm glad I helped squeeze "Supervitesse" into the list. It's definitely not shoegaze or post-rock, but I think it fits the present-day definition of dream pop rather nicely.

ah, ignore my last post then. What *did* you have for lunch?

But doing a click on new tab wont hurt anyone... although if you'd rather have me embed the videos directly to thread I'll do it, no problem.

xpost: I had a banana and yoghurt.

http://www.cocteautwins.org/~robin/images/blackspring.jpg
90. Lush - Nothing Natural (4 votes, 97 points)
Black Spring EP (1991)
Youtube

I really like 'Supervitesse' and the video looks great. Well done Johnny et al!

wow, a wealth of great songs already. particularly happy to see that lush song represented.

I should've voted for "Starblood" really.

Yeah, and "Nothing Natural"

Another one that very nearly made my final edits & that I'm happy to see love for. Lush's first three albums (including Gala were so cohesive that isolating individual tracks was difficult for me.

That Bardo Pond song is great, but I didn't vote for it cos I guess I kind of associate them with a whole different lineage of post-Dead C cosmic wobble. Same with FSA.

I think I need to go on a Lush binge again fairly soon.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41BxgaZZ6lL._SL500_AA280_.jpg
89. My Bloody Valentine - Swallow (5 votes, 97 points)
Tremolo (1991)
Youtube

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/414joCTkbDL._SL500_AA300_.jpg
88. DNTEL - This Is The Dream Of Evan and Chan (4 votes, 98 points)
Life is Full of Possibilities (2001)
Youtube

MBV dominating the lower reaches. Will this be a constant, or will a few truly great songs season the top 50?

DNTEL, for real?

I'm pretty sure this list is gonna be like 1/4 MBV

Yeah I was just thinking potentially 15-20%

wait no there were only 18 mbv songs nominated so it'll be more like 1/6

http://img.amazon.ca/images/I/31Y70ZFMXFL._SL500_AA300_.jpg
87. Yo La Tengo - From A Motel 6 (6 votes, 99 points)
Painful (1993)
Youtube

I love the DNTEL song, wasn't planning on voting for it tho since I didn't think it actually qualified but since I saw other people voting strongly for it I decided to give it a little push as well ;)

Loomer is my favourite track on Loveless, but I'm more interested about these other songs I've never heard of.

Is it wrong if I prefer Lali Puna's cover of '40 days' than the original one?

From a Motel 6 was my very first exposure to YLT. I still love it, but didn't vote for it.

Youtube: Lali Puna - 40 days

Was there a Morr label compilation comprised of slowdive covers?

Blue Skied & Clear

tho I would say only about a third of the tracks are worthwhile

Well this looks great: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Skied_an%27_Clear

Which songs would you recommend Pillbox?

I'm going to get all heretical and mention that I've never been wild about Slowdive outside of a (very) few songs.

xp this is my favorite

Eh, that's about where I'm at with them too Johnny Fever.

xp: Pretty good i'd say. Will definitely give the compilation a spin after I'm finished with this.

First tie coming up.

http://www.swervedriver.net/images/feeling-cover.jpg
86. (tie) Swervedriver - Never Lose That Feeling (3 votes, 100 points)
Never Lose That Feeling (1993)
Youtube

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/513L0WkwbxL._SL500_AA280_.jpg
86. (tie) My Bloody Valentine - Lose My Breath (3 votes, 100 points)
Isn't Anything (1988)
Youtube

Surprised "Lose My Breath" is this low. That's 1/2 of my MBV voting right there.

(A tie moves those up to #85 btw. I know, poll nerd talking.)

First time I hear both songs. Swervedriver has always been to harsh for me, not fond of their sound. The MBV sounds underproduced (maybe it's just the youtube quality) but they always manage to sound sexy. I might need to get my hands on the 'Isn't Anything' EP

I'm going to get all heretical and mention that I've never been wild about Slowdive outside of a (very) few songs.

In agreement with you (if anything it was seeing them live that turned me off to them), however I'm still pretty crazy about Pygmalion (I put "Rutti" pretty high up on my ballot)

That Mahogany album is pretty terrific too.

xpost: Is that how ties work? Oops... you'll have to switch the nerd off otherwise I'll have the numbers all wrong :P

"Lose My Breath" is underproduced, as is much of everything MBV released prior to the '90s.

xpost: There were only two Pygmalion noms iirc. Should have definitely tried to sneak 'blue skied an clear' over there, first song I heard of them and it blew my mind.

Isn't Anything isn't underproduced so much as Loveless is overproduced

um... no

A good half of the appeal of Loveless is the production, though.

well, I guess considering how much it cost to produce it it's underproduced.

I can tell ilxor is gonna love the next one:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61D4V30YRQL._SL500_AA300_.jpg
85. The Sundays - Skin and Bones (3 votes, 101 points)
Reading, Writing and Arithmetic (1990)
Youtube

The production on Isn't Anything is disgusting. I was so, so disappointed when I heard it again after a decade's gap. I genuinely couldn't understand or remember what I'd been getting from it at the time.

SUNDAYS MADE IT!!! And it's not even one I voted for.

So bummed I Only Said is so high on the list. The shoegaze "solo" in that song is the most mesmerizing 20 seconds in all music ever 4ever ever.

― time for a chimmy changa run (kelpolaris)

This make no sense to me.

― Moka.

Ok, already understood. You meant you're bummed 'i only said' is so low on the list and not the other way around. I was a bit confused about it :P

I dunno, I cant agree about the wispy vocal thing, I mean sure it is what the genre was about, but I've never been put off by a clear vocal, male or female.

Is this why people thnk Swervedriver aren't shoegaze? What about the Boos? They sing quite clearly !

sice has/had a very pretty voice

So sorry not to vote in this poll
Can't wait to delve in too because I reckon there are some missed gems in there for me. Am I allowed for being too lazy?
Thanks for the hard work Moka

Fwiw, at the time Swervedriver were the only band I liked from the so called Scene That.... And it took me a while to discover them because of the hate generated by stupid genre inventing/hopping journos in such a naive young idiot.

MBV were always outside of all that scene though from what I remembered. They just didn't know how to pigeonhole them. And that remains so in most cases.

sice's voice was lovely. i didn't much like it when he tried to "rock". is 'drive that fast' the acknowledged gem of 'strange free world' because for me it was always 'railwayed' but then that wasn't nominated. listening to 'mad as snow' now, hmmm...vocals are passionate and really very nice and of course he was the only shoegazer who could write lyrics. now i see?

oh and mbv were not outside of the scene but everyone seemed to think they were a level above the rest. which they weren't really but you know.

It's not "clear" that I dislike, it's that studied, "professional" sounding, singery, show off their chops, ultra-styled almost operatic tone of voice that people like the dude from KoC (see also Martin Fry, Brendan Perry, that Frank Sinatra crooner style, etc. rife through a lot of 80s music, Rick Astley on down.)

In male singers, I prefer a more naive, unmodified tone. OK, not so unschooled that they can't actually hit the notes (i.e. no indie fuX0rs please) but that whole crooned, vibrato, chest tone thing with deep breath support, I don't like it.

Sice had/has a really pretty voice, which is utterly perfect for shoegaze - high register, clean tone. And I'll agree that he had a "good" voice in that he was able to hit and sustain the notes he went for. But on that level, so did Ian Masters, another (male) shoegaze singer whose voice I genuinely truly love. Shoegaze was full both of useless breathy whisperers (hello Andy Bell, Slowdive, etc.) but *also* good singers who weren't... *singery*. I'm probably not expressing this very well. I just like rock singers to sound like choirboys, not like operatic "three tenors" type singers.

Now I'm going to shut up because I'm starting to take a Geir-like "this is the best thing!" attitude which I really don't feel. It's just my personal preference. And I'll skedaddle before Dan comes in to be singing teacher police and tell me I'm wrong.

I see what yr sayin K :)

TBH I love Brendan Perry's voice! But, it suits the band he's in. You *want* DCD to be pompous arses, thats what they do. See Wolfgang Press for similar comparison. Hey, curious they didn't crop up in this poll and neither did Dif Juz. Hm.

The odd thing about DCD is that Lisa Gerrard sings in a very similar operatic, over the top kind of way, and I have absolutely no problem with her and love everything her voice touches. So it is probably completely sexist on my part ha ha ironic. But yeah. That's why there's chocolate and vanilla.

don't know about the rest, but the lead singer's voice is DEFINITELY the reason I didn't put any Boo Radleys tracks on my ballot...

Personal preference isn't wrong! "I don't like so-and-so's voice" is a wholly different animal from "so-and-so can/can't/doesn't sing" and I only ever wade into the latter argument.

Well, it's the vague line between "can sing" meaning "can hit the notes in a timely and on pitch manner" vs anything from "can emote in an evocative and effective way" to "uses a showy kind of technical proficiency" but you're right, we don't need to have that argument.

I like Mark Gardener and I don't like dude from KoC and now I'm going to go back to staring at photos of Cedric Villani and thinking about time reversible entropy... ::little swoony sigh::

I think one of the key features of shoegazing was the contrast between the aggressive, noisy, FX-laden guitars and the soft, 'dreamy' vocals (as opposed to shoutier 'rock' vocals by, say, Nirvana or The Pixies, or the gruff-strangulated vocals of, say The Wedding Present, Happy Mondays, The Fall).

http://web.archive.org/web/20011202075606/http://www.thewire.co.uk/out/1297_4.htm

^ this is the original Simon Reynolds post-rock piece from the Wire that I mentioned unthread but couldn't find at the time

Never Lose That Feeling is just fucking brilliant. Listening to it so much at the moment

Ah yeah, totally!

actual l-o-l @ yr DN fwiw

Thanks feller

just wish someone wd notice the Autechre-flavoured brilliance of the one I've been sporting

Cap.Off Monsieur

"the scene that celebrates itself" is the worst genre name in hell.

fortunately it's not a genre name

The dream that celebrates its shoes.

In my world, Slowdive's "When The Sun Hits" would have won this poll.

It's shoegaze week at mah crib!

perfect damp cold weather to listen to this playlist all over again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShaAPL0eF6M

fuck, these guys should not be forgotten