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

I'll have to hear the rest of the album.

re: Flying. I found something on Youtube called "Flying (2005)" which may just be strangely labeled, because the footage looks early '90s. Anyway, that's their best track? It's just a drone.

Would love to see 'Like A Daydream' in there too but I doubt it will place.

All of my Ride points went to LAD. In my mind it always seemed like their most perfect single, although it's conceivably far too Byrds-with-bonus-distortion to gel with all this Slowdive, Curve and Disco Inferno et al.

Similarly, Boo Radleys would be very lucky to place again, no? With likely vote-splitting, so many of their contenders are also hopelessly impure in terms of 'gazy-ness.

Expect to see Lazarus, didn't vote for it though (or any Boo Radleys).

re: Flying. I found something on Youtube called "Flying (2005)" which may just be strangely labeled, because the footage looks early '90s. Anyway, that's their best track? It's just a drone.

― Johnny Fever

Can't vouch for whether or not that's the same song (if it's labelled 2005 it might be from the re-worked re-release of the album) but, uh, if "it's just a drone" is your idea of an insult then maybe you're on the wrong thread?

[If you now go and tell me you're one of the people who voted for The Sundays I will just accept that there is a vast, vast gulf between us that can never be reconciled and that we should probably stop the discussion]

Lazarus is a lock.

but, uh, if "it's just a drone" is your idea of an insult then maybe you're on the wrong thread?

New display name levels of truth bomb. ;-)

trax from my ballot which I'm fairly certain won't place at this point:

Blur - Oily Water
Catherine Wheel - Crank
Mercury Rev - Meth Of A Rockette's Kick
Secret Shine - Loveblind
Seefeel - Plainsong

Only ever heard their early stuff (7# Disaster etc) so I always lumped the Telescopes in with the likes Loop and Spacemen 3 and maybe Thee Hypnotics. Kind of fucked-up Stoogey bad vibes music. Ought to get around to hearing the later stuff.

If you now go and tell me you're one of the people who voted for The Sundays I will just accept that there is a vast, vast gulf between us that can never be reconciled and that we should probably stop the discussion

I was probably the most vocal supporter for their inclusion on the nominations thread, so...haha, yeah.

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

I just don't hear a song here. Not one that's worthy of being in a Top 100 of anything, anyway.

Oh shit, I'm down with that :)

Okay, I've actually plugged in my headphones and had a listen. That is a completely re-done version from 2005, around the time when they were getting really into experimental drone, ha. Love it, but this is the version that people would have been voting for (and relistening to it has made me wish I'd put it higher in my list):

http://vimeo.com/1249565

Okay, I'm definitely down with the original version. Very nice!

Ought to get around to hearing the later stuff.

Yes you should. If anything good comes out of this thread, maybe people will finally put down their Boo Radleys albums and listen to this instead

All this talk of whether or not "Sunshine Smile" is shoegaze is basically missing the point (I never thought of it as shoegaze in '92, FWIW). If they were trying to crib from shoegaze, then they basically took the swarm of guitars and left the rest. While bands like Slowdive were busy floating in the clouds, Adorable were going full-on teenpop gone RAWK, the blast of noise in the chorus kicks my ass and the lyrics are fumbling, awkward, and altogether much too sweet, like something written by a socially stunted character in a Smiths song. I love this song so much -- it was my #1 (40 points). And it's definitely not "britpop grunge", that would be Radiohead's cover of "Sunshine Smile, except they retitled it "Creep", perhaps you've heard of it?

Re: Slowdive's debut, I think the critics were right at the time -- it's nowhere near as good as their early EPs. There's not a song from JFAD that would be in my top 20 Slowdive songs.

tbh I always thought Sunshine Smile WAS shoegaze, at the time and now, although I can see most of their other stuff wasn't really.

xpost really? You have a top 20 Slowdive songs and Catch The Breeze isn't in it?

Missing Bimble on this poll

I wish I would've remembered to nom "All Good Things" by Medicine. I probably would've been its only vote, but whatever. Surprised there's been NO Medicine at all, though.

i'd have 4 or 5 tunes from JFAD in a slowdive top 20 i reckon - 'catch the breeze', 'brighter' and 'primal' in a heartbeat.

xpost

Right, I forgot about "Catch the Breeze" ... that would probably be around #15. There's nothing else even close though.

also (and this making my blood boil a bit), since when is nicky wire an authority on good music? comes across as a loud-mouthed, opinionated hack to me.

The top 15 would have most of "Souvlaki" and stuff like "Morningrise" and "Avalyn".

xpost

Not even Celia's Dream or Waves or Brighter?

It's quite sad actually I ended up going to Reading University partially due to Slowdive & Chapterhouse, it's all very embarrassing but I assumed because of shoegazing & the Reading festival that Reading must've been a cool town, of course since I started uni in '94 it was all over by then anyway. Well, that and me not getting good enough grades to get into UCL.

also (and this making my blood boil a bit), since when is nicky wire an authority on good music? comes across as a loud-mouthed, opinionated hack to me.

I always kind of liked the Slowdive/Hitler quote because of that.

I really, really like Slowdive, and there are a number of good songs on JFAD, but I almost never feel the need to listen to it. Also, the way that everyone here has been fawning over the early Ride EPs is more or less how I feel about the early Slowdive EPs.

Only ever heard their early stuff (7# Disaster etc) so I always lumped the Telescopes in with the likes Loop and Spacemen 3 and maybe Thee Hypnotics.

Yeah, I preferred the Telescopes up to around the first album myself. I rarely seem to play any of the Creation era tracks with the possible exception of "Precious Little" (whose lack of a nomination is understandable). But then I'm one of those who helped "Can't Be Sure" and "Everything Flows" place instead, so my judgement re some strains of early-90s shoegazery proper is no doubt questionable already. :)

Thankig U for ur Sundays vote!

i was drinking the kool-aid last night and had no time to comment about 41-60. voted for the Teenage Fanclub song but was wondering why when i did. "Does This Hurt?" is brilliant but i didn't vote for it. very surprised that any Blur made this poll.

how does adorable beat de-luxe? leave them all behind is the least epic epic song ever. it's just long. i still like it but when people proclaim it as the best thing ride ever did they are nuts. 'coast is clear' should have been top ten.

also don't get the apparent love for 'gravity grave', it's not even the best track on that single. 'endless life' is miles better.

40. SWERVEDRIVER "Son of Mustang Ford" (1990) - YES! one of my more favorite songs ever, it was my number 14.

33. THIS MORTAL COIL "Song to the Siren" (1983) - this was the last song i cut from my list, didn't think it really belonged so i cut it.

31. PALE SAINTS "Sight of You" (1988) - i thought i would be the only one to vote for this, love ILM.

29. LUSH "De-Luxe" (1990) - my only Lush song made it.

28. ADORABLE "Sunshine Smile" (1992) - voted for this and have no shame, didn't think it had a chance in hell.

27. SWERVEDRIVER "Rave Down" (1991) - this was going to be my second Swervedriver song but they only got one in from me.

23. THE TELESCOPES "You Set My Soul" (1992) - i mentioned earlier on this thread that i voted for this song, as i never thought it would show up later.

21. CHAPTERHOUSE "Pearl" (1990) - this was my number two, could not give it any more points and barely made the Top 21. thought this was a lock to Top 10, maybe even Top 5.

Only ever heard their early stuff (7# Disaster etc) so I always lumped the Telescopes in with the likes Loop and Spacemen 3 and maybe Thee Hypnotics. Kind of fucked-up Stoogey bad vibes music. Ought to get around to hearing the later stuff.

― Harrison Buttwhistle (NickB), Friday, October 29, 2010 6:47 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

Telescopes were kind of all over the map. I mean, their later albums are almost entirely electronic & instrumental, right? Still, I think every band on Creation the early 90s was contractually obligated to produce at least one or two EPs worth of some combination of MBV and/or The House of Love .

But then, almost all of the bands on the initial shoegaze roster were scene-jumpers or just stylistically unsure, even the heavy hitters. Lush & Ride went full Britpop. So did the Boo Radleys, although in a much classier & more interesting way. Catherine Wheel cast their lot w/ the Bush path to grunge success in America. Slowdive became Mazzy Star. Blur became Blur. Chapterhouse became Techno-Zeppelin. Moose secretly put out some of the best easy-listening records of the decade. The Sarah & Cheree bands who released a shoegaze record or two in 91/92 went back to being Sarah & Cheree bands. Some dabbled in IDM. And a lot of them just imploded or disappeared. By 1995, the few bands who retained any aspect of that sound (Swervedriver, for example) were ridiculed or ignored by the weeklies.

What fascinates me about the UK music press of that time is how adept they were at playing kingmaker & manipulating trends. I mean, they basically systematically dismantled the baggy scene with similar efficiency, right? (or maybe baggy did it to itself - I don't remember). It seems like that sound was pretty healthy in 1991, and then nowhere to be found by 92.

Nothing wrong w/ being itinerant, but I wish that some of the core UK shoegaze bands had stuck to their guns & pushed the sound further, esp. since some of the last major records of the era (Split, Giant Steps*, Mezcal Head, Pygmalion) to bear the hallmarks of shoegaze showed it being refined and expanded in promising ways.

*included this b/c even though it was a critical smash, its success had very little to do with the Meriel Barham cameo.

Of course in late 90s, the same NME/MM set who had ignored or written off Bark Psychosis, Disco Inferno & Flying Saucer Attack five years earlier were pissing themselves over bands like Mogwai, GYBE, Death in Vegas & Sigur Ros...

I think during the nomination phase not many people suggested post-rock because there was already much more shoegaze and dream pop coming in?

OR BECAUSE THEY WERE POSEURS.

Or because the few post-rock bands that seemed to stylistically fit the feel of the poll belonged on it not because they were post-rock but because they were DRONEROCK which was somehow missed off the poll concept entirely?

The complete lack of Medicine on the results so far makes me ;_;

But ditto Seefeel. But instead we've got all this Sundays and Blur gubbins. Which fair enough, I love those bands, but WTF at them placing on a shoegaze poll and Medicine and Seefeel not making it.

Moan moan, old person complaining young persons don't understand that thing that was big and important when they was young.

my top 4 votes were all dream pop - I think I just like that kind of stuff (and psychedelic pop) a lot more than shoegaze

The complete lack of Medicine on the results so far makes me ;_; - I'm lukewarm on most Medicine tracks, but "One More" is a colossal fucking jam. I'm still holding out for it, but not getting my hopes up. It deserves to be up there w/ the best of the best tho imo.

But ditto Seefeel. - Is it possible that "Plainsong" could still place? I seriously doubt it at this point.

Blur gubbins. - the one Blur track so far to make the cut is perfectly appropriate for this poll. It's not like Dan Abnormal placed or something.

Perhaps I am just kicking myself for not ordering my list so that all my votes just got 20 points while I'm noticing things that snuck in on not very many votes but a whole lot of points.

But I guess the Medicine vote was split because I went for Aruca.

tbh you could just choose to give everything 40 points because you had 800 points to distribute between 20 tracks. idk why the default for unordered lists was to give everything 20 instead of 40.

Eh? It was 40 tracks, 20 points.

I don't suppose there's much of a chance of any more Kitchens of Distinction appearing, is there?

One KOD track for this poll is a fuckin disgrace.

I imagine the main problem w/ this ^ is that there's not really a consensus pick for Death of Cool.

super vague and far too broad poll disappoints some zzz....

Surely 'mad as snow' will place???

Ey, no disappointment here - concept was pitched just right imo and moka's done a fine job. Genuinely intrigued and excited to see the top twenty now - the last few polls I've participated in have spiralled away at this point into stuff I've never even heard of or the fetishes of the few - will be gutted if this happens here.

DRONEROCK which was somehow missed off the poll concept entirely?

needs its own poll

not that its inclusion among the shoegazing in this poll was a mistake, I just think a straight-up space-rock poll would be nice.

dronerock/pop punk/cumbia noms thread 2011

o whoops u right k8