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

It's more like 3 or 4 years, I think. Psychocandy was 85. I'm gonna have to look on the back of my copy of Isn't Anything to see if it was 88 or 89.

Wiki says November 88 which is nearly 4 years!

I voted Stone Roses IWBA NOT because it was "more recognisable" but because you know I LIKED it better. Thought that was the point.

http://i.imgur.com/XB14N.jpg
14. Ride - Like A Daydream (8 votes, 239 points)
Play EP (1990)
Youtube

OK, Psychocandy was November 85 which makes it 3 years on the nose, but given the age I was and how much else was exploding around at the time, those were long damn years.

thought the point was to be a defensive and cantankerous genre purist tbh

xp to pandemic

stop the bickering please, 'tis dull. 'Like A Daydream' is perfect

OK, that's me out, then. Never mind. Forgive me for actually wanting to talk about a genre in a poll about a genre.

what is a poll without bickering?

lol don't worry about it, the thing is, at this point of the poll every clashing opinion is bound to have some heavy supporters behind it.

I guess one thing is that MBV started out as kind of a straight up JAMC tribute act.

Willing to give 'Just Like Honey' a pass under the nebulous dreampop tag.

I always forget about "Like a Daydream." I really like it, actually, but I didn't realize it was like "best Ride song" good to a lot of people.

I keep changing my mind about how purist I want the poll to be. I guess it's because it is supposed to cover more than one genre anyway, so I'm fine with things like dronerock/dronepop being here, but a tad more skittish about the more mainstream stuff that gets in?

(Voted 'Just Like Honey' quite high, by the way.)

oh don't get me wrong, I'd be right up for some fun bickering

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a6/MyBloodyValentineLoveless.jpg
13. My Bloody Valentine - To Here Knows When (8 votes, 242 points)
Loveless (1991)
Youtube

And there's at least three more of those coming up..

Is that it for Lush then? Shame that "Sweetness and Light" didn't even make it into the top ten (and moreso that "De-Luxe" only just scraped into the top 30). And, yeah, the placement of that Roses track niggles me also.

I nommed the Stone Roses track and I gave it 50 points so if y'all really got a problem with it I call it quits and you'll never know what the remaining 12 tracks were.

Is it possible that The Telescopes might show up again..

Guessing its a lost cause for Medicine at this point.

xp I've really got a problem with you nomming and voting for that Stone Roses track.

But JAMC clearly, directly influenced these bands and then later on toured with some of them & learned back some tricks from those they'd influenced & employed them on later records (Honey's Dead, mainly) It is hardly the case of tracing anything back to The Velvets or anything like that.

JAMC was more of an influence on "shoegaze" by drumming up attention to Creation Records rather than anything of their releases. Those early JAMC tracks were all about sparseness, echo, and a connecting layer of feedback rather than emptying out a bucket of Boss effect pedals.

Wheat Dream's comment upthread about shoegaze dovetailing with affordable digital delays is OTM. Also, I believe the first Alesis Quadraverbs were on the market by then too.

xp I've really got a problem with you nomming and voting for that Stone Roses track.

Me too.

Black Metallic has not place yet, right?

'Like A Daydream' was the only Ride song I voted for, I'm a huge sucker for Byrds + loud guitars.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61dkal90GnL._SL500_AA280_.jpg
12. Cocteau Twins - Pearly Dewdrops Drop (8 votes, 245 points)
The Spangle Maker EP (1984)
Youtube

Best song about having a runny nose ever.

So that's what it's about! Had been wondering for the meaning of it for years now.

The thing I see as JAMC's primary contribution to shoegazing is the guitar-feedback as an essential component of the sound. Sure, others had utilized feedback before, but never anywhere even close to as consistently & confrontationally. It was JAMC's wall of feedback, filtered through MBV, which developed into arguably the most central characteristic of shoegazing in general.

"Never Understand" and Ride's "Chelsea Girl?" Not so fundamentally different when you think about it.

http://imgur.com/iZV0z.jpg
11. Boo Radleys - Lazarus (10 votes, 250 points)
Lazarus (1992)
Youtube

TOO LOW

I AGREE

isn't the fact that i wanna be adored seems to be now perceived as a shoegazing classic a tiny bit interesting, rather than infuriating? i can honestly say i didn't see that coming. isn't purism a little misplaced in a what amounts to a bandwagon that all the key players leapt on and off at will? would it be a problem if sunny sundae smile (1986) were on this list? anyway, i haven't participated in this so maybe i should just piss off. is there any chance big city will be in there? i suppose not

I am bummed that the Cocteau stuff I like is completely unrelated to the Cocteau stuff everyone else likes

I don't care much for 'Lazarus' the song, but that intro is really special

xpost: Sunny Sunday Smile got nommed and voted for... didn't make it to the top 100... I think it placed around place 170 or so.

Hi dere: any examples?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a6/MyBloodyValentineLoveless.jpg
10. My Bloody Valentine - When You Sleep (10 votes, 266 points)
Loveless (1991)
Youtube

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_499wVdW8GZY/SsTepI4zD8I/AAAAAAAAAvQ/d-xrVjnrEXM/s320/Christine+%5Bfront%5D.jpeg
9. House of Love - Christine (8 votes, 280 points)
Christine (1988)
Youtube

Well, if you were to have a "shoegaze" poll using only the strictest historical parameters, we would be polling well under twenty bands b/c it once applied to a specific group of bands from a specific town iirc. "The Scene that Celebrates Itself," right? Nowadays its more like "dream pop" or "post rock" - generalized and no longer retricted by date or geography. So then you've got three amorphous genre tags w/ to apply to a styles of music which are themselves, by necessity, amorphous. So, you know, fuck it.

"Wax and Wane" and "Violaine" were two of my votes, but also stuff like "Serpentskirt", "Blood Bitch"... basically their first album and their last album (ha)

Did not necessarily expect When You Sleep. Could Come in Alone also Place? That would mean that we'd have four more MBV tracks coming up.

Christine is just about right where it belongs imo.

xp (whereas everyone else seems to be all about the middle albums, which I find largely intolerable aside from Heaven or Las Vegas)

xxpost: Ok I'm not supposed to share these results until it's over but Wax and Wane almost made it (#125 3 votes, 75 points) Violane placed (#139 2 votes, 64 points.)

Serpentskirt and Blood Bitch didn't got nommed. Would have voted for the former myself.

http://imgur.com/76BLS.jpg
8. Catherine Wheel - Black Metallic (9 votes, 290 points)
Black Metallic (1991)
Youtube

great song this one, forgot to vote for it, could have helped it place a couple numbers higher.

Well, if you were to have a "shoegaze" poll using only the strictest historical parameters, we would be polling well under twenty bands b/c it once applied to a specific group of bands from a specific town iirc. "The Scene that Celebrates Itself," right?

'The Scene That Celebrates Itself' overlaps with 'Shoegazing', but wasn't quite the same thing. The former was the groups who were going to each other's gigs around London in 90/91, so includes Blur, but doesn't include northern groups like the Boo Radleys or Pale Saints.

isn't the fact that i wanna be adored seems to be now perceived as a shoegazing classic a tiny bit interesting, rather than infuriating? i can honestly say i didn't see that coming. isn't purism a little misplaced in a what amounts to a bandwagon that all the key players leapt on and off at will?

Couldn't agree more fwiw - getting some idea for where other people perceive this stuff to be and to have come from is fascinating. And what it all looks like now. If you want to be all purist then perhaps the poll thing isn't for you - just laminate your own list and go by that, maybe?

"Black Metallic" is nothing special, imho.

I agree.

xpost: I never thought of Catherine Wheel as particulary impressive. Hadn't heard this song in years but has been stuck in my head all week due to this poll.