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

An all-time-all-genre EPs poll would be fun - it's such a shoegaze format that Slowdive could come out of it looking like twentieth century music's dominant figures.

...they're not?

yeah, but the pale saints wrote catchy pop songs, that's not very shoegazey. x-post times 6.

maybe not the place to post this, but I just listened to Strawberry Wine for the first time, and I think it might be my favorite MBV song (though To Here Knows When is def. close second)

Its a pretty awesome song, most certainly.

Keith is summoning shoegaze demons! Be careful.

i considered pale saints shoegaze in 1992 and i consider them shoegaze now

("dream pop" as a genre signifier didn't exist for me til the mid-late 90s)

yeah, but the pale saints wrote catchy pop songs, that's not very shoegazey. x-post times 6.

So did Lush.

So did Ride and Chapterhouse and even occasionally MBV if you strip the noise back, in fact, so did every single damn first wave Shoegaze band except Slowdive.

I feel like the annoying dronerock paperclip that pops up and says "when you typed shoegaze there, did you mean DRONEROCK?" at some of these complaints.

Gotta say that I never heard the term dronerock until I saw it on ilm. Was it a term in wide use? Having said that, i CAn't really remember what the likes of spacemen 3 and loop were referred to as genre-wise. Maybe 'the new psychedelia' or something?

Well, I basically remember "dronerock" as a catchall term for all those children of the Velvet Underground who started popping up in the mid/late 80s. (I always ask this, but wasn't there a set of VU reissues in the 80s?)

That's the whole hypnotic, droney, no-tune aesthetic. Shoegaze had tunes as well as sonic cathedrals.

I first read the term drone-rock reading a review of a Fall show ca. 79; the Fall opened with "Before the Moon Falls" and the reviewer said they were shaping up to be a rahter good sub-Velvets drone-rock band...

that's what drone-rock usually means to me: stuff on Dragnet like Before the Moon Falls and Flat of Angles, or Clean songs like Point that Thing Somewhere Else. Those bands were heavily influenced by VU and a bit ahead of the curve as far as that goes (Dragnet came out in 79; Boodle Boodle Boodle came out in '81 I believe; I'm thinking that open VU worship in the American/British rock underground began outright with The Dream Syndicate's Days of Wine and Roses, which was '83??? and then JaMC came out with Psychocandy in '85, trying to outWL/WH Reed & Cale, and that's kind of when shoegaze started to materialize???)

Gah. Can't decide between:
a) albums only poll
b) separate albums and EPs polls
c) joint albums and EPs poll
d) no more fucking polls

― Running the Gantelope (Nasty, Brutish & Short), Monday, November 1, 2010 6:21 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

imo there is no reason not to combine EPs & LPs for this. there is such an embarrassment of riches for both formats in this case that I think pitting them against each other objectively would make for the most rewarding results anyway.

I have some ideas of what a loose set of parameters might be, mostly in keeping with Moka's but with a few delimiting factors to prevent w/ too general an overlap with certain strains of post-punk, IDM, indie, post-rock etc. But I am also definitely for keeping it diverse and inclusive enough to cover various splintering genres & also the occasional wild card b/c limiting an entire albums poll to OG shoegaze bands would not give us enough fodder to make this interesting.

how is it that 'mad as snow' did not make the top 100?

never really heard much KoD myself. the name always put me off for some reason, among other reasons. suppose i should hear more.

"drive that fast" is some serious shit

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.

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVj-fc1M_D0

1:47

MBV never really diverted from riff/verse/riff verse on Loveless save for this song.

how is it that 'mad as snow' did not make the top 100?

guessing votes Death of Cool-era KOD were split among MAS, On Tooting Broadway Station & Breathing Fear. All A+ trax imo.

I started listening to that song again, and I have the same problem with KoD now that I had then.

I think it's lovely and beautiful until the guy starts singing and then it's all over for me. I remember I had a couple of their albums, which I ended up giving to my brother.

...which is kind of ironic because yer man Patrick Fitzgerald is one of the few males in this genre who's got a strong singing voice IMO. Sounds a bit like an indie Martin Fry.

I don't know that people get into shoegaze for the strong vocalists.

Nah, the main thing I remember about KoD was that I didn't like the vocals. Been a long time since last I heard them, though.

I don't know that people get into shoegaze for the strong vocalists.

You're not wrong! KOD were fatally handicapped by good singing and meaningful lyrics. Oh and a cock-awful name obv.

Well apart from the fact that, erm, as I state often enough, I don't really like male singers (far prefer female vocalists, always have, always will, on a pure sound level... I especially don't like male singers who really *sing* (see also Brendan Perry of DCD)

if I have to put up with a male singer, I'd much rather have the speak-singy non-singers of dronerock or, preferably the male "etherial boy" equivalent choirboy type a la Ian from Pale Saints, Mark Gardener, thems out of Chapterhouse, etc.

But that us just my personal foible, I don't expect anyone else to share or even understand.

No, I think that's as much as anyone was looking for from the genre at the time.

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