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

Would like to help w/ album poll.

Maybe you could solve this while I sleep: I still haven't thought of a fair way of excluding random inappropriate albums from the poll, though.

Basically, what I'm saying is, fuck this "dream pop" nonsense. Let's have a SHOEGAZE poll where if it ain't SHOE I don't have to look at it! :-P

(I didn't quibble with the Eno because it placed down so low. Had that turned up in the top 20, you can bet I'd have looked intensely askance at it.)

SHOW ME THE SHOE, THE WHOLE SHOE AND NOTHING BUT THE DAMN SHOE!!!

I think Chapterhouse were the only shoegaze band ever to use the "When the Levee Breaks" beat.

Dreams Burn Down?

NBS, I will turn it over in my head tonight while I get drunk with Robert Pollard! Actually, I gotta get going.. It's been real, ILX shoegaze team.

http://www.xxlmag.com/online/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/n-w-a-straight-outta-compton-album-cover.jpg

How about just taking 'shoegazing' literally, then?

Actually, I'm gonna start campaigning now for the inclusion of "Selected Ambient Works 85-92" as a shoegaze album. I mean, it's got the atmospherics, it's got the delay pedal abuse, it's got wispy girly vocals deeply buried under onslaughts of warm noise. It meets more shoegaze criteria than the Sundays!

Poll needed more metal tbh

I guess my sole nomination for XTC didn't really mesh in this poll (like post-rock)

Such a great song though

I've just thought of another potential problem for the albums poll, which came to light when somebody did a 'Nowhere' tracks poll: what version of the album or we talking about? For example, for me (and for the reviewers of the time) there were 8 tracks on Nowhere. People who bought the CD version had three 'bonus' tracks from the Fall EP as well. People who have bought later re-issues have even more tracks on there (I think the Today Forever EP, maybe Ride and Fall as well).

(Fall = Play in that last section)

"Chasing a Bee" didn't even chart. SMH

That must be a thing for all album polls now, though? What with deluxe reissues and all that cal. xp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2LhT_X9V6Q

Posting 'Grasshopper' because I'm saddest that it didn't make the top 100 and I wish more people knew it. I accidentally fired up two versions simultaneously there, the double-tracked drums were fierce.

PS there was another b-side of theirs called 'Rolling Thunder #2' which is impossible to find - there appears to be some sort of motorcycle festival of the same name, which unfortunately monopolises the search results. Anyone know where I could hear it?

"Chasing a Bee" didn't even chart get nominated. SMH

― Cunga, Saturday, October 30, 2010 6:27 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

Had it been on the list, I would have given it 50 pts.

Shoegaze albums would be a nightmare because so often early EPs were collected and stuck together into albums for the US release (hence things like Ride's Smile, Lush's Gala - I forget the name of the Slowdive one, I'm fairly sure there was one, though. There's that pre-Isn't Anything MBV EP bonanza thing as well.)

And, like, I think of the Today Forever e.p. as pretty much a mini album in itself so counting that as part of Nowhere would just be nuts.

the Slowdive one

blue day

That's the one. Except all of that is now on the bonus disc for the reissue of Just For A Day now...

Hmmmm. I'm going to sleep on it. Perhaps we could make it an albums and EPs poll, with strict criteria that only the original vinyl version of an album counts and if you want yer bonus EP tracks you've got to nominate / vote for the EP instead / as well.

NBS, yeah, I think including EPs would be absolutely essential to organizing such a poll.

I would've voted the heck out of "Grasshopper," too.

But the E.P. collections were pretty canonical! Despite my general anti-Slowdive stance, I would totally vote for Blue Day as an album but I'm not sure I'd waste my votes on the singles/E.P.s

and omitting Gala as an album would just be wrong!

It's funny, though, how in many ways the E.P. was the natural shoegaze format.

Interesting mix, those results.

I think the one band consistently written out of shoegazing history as such still is Lovesliescrushing, probably because they were on Projekt and there just wasn't much focus on what Scott Cortez and company were doing as a result. And arguably you could say he was one of the first followers in the end. But he was creating some loud as hell, violent and beautiful stuff starting back in the early nineties and for all the MBV jones in evidence they ended up having their own impact:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CkAVwLwSRo

Did 'Jesu' got nominated? They could fit in the metal-shoegaze.

Ok, 'tired of me' did got nominated but noone but not a single vote for it.

Thanks Moka!

I was surprised to see some of my faves finish so high (e.g. "When You Sleep" in the top ten, "Pearly Dewdrops Drops" as the top Cocteaus song, "Allison" as the top Slowdive song.), wasn't at all surprised to see "Soon" at #1.

I'm into that Loveliescrushing song. Thanks, Ned!

Yer welcome. Trust me, there's a lot there to investigate. (Check out Astrobrite as well.)

astrobrite used to open for a lot of shoegazer bands when they would play detroit. well the ones that majesty crush didn't.

Did 'Jesu' got nominated? They could fit in the metal-shoegaze.

Cant remember but I did nominate a Lycia track (and voted for it!) which is closer to gazey goth-metal, and thats a whole subgenre that - I feel - stylistically fits here better than some of the stuff that charted.

I can't be such a stickler for canon than K, though I do understand where she's coming from being in the STCI back in 91. But if we stuck to that pure "shoegaze" we'd be stuck with half a dozen bands and some limp has-been forgotten leftovers. I *like* to think the genre expanded and developed branches, as many do - metal, goth, dreampop, IDM.

Er, what I meant there was, shoegaze developed into those offshoots (gazey metal, IDM gaze such as Schnauss, etc)

Anyone else think it's indicative of how music listening has changed the last few years that we did the trax poll before, and without even planning to do, the album poll?

ILM a few years ago would never have stood for that order, unless you were doing chart pop.

I probably would have nominated & voted in an album poll. Never thought of shoegaze as a singles genre.

Being a genre poll, why arent straight up bands done?

Anyone else think it's indicative of how music listening has changed the last few years that we did the trax poll before, and without even planning to do, the album poll?

ILM a few years ago would never have stood for that order, unless you were doing chart pop.

― Cunga

I'm sorry if I'm out of the norm. I don't really think I'm much younger than most of ILM (I'm 24) but I've always been a singles/songs person (unless were doing classical, of course). I have 30 complete albums at most in my ipod, which are the only ones I'll listen to end to back in physical format as well. I always keep only the 3 or 5 highlights or the songs which I think that better represent the sound from every album and ditch the rest. Probably a sacrilege for most of the posters on this board but I very rarely bump into an artist that can genuinely hold my interest for so long.

Shoegaze-wise not even classic albums like say Loveless or Nowhere have managed to win my heart completely.

But if we stuck to that pure "shoegaze" we'd be stuck with half a dozen bands and some limp has-been forgotten leftovers. I *like* to think the genre expanded and developed branches, as many do - metal, goth, dreampop, IDM.

Hey, I'm totally fine with a genre expanding and developing branches and sprouting new and exciting developments (see: the mutators and the diaspora in my little explanation thing)

What I a *not* fine with is people retroactively grabbing things from a different, EARLIER genre, and redefining it going "oh, this is shoegaze now" on account of superficial resemblances. That, I think is just anachronistic and shows a real flaw in critical thinking.

No it doesn't. It just shows that your understanding at the time, and other people's understanding now, are not the same thing.

OK, fine. I am now going to claim that the American Revolution, even though it happened earlier, and in a different country, is part of the *French* Revolution. No, I'm not saying that the French revolution was inspired by or influenced by the American Revolution, I'm saying that it one and the same thing because hey, shots got fired and a government got changed. And you can't tell me that I'm wrong or criticise that statement, because that is *my* understanding now, and you are just a history nazi, the end.

::flounces off::

I hope that it's obvious that I'm being quite playful and not serious at all about this, but the thing is, I think this begs other questions.

That it comes from this dichotomy of, what *is* genre? Is it just an adjective, a purely descriptive tag that you put on a piece of music like "acoustic" or "female singer"?

Or is the idea of a Genre (especially a genre as small and specific as "shoegaze") something deeper, a signifier of a specific movement, with specific cultural significance relating to a moment in time (and what came after)?

Like, if you were talking about art, there's a difference between saying something is "a landscape painting" (meaning a painting of a pastoral view) or a Hudson River School Painting (meaning that it is specific to a certain group and school of painters with a certain aesthetic and a certain philosophy and cultural meaning, and the people that they went on to inspire.)

I do actually kind of resent being called a "genre nazi" because I'm going with the latter, more academic approach to genre instead of just treating it like an all purpose adjective akin to "blue". It's a different approach, and not necessarily a worse one.

Inviting thoughts for this 'Shoegazing etc.' albums poll - feel free to chip in.

As I said last night, there's a problem with albums like 'Nowhere' in that depending on what format you bought and when, you could consider the album to have 8 tracks, or 11, or even 15:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nowhere_(album)
For this reason I think it's best to limit everything to what it consisted of at the time it was released, but also to include EPs in the poll so that those tracks can still be considered. Also, I think that any album / EP listed in the nominations thread should have the agreed tracklisting after it, so that everyone can see what is actually being voted on,

e.g. Ride - Nowhere (Seagull, Kaleidoscope, In A Different Place, Polar Bear, Dreams Burn Down, Decay, Paralysed, Vapour Trail)
Ride - Fall EP (Dreams Burn Down, Taste, Here and Now, Nowhere)

As for whether a particular album/EP really fits into the genre or not, perhaps we could have a panel of experts (!). Maybe Pillbox, Wheal Deal, and somebody else. Something can be excluded only if ALL of them agree that it doesn't belong there.

Is this just getting too complicated?

I know, when my BFF gets back from LA, we'll have her ring up Kevin Shields and ask *him* if he thinks something should be included or not. ;-)

(Actually that's a terrible idea because then we'd end up with Le Volume Corbe number one in the list and no one wants that.)

(Actually ARGH that linked Nowhere wiki article has it listed as shoegaze / spacerock which makes me want to stab a pencil through someone's eye because of the many things that that album is, Spacerock is SOOO not one of them argh blargh kill kill WTFiswrongwithyoupeople OK I better have a lie down now.)

Do it that way if you want nbs, it would certainly resolve everything (until the next argument!) - but only if you don't mind putting the extra work in. Like I said, I thought moka got it right, but I seem to be a lot more relaxed about these things than the consensus here.

Actually, maybe there should be two separate polls for albums and EPs. My brain hurts...

That it comes from this dichotomy of, what *is* genre? Is it just an adjective, a purely descriptive tag that you put on a piece of music like "acoustic" or "female singer"?

FWIW, I'm usually not the least bit interested in answering these sorts of questions. For starters, I think that demarcating where one genre ends and another begins is nearly an impossible task. For example, we might agree that Chapterhouse are shoegaze, but "Pearl" wouldn't exist without the Stone Roses (and Madchester). What does this mean? Are Chapterhouse still considered "purely" shoegaze (and good luck defining that) because they borrowed from dance? Are they shoegaze, except not on this particular song? Should we lump Stone Roses and Chapterhouse together under some other genre heading? I can see why some people might enjoy thinking about this stuff, but frankly, these questions bore me.

I think that these polls are the best indications of what is shoegaze ... IOW, if the community accepts it, then it's in. And what the "shoegaze community" considers to be an offshoot of shoegaze might be in constant flux.

I also don't know why you're assuming that genres always evolve linearly and separate from each other ... there's plenty of cross-pollination going on. This is why your history analogy doesn't work. So for instance, once bands like Slowdive started sounding more like Talk Talk in 1994-5, then TT become part of the shoegaze narrative. In 1991, they didn't fit into the narrative, but fast forward a few years, more and more bands start citing them as an influence, the parameters of the genre change, and it makes perfect sense to retroactively add new bands to the genre.

It's actually funny you mention that Talk Talk got integrated in circa the mid-90s because there was at least one sign it was sooner -- I typed up this Mark Hollis interview from 1991 for the big TT fan site and there's this bit:

Mark Hollis hasn't a clue whether Talk Talk bear any relationship at all to rock music as we know and love it today. He's never heard Ride, never heard Chapterhouse, never heard any of the bands who swooned when "Spirit of Eden" came out, enraptured by its textures and envious of its freedom of format.

"I'm really not familiar with what is happening," he says. "I haven't heard any of them but it's not because I'm in any way dismissive of what is currently happening. It's just that I'm basically uninformed. That's all it is. I don't for a minute think that we're out on some limb and there's no one that has an understanding of what we're doing. I would hate to think that and I'm sure there are a lot of people around right now with whom we would have an empathy but it's just that I don't know who they are."

Now, this is Steve Sutherland clearly asking the question and spelling out the links rather than either Hollis (obv.) or, perhaps, the bands themselves, though maybe Sutherland had heard said bands mention it and decided to ask. Still, though, it's an interesting outlier.

Should also add that that mention -- along with the interview and the excellent review of the album -- is precisely why I picked up Laughing Stock as soon as I could, having then only known "It's My Life" from my middle school radio-listening years. So even if the comparison was at most implicit it was still something that resonated, especially in a time when print was just about the only way I could know about something potentially interesting like that album.

I'm pretty sure I've read that interview (the intro and the parts about suing EMI seem really familiar) but forgot about the TT/shoegaze question. And yeah, it's not really clear if Sutherland is spelling out the links or just namedropping contemporary bands who happen to like TT. But it's interesting to think about it.

OK, fine, NTBT. If you want to live in a universe where the law of gravity is replaced by intelligent falling that's your business, but in *my* universe, the laws of physics state that time and causality really only goes one way, and X can *influence* or even *cause* Y without actually *becoming* Y. (And this is when I really wish that Mark S were still around to say "influence does not exist.")

Like I said, it's about how you see what genre *is*. If you just think of it as a tag that means "if you like Y, you're likely to like X as well" then fair enough. I mean, all British guitar bands of the late 80s / early 90s do kinda look and sound alike if you're not totally saturated in the culture that produced them.

But if you are, you can look at these things, and see the narcissism of small difference that makes these things actually very different on a socio-cultural level. I mean, just for a start, there's this big gulf between "baggy" which was a Northern phenomenon, urban, working class and "shoegaze" which was (mostly) a Southern phenomenon, suburban, middle class/affluent <- and it's differences like this which provide different context, different meaning, different focus. You're talking about music made by the losers of the Thatcherite class conflict vs music made by the winners, and the way they see the world and the way they express that world. Music doesn't happen in a vacuum, and I find the other stuff around the context almost as interesting and important as an Amazon recommendation of "if you bought this, you should purchase that."

If you're not interested in that context, then fair enough, but that doesn't mean that it's not there or not worth talking about.

Good post ntbt, that's exactly how I feel about it. Also kudos for having a user name that could practically be a Ride song title.