Sugar for the POLL - The Shoegaze Reunion LPs + EP 2013-17

So bummed I missed swervedriver... theres a lot of live footage from throughout the years on youtube

I hate to agree with LJ but mbv so far ahead of the pack here its not even funny.

Slowdive album was decent but nothing special either

aw that is not a real hate surely </3

i just listened to mbv again btw, it's truly one of the best albums of the last decade

ooh the swervedriver album begins strong

I need to listen to mbv again I guess.

Slowdive

the swervedriver album continues strong. way better than i expected

"M b v" by miles. It is almost as good as "Loveless". And I guess "Only Tomorrow" is even their best song. The Slowdive is decent but it is still Slowdive, there is something quite soporific about that band. The Ride is rubbish.

Voted for Slowdive. It fits in perfectly with their flawless back catalogue.

I like mbv but haven't been back to it in a long time. The Lush EP was really forgettable which was such as shame as their run of albums and EPs was almost as strong as Slowdive's. The Ride album is so dull. It's not even as good as Carnival Of Light.

Lol at the difference of opinion here.

"Not even as good as Carnival of Light" that's fucking harsh.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing. But yeah, it's a better follow up to GBA, right? I think I'd have been happier with that at the time.

It has 'Cali' on it, which alone makes it better than the Slowdive

ooh the swervedriver album begins strong

It sure does. For me it's the album that's in a different league here, just a beautiful piece of music.

well CERTAINLY not that fucking Ride album.

is MBV a reunion album or an old album that was finally released?

I like the new Slowdive a lot

I thought "Sugar For The Pill" sounded like Coldplay when I heard it on its own as a single but in the context of the album it sounds much better.

I really love Lush first time around, but I never fell for Slowdive in the same way. But I think the new Slowdive album is much better than the new Lush EP.

Hmm, difficult poll. Both the MBV and Slowdive albums feel on par with those band's respective outputs so ranking them is just a matter of mood or how much one liked those bands in the first place.
The Ride one otoh was quite a surprise. Not necessarily the best album but maybe the most intriguing and probably the easiest to just put on in the car.

Lush EP putting me in mind of Dubstar, except I think I prefer Dubstar

But yeah, really enjoying the Swervedriver again. I'd definitely rank it 2nd of these and quite a close 2nd too, but I do think mbv is a brilliant, brilliant album. I'd be tempted to throw Swervedriver a vote if mbv seemed to be racing away with it, but ILM seems to have decided en masse to favour Slowdive's bland new album just coz it came out this year. Run this poll again in 2020 and I suspect it might have worn off a bit. So Kevin needs all the votes he can get

but ILM seems to have decided en masse to favour Slowdive's bland new album just coz it came out this year

god shut the fuck up lj

time was you could kick a slowdive in the street

"Slowdive are worse than Hitler"
-- LJ

comparisons of “sugar for the pill” to coldplay are bizarre to me as “star roving” is the one that resembles an actual coldplay song (“chinese sleep chant” iirc) unless coldplay are uniformly associated with chimey and sleepy melancholy now

anyway my objection to lj is as usual not his opinion but his disingenuous characterization of other people’s tastes which makes him sound like t*rr*c*n with a larger vocabulary

slowdive record much like m b v builds on and references their previous work while also being very much its own thing, they’re both very special records imo the slowdive is just more accessible and more interesting to revisit for me. “no longer making time” is up there with “blue skied an clear” imo

that is a huge call!

i like slowdive and i even like (some) mojave 3 so i'm not coming at this from a place of opposition, i just couldn't see where the magic was this time around. RYM has it firmly in the top ten of the year so maybe the problem is mine rather than everyone else's. this time.

sorry for getting salty and misattributing your preferences though, I really do need to stop doing that

The MBV record was so sterile and smooth it sounds like an idling bus. No bite.

I really like it but it's hard for me to focus on and I'm not emotionally grabbed by too much on it.

anyway my objection to lj is as usual not his opinion but his disingenuous characterization of other people’s tastes which makes him sound like t*rr*c*n with a larger vocabulary

― ToddBonzalez (BradNelson), Monday, October 2, 2017 2:25 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Beats sounding like a c***

THERE'S A GEODE THAT'S ON MAH MIND
ALL THE TIME

PSEUD-PSEUD-PSEUDIO!

I don't really like Falling Ashes because it sounds too much like a doctor show theme. Otherwise that album is fantastic.

I like the Slowdive album a lot, but I like the My Bloody Valentine album far more.

slowdive felt a bit slight to me, kind of a mish-mash of things they'd done before. mbv actually had some new/unexpected directions. it still also managed to sound very 1995 which makes it kind of more interesting, almost like a time capsule

Whenever someone says a song 'sounds like Coldplay' it will probably be the song I love the most by that band. I love the idea of Coldplay, they're just a pisspoor version of it. Sugar for the Pill reminds me of John Maus, though. The vocals.

Slowdive

for me the Coldplay comparison is more about the mix of wistful and anthemic, a sense of mood more than any direct individual song comparison

Not feeling the Coldplay comparisons of the Slowdive record at all. However, I feel the urge to sing "Streets of Philadelphia" over "Slomo".

Listened to m b v yesterday, the clear winner for me in this poll.

Slowdive

Haven't been able to get 'Lone Star' off the Swervedriver album out of my head these last few days

My Bloody Valentine - mbv - heard twice and not on Spotify. indifferent

Swervedriver - I Wasn't Born to Lose You - good but not great, even 99th Dream is better

Lush - Blind Spot - never heard

Slowdive - s/t - my album of 2017. this is not an instant gratification album. it reveals itself over time. if you take a break for 19 years there is no way you have something with this impact in you. on the plane with Portishead Third. once in a lifetime album. i think this album is that special.

Ride - Weather Diaries - one of my all time favorite bands. they have meant so much to me in '91. this album is not good.

I guess Chapterhouse never bothered to record after that brief reunion tour w/Ulrich Schnauss. Could have been a contender here.
I wished the Lush RP was a full album.
Despite being a Pygmalion stan, I like the MOR on the new one. I don't mean that as a slam - It may just end up being my favorite album of theirs.
Predictably I voted for MBV.

really surprised by people having any negative reactions to the slowdive album. clear winner in this list, just on top of Lush, whose ep sounds like they never went away; sad there won't apparently be any more from them (although, I saw somewhere that 4ad were now distributing or had reissued the ep? maybe that's a sign of something)

Slowdive for me but I’d also vote Souvlaki over Loveless.

Slowdive for me but I’d also vote Souvlaki over Loveless.

Me too!

I'd probably vote Pygmalion over Loveless, but I've never really gotten into Souvlaki.

Slowdive's album is closer to their 90's peak than the MBV album was to theirs. Between that and the recency bias, it's almost enough for me to pick Slowdive. If it had been a four track EP then I probably would have. The Lush EP did nothing for me, Ride's album is a nice listen but fairly forgettable, and I haven't heard the Swervedriver.

itt: people grumbling at my objections to the slowdive album, then voting without hearing all the options ;)

(it's really striking how much better than expectations the swervedriver album was, and nobody's really talking about it, which seems weird. it deserves votes here)

Of these I've yet to hear the Ride or Swervedriver albums, but then I haven't heard any Swervedriver albums after Raise anyway (for unknown reasons really, I like Raise) and expect Ride to be shit given their previous 2 albums and post-Ride careers. Swervedriver also the only reunion tour I haven't seen.

I guess I'd probably go with MBV over Slowdive. The Lush EP was good, I like all the songs on it, but there's only 4 songs and the others are all albums.

the new MBV was, incredibly, worth the wait. love that album so much. gonna listen to it again today...

the new slowdive is really nice and perfect for a sunny morning but the MBV has those solos that go into distorted ectstasy, really works for me

someone might feel like throwing a bottle or something at me for saying this but i’ll admit you’re right imago: I haven’t even heard the swervedriver and ride albums but to be honest their 90’s output never resonated with me so I’m not interested in hearing what they have to say now.

Interesting how in music (at least true for rock music) we place more value in youth over whatever wisdom the artist has acquired aging.

At least for me concerning those two, if I didn’t relate to their style and content when they were young (and in their prime according to this rock crux) I don’t think they have anything to interest me now.

The Slowdive and MBV albums sound like more like a logical progression in their careers after their last albums than reunion albums. I was always a bigger Slowdive fan, yet for some reason I knew I had to vote for the MBV which I am pretty sure I like more than Loveless (my favorite of their original run).

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Slowdive always resonated more with me and I’d take Souvlaki over Loveless any day. However -despite how much both bands stayed true to their original sound- I gotta vote for mbv. I can admire Slowdive’s new one but it leaves me kinda cold. Maybe I’ve moved on

mbv

The mbv album was my greatest letdown of the decade, probably. I only gave it a few spins, though; may need to re-listen. Loved the Slowdive album from this year instantly.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

That was closer than I thought it'd be, even though I voted Slowdive.

Yo to my fellow Swervedriver voter.

Also wanted to mention that Secret Shine continue to be great in the '10s. There is Only Now is the new one. I feel like they belong in this conversation even if they don't quite match the timeline of the other bands.

Yeah, I listen to the Dreamscape compilation on Kranky and Secret Shine's Untouched far more than anything by MBV.

Yo to my fellow Swervedriver voter.

― geoffreyess, Saturday, October 14, 2017 10:23 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hey there

Somebody said something upthread about consistency. Personally, I don't really care if an album is consistent or not as I hardly ever listen to anything as an album any more, just picking tracks or using playlists through itunes, so it's more important to me that the best tracks are really good. I would agree that the Slowdive album is the most consistent of them here*, but it doesn't really have any standout tracks for me. I don't dislike the album, but I haven't found myself desperate to listen to it - it's just quite good. Similarly with the Lush EP - it was just alright, but a bit forgettable. The Ride album is much more patchy. I liked them so much back in 1990-92 and I really wanted their new stuff to be good, but was worried it was going to be shit. On the whole, it's much more in a 'rock' direction than my taste, but it has its moments. I think Cali is a brilliant slice of Pixies-style pop, I'm happy enough to listen to Charm Assault, All I Want and Lateral Alice and White Sands is interesting (and doesn't sound like anything else they've done). Some of the rest of it is a bit rubbish or dull (definitely not a fan of Impermanence, which seems cruel as it's about the death of his father, and keep getting distracted by the "but if you've got to go, I want you to know..." bit sounding like "the men from the press said we wish you succcess, it's good to have the both of you back"). I wouldn't say I like everything on mbv, but for me Only Tomorrow and If I Am are right up there with anything else they've ever recorded and better than anything else in this poll.

*I haven't heard Swervedriver, but was never actually into them back in the day anyway

Really wish Chapterhouse had done a new one but if they really didn't want to I guess it's probably for the best. Their output is really small so it seems odd they didn't have more left to say.