-=- SHGZ -=-
* Shoegaze * Indie * Post-rock * Grunge * Dream Pop * Ambient * Ethereal *
Artist..: VA
Album...: Still In A Dream - A Story Of Shoegaze 1988-1995
GENRE....: Indie
STYLE....: Shoegaze, Noise, Alternative Rock, Art Rock, Lo-Fi
Indie Rock, Ethereal, Experimental, Brit Pop, Psychedelic Rock
LABEL....: Cherry Red SCENE.....: 2016-02-07
BITRATE..: 265 kbps avg STORE.....: 2016-00-00
ENCODER..: LAME 3.98.4 -V0 TRACKS....: 87
SIZE.....: 751.7MB SOURCE....: CD
URL..: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoegazing
- TRACKLIST
Disc 1
------
1 The Jesus & Mary Chain - Rollercoaster 3:47
2 Cocteau Twins - Cherry-Coloured Funk 3:12
3 The House Of Love - Christine 3:25
4 A.R. Kane - Baby Milk Snatcher (12" 6:01
Version)
5 Ultra Vivid Scene - Mercy Seat (12" 6:31
Version)
6 Spacemen 3 - Hypnotized 5:56
7 Loop - Arc-Lite (Sonar) 4:28
8 14 Iced Bears - Surfacer 6:43
9 Galaxie 500 - Tugboat 3:55
10 The Prayers - Puppet Clouds 2:57
11 Kitchens Of Distinction - The 3rd Time 3:20
We Opened The Capsule
12 A.C. Marias - One Of Our Girls Has 4:40
Gone Missing
13 The Telescopes - Precious Little 3:13
14 Pale Saints - Sight Of You 5:49
15 Jane From Occupied Europe - Ocean Run 6:39
Dry
16 Sonic Boom - Angel 7:52
Disc 2
------
1 Ride - Drive Blind 4:47
2 Lush - De-Luxe 3:28
3 See See Rider - Slip So Slow 2:29
4 Nightblooms - Crystal Eyes 2:24
5 The Darkside - Waiting For The Angels 5:12
6 Velocity Girl - I Don't Care If You Go 3:05
7 Cranes - Inescapable 2:46
8 Chapterhouse - Falling Down 3:57
9 Whipping Boy - Switchblade Smile 2:59
10 The Boo Radleys - Kaleidoscope 5:40
11 Swervedriver - Rave Down 5:08
12 Slowdive - Slowdive 5:15
13 The Charlottes - Liar 4:20
14 Dr. Phibes & The House Of Wax 6:17
Equations - Sugarblast
15 Bleach - Decadence 4:23
16 Catherine Wheel - She's My Friend 4:29
(Wilde Club Version)
17 Blow-Up - Somersault Sunrise 3:36
18 Bark Psychosis - All Different Things 8:11
Disc 3
------
1 Curve - Ten Little Girls 4:28
2 The Dylans - Godlike 4:35
3 Th' Faith Healers - Gorgeous Blue 6:17
Flower In My Garden
4 The Lilys - February Fourteenth 3:51
5 Honey Smugglers - Good Afternoon 3:30
6 Spirea X - Chlorine Dream 4:21
7 Moonshake - Gravity 4:29
8 Spitfire - Translucent 3:40
9 Moose - Suzanne 3:26
10 Spiritualized - Run 3:12
11 Revolver - Heaven Sent An Angel 4:48
12 Lowlife - June Wilson (Edit) 3:10
13 The Ecstasy Of Saint Theresa - Square 3:41
Wave
14 Black Tambourine - By Tomorrow 3:05
15 Whipped Cream - Explosion 4:34
16 Smashing Orange - My Deranged Heart 5:23
17 The Hinnies - Gong 3:48
18 Bang Bang Machine - Greek Love 9:26
(Original 12" Version)
Disc 4
------
1 The Sunflowers - Closer 4:02
2 Drop - Mirrored 4:47
3 The Belltower - In Hollow 4:07
4 Sweet Jesus - Phonefreak Honey 2:30
5 Adorable - Sunshine Smile 5:03
6 Sun Dial - I Don't Mind 3:35
7 Swallow - Sugar Your Mind 4:03
8 Drop Nineteens - Winona 3:29
9 Flaming Lips - Talkin' 'Bout The 3:51
Smiling Deathporn Immortality Blues
(Everyone Wants To Live Forever)
10 Medicine - Aruca 4:50
11 Coaltar Of The Deepers - Charming 5:10
Sister Kiss Me Dead!!
12 The Honey Buzzards - Starhappy 4:01
13 lovesliescrushing - Babysbreath 3:52
14 Majesty Crush - No. 1 Fan 3:47
15 The Swirlies - Park The Car By The 5:06
Side Of The Road
16 Submarine - Chemical Tester 3:30
17 Bailter Space - Shine 3:55
18 Spectrum - True Love Will Find You In 3:33
The End
19 Blind Mr. Jones - Spooky Vibes 6:13
Disc 5
------
1 An April March - Memory 4:24
2 Flying Saucer Attack - Soaring High 4:20
3 Drugstore - Alive 2:30
4 Secret Shine - Loveblind 4:32
5 Mercury Rev - Bronx Cheer 2:48
6 The Curtain Society - Chelsea 4:10
7 Seefeel - Plainsong 7:43
8 Spindrift - Surround Sound 4:48
9 Rollerskate Skinny - Miss Leader 4:15
10 Bardo Pond - Die Easy 6:52
11 Alison's Halo - Dozen 5:25
12 Swirl - The Last Unicorn 4:34
13 Bowery Electric - Next To Nothing 6:30
14 Bethany Curve - Me Voy 4:23
15 astrobrite - Orange Creamsickle 5:23
16 Luna - 23 Minutes In Brussels 6:40
Total Playtime: 395:19
NOTICE: There is a kind of typo on the back cover for Disc 4, Track 18. The
artist name is Spectrum. The word "True" (highlit in white therefore maybe
confusing) belongs to the track title. This can be verified by the scans 19 & 23.
And by the discogs info on the original release:
https://www.discogs.com/Spectrum-True-Love-Will-Find-You-In-The-End/master/32863
Another item is that sometimes the word "The" is incorrectly used or omitted
in front of artist names.
The Swirlies should be "Swirlies"
Flaming Lips should be "The Flaming Lips"
Nightblooms should be "The Nightblooms"
But tagging has stuck to naming from the boxset (backcover + scans).
*
Pitchfork: 8/10
Like band names, genre terms usually lose their literal meaning once they get
established. Just as the corny reference of "My Bloody Valentine" was wiped
away by the bandÆs might and majesty, "shoegaze" became a phonetically
evocative wordùthose oozy vowels and soft sibilantsùthat suited the blurry
sound. The literal meaningùand the fact that it was initially intended as a
derisive termù disappeared.
The compressed accusation in "shoegaze"ùcoined by someone at NME, a music
paper less supportive of the genre than its rival Melody Makerùis that these
were bands too bashful to meet the audienceÆs eyes. Unlike the
attention-seeking egos that typically front British bands, the shoegazers
were self-effacing, hiding behind their hair and glancing down at the array
of effects pedals at their feet. Shoegazers were insufficiently invested in
the performative aspects of rock: the genre was all about sound, not show.
Despite starting as a slur, "shoegaze" fit the genre like a glove and soon
supplanted the competing descriptors. "Dreampop," an invention of A.R.
KaneÆs, enjoyed small and short-lived currency in the U.S. The other
contender was The Scene That Celebrates Itself, coined by a Melody Maker
editor. A tautology, of courseùshow me a Scene That Denigrates Itselfùbut it
did convey the incestuous vibe of the early movement. Most of the bands knew
each other and fraternized, and they generally hailed from the Thames Valley
(London, Reading, Oxford).
Remembering shoegazeÆs other name made me think of Brian EnoÆs "scenius"
concept: the idea that music evolves through collective processes, in an
incremental and reactive way, rather than through heroic innovators making
giant steps that everyone else follows. A sound emerges and everyone wants
in; the styleùusually a mixture of new technological possibilities and
aesthetic choicesùbecomes the idiom through which you express what you have
to say. Like all languages, the style stipulates and restricts possibilities
as much as it creates them.
The first few discs of Still in a Dream, a new 5xCD box from Cherry Red, make
a good argument in favor of scenius. Picking almost randomly, one example of
the perfectly generic here is Pale Saints' "Sight of You." It is not
ur-shoegaze (that would be MBVÆs "You Made Me Realise"), but it is
echt-shoegaze. The name Pale Saints vaguely gestures at the Pre-Raphaelites
and mystic devotion; the song title proposes love as a rapture of the gaze
rather than a fever of the flesh; the sound is choirboy-pure vocals and
guitar that works as a billowing curtain of texture rather than propulsive
riff. Two other absolutely typical, absolutely lovely specimens of shoegaze
here are LushÆs "De-Luxe" (like being buffeted by flower petals in a
wind-tunnel) and SlowdiveÆs "Slowdive," where the slightest of chord
sequences ripples the silvery guitar wooze. Where the genreÆs progenitors My
Bloody Valentineùmystifyingly absent from the box despite providing its
titleùchurned with dizzy-making desire, the effect with second-wave shoegaze
tends to be more virginal. Slowdive certainly emit none of the dark erotic
energy of the Siouxsie and the Banshees song from which they took their name.
Along with "scenius," another Eno thought sprang to mind when listening
through the box: Eno hailed MBVÆs "Soon" as "the vaguest music ever to have
been a hit." That got me musing: why would "vague" be a good thing for music
to be? How would you distinguish between the deliberately indistinct and the
merely insubstantial? And how does this sonic vagueness relate to life?
ShoegazeÆs nebulousness has to do with its slightly "off" relation with both
rock and pop. The genre fetishizes the sound of the guitar, but is relatively
uninterested in the other things that guitars have traditionally doneùriffs,
solos, grooving. Shoegaze introduced a new generation of guitar heroes who
werenÆt dramatic. Rather than the spotlight of a solo, there would be a
mid-song caesura of abstract carnage. The heroism took the form of
explorations into texture. Kevin Shields was the scene's Hendrix figure, but
the contrast between Jimi the showman and Shields the shy man is telling. No
guitar-face or swaggering about the stage. The music was designed to
overwhelm in the live context, but in a way that was impersonalùas though the
band were victims of the sound as much as the audience, or simply conduits
for the torrential noise.
What also made shoegaze such an indeterminate proposition as regards proper
rock and proper pop was the way it used rhythm and the voice. ItÆs tempting
to say that this is a genre consisting of non-drummers and non-singers.
Certainly, re-listening to RideÆs "Drive Blind" was a bit of a shocker: how
did a group get so big with such a shaky voice upfront, with a drummer that
could barely hold a beat? But mostly the subdued rhythm and buried vocals was
a deliberate aesthetic choice rather than a matter of deficiency. Voices were
mixed to be half-obscured by the blizzard of sound; the rhythm section just
about kept up with the guitar tumult. Shoegaze was as not-quite-pop as it was
not-quite-rock. The melodies harked back beguilingly to a hazy,
half-remembered '60s, but had little to do with what '80s chart-pop
considered "a tune." ShoegazeÆs brief stint as the reigning alternative sound
in the UK was ended by Britpop, and itÆs the emphasis on "pop" there that is
significant. Groups like Oasis and Blur mixed the voice upfront and above the
instrumentation; songs acquired anthemic choruses; singers got cocky and
in-your-face.
Shoegaze, in contrast, made a fetish of the swoon. The sighing vocals, the
sickly drooping drones and melodic descents, the wavery timbresùthese
signature sonic effects induced listener responses like rolling your eyes
back in your head or swaying slightly as if about to faint. The feeling
transmitted by shoegaze at its most compelling combined surging urgency and
heavy-lidded languor. It suggested threshold states: drowsily slipping into a
nap in the mid-afternoon, not being able to shake off the dream in the
morning. The connective thread with all these sensations is the relinquishing
of control, the scary bliss of losing orientation and agency.
I donÆt think itÆs too much of a reach to imagine that this had some kind of
semi-conscious resonance for a generation that felt powerless. ItÆs quite
hard to reconstruct how bleak things seemed in the late '80s and early '90s;
in both Britain and America, conservative governments were in third-term
ascendance, and mainstream popular culture from hair metal to Hollywood
seemed be in sync with the rightward shift. For manyùnot all, but manyùthis
encouraged resignation, a withdrawal verging on hibernation. ThatÆs why
American nu-punks L7 wrote their anti-slacker anthem "Pretend WeÆre Dead" as
a wake-up call from apathy. ThatÆs why Welsh nu-punks Manic Street Preachers
declared that they hated Slowdive more than Hitlerùfor being so dreamily
disengaged, advocates for reverie rather than revolution.
This anti-politics of vagueness comes through clearly on one of Still in a
DreamÆs more unusual and surprising inclusions, a lost classic that I would
never have filed under shoegaze: AC MariasÆs "One of Our Girls Has Gone
Missing." AC is Angela Conway, an associate of Wire (whose Bruce Gilbert was
involved in the sculpted-snow sound of "One of Our Girls," which ought to
thrill anyone who loves Chairs Missing and 154.) Drawing on the John le CarrΘ
genre of ice-hearted espionage fiction and the idea of the agent who goes
AWOL, ConwayÆs lyric imagines a strategy of dissidence through
disappearance:"ôShe has lost her color/ And faded away/ Moved into thin air."
As a frontline journalist covering much of this music at the time, I recall
that the '60s allegiances of shoegaze seemed obvious and paramount. They were
harking back longingly to the '60s as a refusal of the '80sùthe decade of
Thatcher and Reagan. But that necessarily meant a return of '60s sounds
without any of the hope or confident dynamism of that decade; change would
not be coming, change in fact was being reversed. ThatÆs one reason why the
word "dream" was so emblematic of the era (Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation
being only the most conspicuous example). Rather than turn dreams into
reality, now it was more like dreaming your life away, assisted by recorded
relics from that lost time. Rather than "we want the world and we want it
now" (the Doors) or even "weÆre all normal and we want our freedom" (Love),
the spirit was crestfallen and crushed: "ThereÆs a place IÆd like to be/
ThereÆs a place IÆd be happy" (Galaxie 500Æs "Tugboat"), or the murmured,
barely audible "much rather be" in "All Different Things" by Bark Psychosis.
Listening today, though, the '60s-ness of shoegaze recedes to a surprising
degree. Especially on the first discùwhich includes shoegaze-spawning but
not-really-shoegaze greats like Cocteau Twins, the House of Love, A.R. KaneùI
donÆt hear the Byrds or Velvets, I hear the glassy textures of John McGeoch,
Vini Reilly, or Clive Timperley of the Passions (the glorious glistening
echoplexed intro to "IÆm in Love With a German Film Star"). Yes, the "ba
ba-ba-ba ba" bit in "Christine" by the House of Love harks back to '60s pop
of the Turtles type, but Terry Bickers' crystalline cascades are totally
modern in their moment.
In other shoegaze groups, a surprisingly large amount of New Order and the
Cure is discernible: the processional glide-rhythms, the high-toned droning
basslines. Despite being swathed in prismatic guitar-miasma, Kitchens of
Distinction sound like Modern English more than anything on "3rd Time We
Opened the Capsule." Even with the overtly classicist outfits like Spacemen
3, for all the signposted allusions to the Velvets, Beach Boys, Stooges, and
their refusal of '80s tropes (gated drums, Yamaha DX7 synthùi.e. the very
things that groups like Haim now deliberately redeploy), a record like
"Hypnotized" could only have been made at that particular time. If you placed
it alongside records actually made in the '60s, it would jut out jarringly.
Still in a Dream takes a wide trawl approach to its genre, which has upsides
and downsides. The stricture of only one track per artist means that the
inessential gets inevitably over-represented and the defining greats get
short-changed and effectively demoted. A five-disc box set of shoegaze
organized around quality and innovation as criteria would be about 1/3 My
Bloody Valentine. As with RhinoÆs goth box A Life Less Lived, shoegaze is
generously interpreted to include antecedents and formative influences, which
bulks up the quality. After that you get the influenced: the second and third
waves, as well as fellow travelers (Cranes), outliers (Mercury Rev), and
offshoots (Seefeel). Shrewdly, the compilers cut off in '95, and donÆt
attempt to corral any of the shoegaze homages or revivalists of the last 20
years.
I had a great time with the first disc (late '80s), a good time with the
second and much of the third (lovely to remake the acquaintance of Moose and
the muscular Swervedriver, who had a bit of Thin Lizzy in their make-up), but
by the fourth, the trip down memory lane took on a purgatorial aspect. "More
of the same, only slightly different" is good up to a point, but with any
genre you can have too much of a good thing. Although primarily a UK
genreùand in some way reflective of British character traits like
diffidenceùthe Americans did join in: sometimes inventively warping the MBV
blueprint (the blow-torched beauty of MedicineÆs "Aruca") and other times
cloning it (Swirlies). You can always quibble about choices (why
"Rollercoaster" as opposed to two dozen other Jesus and Mary Chain
candidates?!). But overall Still in a Dream is a job well done: an accurate
portrait of an era that, while it canÆt really be described as a lost golden
age for rock, nonetheless provided sorely needed radiance and refuge during a
particularly grim period.
*
Allmusic: 8/10
Let's get this out of the way at the beginning. Telling the story of the
overdriven, dreamlike sound of shoegaze without including a song by My Bloody
Valentine is like The Great Gatsby without Gatsby or Citizen Kane without
Charles Foster Kane. The group pretty much invented the sound, went on to
perfect it, and was always the one band that could be counted on to innovate
and disrupt. Still, once you get past that not insubstantial hurdle, Cherry
Red's Still in a Dream: A Story of Shoegaze is a pretty great collection.
Over the course of five discs, it gathers up major influences on the shoegaze
sound, rounds up all the main practitioners, travels around the globe and
catches the best of the U.S. pedal pushers (Swirlies, Black Tambourine) along
the way, and takes some mild detours into dream pop, baggy, and noise, all
the while dropping classic songs one after the other. The compilers make full
use of all five discs, digging deep and casting a wide net that yields both
obvious choices and some much less so. Part of the fun going through the
discs is hearing "hits" by big names like Slowdive, Ride, and Swervedriver;
part of it is rediscovering bands like Sweet Jesus, whose "Phonefreak Honey"
is a delightfully sugary blast of distortion and melody, Adorable, a
stadium-sized band with tunes like "Sunshine Smile" that were built on huge,
impossible to ignore hooks, and Majesty Crush, who impress with the archly
pretty "No. 1 Fan." There also are bands that even someone who was around
during the era covered here (1988 to 1995) may have missed. Jane from
Occupied Europe's "Ocean Run Dry" is an early noise pop gem; Coaltar of the
Deepers' Charming Sister Kiss Me Dead!!" is a chunky, almost metallic tune
from Japan that shows how universal the sound became. By the time the set is
over it's hard not to be impressed by how quickly the shoegaze sound spread
and evolved, how many bands were able to use it to an advantage, and -- more
to the point here -- how well the set is put together. Apart from MBV, it's
hard to think of any bands they missed, just as it's difficult to think of
too many that they could have cut. It might have been interesting to boil the
track list down a bit, then spend a disc catching up on the post-1995 bands
that have kept the sound alive. That being said, the story they do tell on
Still in a Dream is a fascinating one, full of guitar-mangling bliss and
soaring melodic grandeur suitable for a fuzzy trip down memory lane or a deep
dive of discovery for the novice gazer.
*
DrownedInSound: 9/10
Shoegaze. Initially a derogatory term bestowed upon bands that emerged in the
early Nineties deemed to be hiding behind floppy fringes whilst staring at
their feet. Of course that wasn't the case, as My Bloody Valentine's Debbie
Googe pointed out in an interview on this very site three years ago. 'We were
staring at our pedals not at our shoes!' she insisted.
Effects pedals. Lots of them. Arguably the definitive weapons of choice for
any band aligned with the dirty eight-letter word. And what a glorious wall
of sound many of those acts created. Fusing elements of Sixties garage pop
and neo-psychedelia with the more experimental elements of post-punk given an
ambient makeover made for some of the most original and ultimately
influential music of its time. Hell, shoegazing even has its own Wikipedia
page now! No longer an insult. Now a respected genre in its own right, and
some could argue responsible for the last truly innovative groundbreaking
record of recent times. Loveless.
So where did all start? While many commentators cite The Jesus & Mary Chain's
Psychocandy as being the first shoegaze record, its origins start two decades
beforehand. Bands like The Yardbirds and The Pretty Things were using
distortion as an art form in the mid-Sixties, while The Byrds' off kilter
melodies where David Crosby's rhythm guitar chimed and weaved a melody of its
own beneath the main body of the song also played a part. As did the first
incarnation of Pink Floyd, undoubtedly the catalysts for taking songs way
beyond the traditional three-minutes structure. Fast forward a decade to the
late David Bowie's 'Heroes' and you'll hear Robert Fripp's echo-laden guitar
driving through the song's heart. A completely unique sound at the time -
remember this was 1977 - and surely something that didn't go amiss with the
main protagonists of shoegaze several years later.
Of course there's been a resurgence of interest in the genre these past few
years. Not least due to the emergence and subsequent success of numerous
bands clearly influenced by its initial phase. People like Sigur Ros, M83 and
Mogwai for instance. Coupled with the reformations that have taken place by
most of its leading lights. My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive and Ride having all
played a succession of sold out shows worldwide to a new wave of critical
acclaim, with Lush set to follow suit in a few months time. So it was perhaps
inevitable - and welcoming - that following on from last year's excellent
'Beautiful Noise' documentary there'd be an anthology boxset waiting to be
unleashed somewhere soon.
Still In A Dream: A Story Of Shoegaze 1988-1995 collects a mammoth 87 artists
across five CDs in one glorious compilation, housed in a book-style box set
that also includes a 12,000-word essay by esteemed music writer Neil Taylor,
rare memorabilia and photographs from the era, biographies of each
participating band and an American perspective of the genre by Springhouse
drummer and editor of The Big Takeover fanzine Jack Rabid. It represents the
most definitive document yet of a scene that was much-maligned at the time,
but has since gone on to be one of the most pivotal and influential in the
development of modern music.
Minor gripes aside first. My Bloody Valentine are conspicuous by their
absence. Undoubtedly the leading exponents of shoegaze (a tag they've never
been comfortable with if the truth be told) and responsible for two of its
most influential records: Isn't Anything (a track off which Still In A
Dream... finds itself named after) and the aforementioned Loveless. Likewise
Sonic Youth and The Brian Jonestown Massacre û while neither band would ever
claim to be shoegaze in its most linear form, their presence and influence
both then and now can never be underestimated. And for a collection that
focuses on the years between 1988 and 1995, one would've hoped its creators
would surely have considered their inclusion at the very least?
Nevertheless, what Still In A Dream... does amass is a smorgasbord of aural
delights from a plethora of artists both instantly recognisable and some not
so familiar. Disc one opens with The Jesus & Mary Chain's 'Rollercoaster'
which is perhaps as good a place to start as any. While Cocteau Twins
'Cherry-Coloured Funk' and The House Of Love's 'Christine' are devoured along
the way for old time's sake, it's the lesser feted likes of Ultra Vivid
Scene's 'The Mercy Seat', Kitchens Of Distinction's 'The 3rd Time We Opened
The Capsule' and Pale Saints 'Sight Of You' that steal the show here.
Salisbury's Jane From Occupied Europe deserve a mention too, their excellent
debut 'Oceans Run Dry' meriting an inclusion here, if only as a reminder of
what a spectacularly underrated, if short lived, band they were.
Disc two kickstarts with Ride's 'Drive Blind' leading into 'De-Luxe' by Lush.
The Boo Radleys' early single 'Kaleidoscope' - all feedback, reverb and
distortion - is as far away from their Wake Up! Britpop era as is likely to
get, while Slowdive's 'Slowdive off their debut EP is followed by 'Liar' from
The Charlottes which was said band's last recording to feature future
Slowdive drummer Simon Scott. Elsewhere, Netherlands four-piece The
Nightblooms explosive 'Crystal Eyes' remains one of the great lost singles of
that era while Bark Psychosis's incredible debut 'All Different Things'
undoubtedly paved the way for post-rock.
By disc three, there's a more diverse and experimental nature to proceedings.
Curve's 'Ten Little Girls' - possibly the only predominantly shoegaze record
to feature a guest rapper (JC-001) - fuses hip hop beats with layers of
distorted guitar to maximum effect. Th' Faith Healers 'Gorgeous Blue Flower
In My Garden' provides a solitary axis between the scene's incumbent noise
peddlers and the impending US grunge movement that was building momentum at
the time, while Bang Bang Machine's 'Geek Love' takes an even more
aspirational voyage towards the dancefloor across its nine minutes of
beat-infused alt-pop. Irish quartet Moonshake sound years ahead of their time
on the lavish 'Gravity' while post-C86 noiseniks Black Tambourine's 'By
Tomorrow' and Revolver's insatiable 'Heaven Sent An Angel' are among the many
highlights contained within.
Discs four and five focus on both the obscure and early Stateside take on
shoegaze respectively. Early Flaming Lips recording 'Talkin' 'Bout The
Smiling Deathporn Immortality Blues (Everyone Wants To Live Forever)' sits
comfortably alongside Newcastle jangle poppers The Sunflowers' 'Closer',
while Sonic Boom and Spectrum's poignant take on Daniel Johnston's 'True Love
Will Find You In the End' finds solace in such distinguished company as Drop
Nineteens 'Winona' and Adorable's 'Sunshine Smile'. Mercury Rev make an
appearance too, 1993's 'Bronx Cheer' one of their last recordings to feature
original vocalist David Baker. Elsewhere, Bristol's Secret Shine
('Loveblind'), Sydney's Swirl ('The Last Unicorn') and Irish outfit
Rollerskate Skinny ('Miss Leader') all offer diverse suggestions as to where
the genre was heading next. Perhaps the most striking chord for its future is
documented within Seefeel**'s gorgeously crafted 'Plainsong', which paved the
way for electronic diversions the likes of M83's Anthony Gonzalez and Ulrich
Schnauss have cultivated and made their own.
Overall, Still In A Dream: A Story Of Shoegaze 1988-1995 is an essential
purchase for anyone with an interest in the genre. And while the omission of
certain acts make it just fall short of being definitive, there's more than
enough sonic gold here to compensate.
-=- SHGZ -=-
P.S.
** Thanks ***
*** BCC FNT IPC SSR ***
*** For Knowing Where The Music Is At ***
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* NuHS we miss you! *
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