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Shoegaze (also known as shoegazing) is a subgenre of indie rock and alternative rock characterised by its ethereal mixture of obscured vocals, guitar distortion and effects, audio feedback and overwhelming volume. Originally emerging in Ireland and the United Kingdom during the late 1980s among neo-psychedelic groups who usually stood motionless during live performances in a detached, non-confrontational state.
A loose label given to the shoegaze bands and other affiliated artists in London during the early 1990s was "the scene that celebrates itself". (1992). 9780851125794, Guinness. ISBN 9780851125794 Most shoegaze artists drew from the Jesus and Mary Chain and Cocteau Twins, alongside the template set by My Bloody Valentine and their albums Loveless and Isn't Anything.
During the early 1990s, shoegaze was sidelined by American grunge and early Britpop acts, resulting in bands breaking up or reinventing their style altogether. By the 2000s and late 2010s, a renewed interest in the genre began, leading to the emergence of Fusion genre and subgenres like shitgaze, witch house, nu gaze and blackgaze.
The genre is typically "overwhelmingly loud, with long, droning , waves of distortion and cascades of feedback. Vocals and melodies disappeared into the walls of guitars". According to Pitchfork, "emotionally, shoegaze turns its focus inward. The extreme noise eliminates the possibility of socializing while the music is playing, leaving each member of the audience alone with their thoughts. It's music for dreaming". It is sometimes conflated with dream pop. Early UK shoegaze was influenced by American bands such as Dinosaur Jr., Hüsker Dü and Sonic Youth.
A defining characteristic of shoegaze is its use of heavily processed Electric guitar. Guitarists often employ a wide range of effects such as Reverberation, delay, chorus, tremolo, and distortion to produce a layered and immersive wall of sound. A notable technique within the genre is the use of the "glide guitar", developed by the Irish-English band My Bloody Valentine, in which pitch bends are achieved via the whammy bar during chord strumming to create a woozy, undulating effect. These textures are frequently described as blurred or atmospheric and are designed to blend seamlessly, creating a continuous sonic field.
Visually, shoegaze releases often incorporate abstract or distorted imagery in album artwork and music videos, mirroring the genre's sonic qualities. Effects such as overexposure, Gaussian blur, and color inversion are commonly used to complement the music's atmospheric qualities. Many notable early shoegaze bands featured both male and female members, contributing to a broader range of vocal timbres and a balance of musical sensibilities. Mixed-gender vocal interplay became a common feature in several influential acts.
A notable pattern within shoegaze is the frequent use of band and release names containing Phonestheme—clusters of sounds that evoke movement or fluidity (e.g., Swirlies, Swervedriver, Whirlpool, Swoon). According to a study written by Zac Smith, this trend has been interpreted as an unconscious branding strategy that reflects the genre's emphasis on swirling, indistinct textures and fluid sound design.
In a 2016 article for HuffPost, Andy Ross claimed he coined the term shoegazing at a show on 3 September 1991 which featured Chapterhouse, Slowdive and Moose, because the bands' members seemed to be in "a state of trance by the footwear lurking semi-motionless beneath their low-slung guitars". Alternatively, The Guinness Who's Who of Indie and New Wave Music (1992) claimed that the first use of the name was in a concert review for Moose, published by Sounds, in which the author referenced how singer Russell Yates read lyrics taped to the floor throughout the gig. (1992). 9780851125794, Square One. ISBN 9780851125794
According to AllMusic: "The shatteringly loud, droning neo-psychedelia the band performed was dubbed shoegaze by the British press because the band members stared at the floor while they performed". The term was also used by the British music press to describe dream pop bands. Slowdive's Simon Scott found the term relevant:
However, to some, the term was considered a pejorative, especially by a part of the English weekly music press who considered the movement as ineffectual, and it was disliked by many of the groups it purported to describe. Lushs singer Miki Berenyi explained: Ride's Mark Gardener had another take on his group's static presentation: "We didn't want to use the stage as a platform for ego... We presented ourselves as normal people, as a band who wanted their fans to think they could do that too".
"It's All Too Much", a song by the Beatles recorded in 1967 and released on Yellow Submarine (1969), "All I Wanna Do", a song from the Beach Boys' 1970 album Sunflower as well as the title track off Brian Eno's 1974 debut album Here Come the Warm Jets, have all been retrospectively labeled "proto-shoegaze". Slowdive, who were fans of Eno's work, approached him to produce their album Souvlaki. Although, declining, he spent a few days recording with the band, resulting in the tracks "Sing" and "Here She Comes".
Post-punk acts Siouxsie and the Banshees and the Cure were formative influences on shoegaze. Slowdive named themselves after the Siouxsie and the Banshees song of the same name, released in 1982, and took inspiration from the group in their early days. Their contemporaries Lush were originally called "The Baby Machines", a name taken from a Siouxsie Sioux lyric. Additionally, Slowdive were also influenced by Joy Division's dark and atmospheric sounds, songs like "The Only Mistake" being precursors to shoegaze.
Other precursors include Robert Fripp's guitar on David Bowie's 1977 song 'Heroes', and the English art punk band Wire whose 1979 single "Map Ref" would later be covered by My Bloody Valentine. Indiana band MX-80 Sound's 1981 song "Obsessive Devotion" has also been cited as an early progenitor of shoegaze, and an influence on Sonic Youth.
Whereas contemporary alternative rock movements of the time period were extremely male-dominated (Britpop, grunge), My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Lush, Cocteau Twins, Pale Saints, Curve and many other popular shoegaze acts had at least one prominent female musician who contributed key vocal elements and/or integral writing components to the music. In the 2014 film Beautiful Noise, Kevin Shields noted that there were as many women as men in the shoegaze community.
Bands lumped into the 'scene' by the press included several of the bands that were branded with the shoegazing label, such as Chapterhouse, Lush, Moose and other (mainly indie) bands such as Blur (prior to the release of their single "Popscene"), Thousand Yard Stare, See See Rider and Stereolab. A prime example were Moose, who often swapped members with other bands on a given night. Moose's Russell Yates and Stereolab guitarist Tim Gane would often trade places, while "Moose" McKillop often played with See See Rider. Gane and his Stereolab colleague Lætitia Sadier even played on the 1991 session by Moose for John Peel's BBC Radio 1 show." Peel Sessions: 16 April 1991 - Moose ", Keeping It Peel, BBC
The bands, producers and journalists of the time would gather in London and their activities would be chronicled in the gossip pages of the music papers NME and Melody Maker. The most famous club and focal point was Syndrome, which was located on Oxford Street and ran weekly on Wednesday nights. The NME, in particular, embraced the scene, and the unity of the bands was probably advantageous to their careers, because when one band had a successful record, the other bands could share the publicity. The scene was extremely small and revolved around fewer than 20 individuals.
The first stirrings of recognition came when indie writer Steve Lamacq referred to Ride in an NME review as "the House of Love with chainsaws".
The shoegaze genre label was quite often misapplied. As key bands such as Slowdive, Chapterhouse and Ride emerged from the Thames Valley, Swervedriver found themselves labelled shoegazers on account of their own Thames Valley origins, despite their more pronounced Hüsker Dü-meets-The Stooges stylings.Lester, Paul (12 September 1992). "Whatever Happened to Shoegaze?" Melody Maker, p.6. Retrieved 12 April 2007 from Proquest Research Library.
Many shoegaze bands would either disband or change their sound during the mid-1990s. Ride disbanded before the release of their fourth album, Tarantula, which would shift to a more contemporary alternative rock sound. Slowdive's third album, Pygmalion, would shift to a more experimental sound that was stylistically closer to post-rock than shoegaze. Slowdive would be dropped from Creation Records just a week after Pygmalions release, and Tarantula would also be deleted from their catalogue a week after its release.
Lush's final album, Lovelife, was an abrupt shift from shoegaze to Britpop, which alienated many fans; the 1996 suicide of their drummer Chris Acland signaled Lush's dissolution. Following a long gap from My Bloody Valentine since Loveless, aside from their 2008 reunion tour, the band released m b v in February 2013. Shields explained their silence by noting, "I never could be bothered to make another record unless I was really excited by it".
While shoegaze briefly flared and then faded out in the UK, the bands of the initial wave had an immense impact on the development of regional underground and college rock scenes in the US. In particular, a Lush and Ride tour of the US in 1991 directly inspired the spawning of American shoegaze groups including Drop Nineteens, Half String and Ozean. Columnist Emma Sailor of KRUI in Iowa City opines:
About DC-based Velocity Girl's 1991 single "My Forgotten Favorite", Sailor goes on to note, "Could anything be more different—and yet so similar—to Slowdive? The hazy production and dreamy, high pitched female vocals are there, but the outlook is entirely different".
During the mid 1990s, emerging American Christian rock label Tooth & Nail Records signed Starflyer 59 as one of its first acts. Band frontman Jason Martin, having been inspired by the sound of The Cure, The Smiths, Black Sabbath, and Deep Purple, led Starflyer 59 to exhibit strong shoegaze influence with its first three projects, all featuring monochromatic cover art: Silver, Gold, and Americana. Despite the chaotic production process of Gold and Martin's dissatisfaction with the album, Gold went on to reach nearly triple the sales of Silver, Easy Come, Easy Go (CD liner notes). Starflyer 59. Tooth & Nail Records. 2000. TND1195. along with becoming a hallmark of the shoegaze genre, reaching number 41 on Pitchfork's 50 Best Shoegaze Albums of All Time list. Starflyer 59 would later depart from its shoegaze sound, shifting between softer indie rock and modern alternative rock. Although, 2004 studio album I Am the Portuguese Blues features a large portion of redeveloped, unused work from Americana. In 2024, Starflyer 59 released its seventeenth studio album Lust for Gold, designed as a modern, refined tribute to its original shoegaze era.
A resurgence of the genre began in the late 1990s (particularly in the United States) and the early 2000s, that helped usher in what is now referred to as the "nu gaze" era. Also various heavy metal acts were inspired by shoegaze, which contributed to the emergence of post-metal and metalgaze styles. Particularly in the mid-2000s, French black metal acts Alcest and Amesoeurs began incorporating shoegaze elements into their sound, pioneering the blackgaze genre. The term shitgaze, a microgenre that further developed in the mid-2000s, was originally coined by the Midwestern rock band Psychedelic Horseshit to describe their style of music, with the label becoming one of the earliest examples of an internet microgenre, and later appropriated by wider online music critics and blogs. Notable acts in the scene include the Hospitals, No Age, Times New Viking, and early Wavves.
In the early 2020s, shoegaze experienced a revival among Generation Z, through internet spaces such as TikTok, with newer bands like Julie, Wisp and Fleshwater as well as an influence on digicore artists like Quannnic and Jane Remover. Multiple outlets described this as shoegaze's "revival" or "resurrection". Irish band Fontaines D.C. have commented on shoegaze influences in their sound, particularly My Bloody Valentine, their fourth album Romance was particularly noted for this sound by reviewers.
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