expect delay
Returning to my intermittent series on quality dreampop from around the corner from me (I almost wrote “from the Six” but nope, can’t do it), we’ve got Toronto trio Swiims, who celebrated the one-year anniversary of their debut album Into The Blue Night yesterday. It’s an assured debut that doesn’t lag or get too samey […]
Just as Kinoko Teikoku spawned a generation of Japanese emo-shoegaze bands, I think we’re starting to see the legacy of For Tracy Hyde and their hyper-melodic, nostalgia-soaked ethos, manifest itself in a new wave of J-gaze bands. One of them is Tokyo’s KILDREN, whose debut single last year is a six-minute sugarblast of noise and […]
Thus far, Airiel’s return to fully active duty has consisted of archival releases – the Winks & Kisses EP box set was re-released last year for its 20th anniversary, and their second album Molten Young Lovers given a deluxe reissue this year – and a lot of touring behind said releases. All of which is […]
After an eternity of variable length – 16 years since their last studio album, five years since it was recorded, two years since Robert Smith revealed its title, and over a year since the world tour for it concluded, The Cure’s Songs From A Lost World is finally out… or so I’m told, as no […]
I included a typically poor quality version of this live Siouxsie & The Banshees performance in my “Halloween” Halloween post in 2021, but since then some kind soul has remastered the clip of them performing at Warwick University in 1981 for BBC’s Rock Goes To College series such that it’s worth re-sharing, including these notes […]
Tokyo’s Cephalo released their debut EP Wind Surfing School back in May and immediately set themselves apart from most of their contemporaries with a decidedly darker aesthetic that embraces the goth as much as the shoegaze, and make excellent use of frontwoman Fuki’s breathy vocals, which conjure some serious magic when it gets into its […]
No question that shoegaze is a healthy genre in the US right now, but if we are being honest, the current incarnation of the sound which incorporates a lot of hardcore and grunge influence. That, as well as a certain aversion to melody and pop that was so key to the appeal of the progenitors […]
Catalyzed by the passing of founding guitarist Andy Gill in 2020, Gang Of Four reformed their almost-original lineup in 2022 for a legacy-celebrating world tour to coincide with the 77-81 box set. They have since declared that 2025 will be the year they say farewell, with one more North American tour slated for next year […]
Guy Chadwick went to ground for a few years after The House Of Love’s initial dissolution in 1994, eventually resurfacing in 1997 as a solo artist and with the assistance of Cocteau Twins’ Robin Guthrie, released a solo record in Lazy, Soft & Slow in 1998. It’s a pretty low-key affair of originals and one […]
Reunited US shoegaze forebears Drop Nineteens are in town tonight for their first show in Toronto in over 30 years (December 1993, apparently) and you’d think I’d be there but I won’t be – not because I’d already bought tickets to see UK guitar god Richard Thompson months earlier, though I did – but because […]
