expect delay
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 […]
I’ve been filling a few longstanding holes in my Cocteau Twins collection, most recently getting the Lullabies To Violaine, Vol. 1 compilation of all their 4AD-era EPs – easy enough, as it’s still in print in CD – but the second volume, which covers their Fontana years but was also released by 4AD, is somewhat […]
Newcomers to Japanese shoegaze over the past decade – I’m looking at you, me – will have surely come across the name Burrrn and their 2011 debut album Blaze Down His Way Like The Space Show as must-listens, and indeed the My Bloody Valentine-admiration on that record treads just on the right side of slavish […]
One of the things I like most about Japanese shoegaze bands is that, by and large, the bands come with a very strong identity and aesthetic – and not just because they almost all still take the trouble to come up with logos. Case in point, Plant Cell, which began as the project of Masaki […]
The title of the latest release from The Chameleons – Tomorrow Remember Yesterday is out today – is especially apt as the band continues to simultaneously establish themselves as a current, forward-looking act – releasing their first new single in a quarter-century this past Spring and releasing their first new album in that long next […]
And here we are with taste number two of The Cure’s forthcoming Songs Of A Lost World. “A Fragile Thing” is, as Robert Smith put it in a video interview clip reported on by NME: “It’s the ‘love song’ of the album, but it’s not really a love song in the way that [1989’s] ‘Lovesong’ […]
As I try to recover from a three-nights–of-gigs–in-a-row weekend – no regrets, but I am full-on Danny Glover over here – some low-hanging fruit in the form of Slowdive’s appearance at Spain’s Bilbao BBK Live festival this past July. It’s 70 minutes of professionally-shot, beautiful-sounding footage of the band at the top of their game, […]
