expect delay
There’s some irony that the second single from The Sundays’ debut album Reading, Writing and Arithmetic is often held as a prototype for dream pop, but actually doesn’t have many of the traits that would become the genre’s calling card. Chorused guitars? Only what you naturally get from David Gavurin’s 12-string acoustic (okay, maybe a […]
So about a decade ago there was a big sort of shoegaze/dreampop renaissance and a bunch of new bands showed up with Fender offset guitars and loads of chorus and delay pedals on hand and, for the most part, because I’m a contrary bastard, I had no time for any of it even though – […]
I got it in my head to go looking for a Beach House video to post, and besides the fact that they don’t have a lot of conventional, official videos, it took some digging and lo and behold I came across this clip from 2012’s Bloom that I had no idea existed, though apparently it […]
For the endless wealth of musical options at our fingertips, one song I always return to as a bit of cozy aural comfort food is The Radio Dept.’s cover of The Go-Betweens single “Bachelor Kisses”, originally taken from their 1984 album Spring Hill Fair. Instrumentally, it’s Radio Dept by the numbers – warm synth pads, […]
It wasn’t a single. It was never played live. It didn’t even sound like anything the band had ever done. And yet by virtue of its stark, dark, beauty acting as a coda for the cosmic grandeur of Souvlaki, “Dagger” became one of Slowdive’s signature songs. A scan of the lyrics invite speculation that it’s […]
When Amelia Murray, aka Fazerdaze, returned from the wilderness last month, it came without much explanation of where she’d been from the last four years nor what was going to come next. And fans might have had those questions, but didn’t ask – they were just happy to have her back. But in anticipation and […]
Dreampop fans who like their guitars chorused and the melodies buoyant would do well to not miss out on Patina, the just-released second record from Toronto’s Tallies. Any press around it will reference The Sundays, Smiths, and Cocteau Twins and the band would likely take these comparisons as sincere flattery (the “None more 4AD” artwork […]
Mathematically, Spring 2019 wasn’t that long ago but watching live footage from then now seems like a window into another dimension. Here, for example, we’ve got Hatchie performing at Barcelona’s Primavera Sound in May of that year, still a couple weeks away from releasing her debut album Keepsake. Half the set previews that new record, […]
How set am I on not being overly “extra! Extra! Hot off the press!” with this here blog? Well, my favourite hometown band finally announces a new record after five years, and it takes me… almost three weeks to get around to posting it! Hey, things get busy around here. We are, of course, talking […]
That The House Of Love’s first new track in almost a decade doesn’t sound anything like their classic, first-run material probably shouldn’t be a surprise. Neither 2005’s Days Run Away or 2013’s She Paints Words In Red revisited the elegant dream-pop of their 20th century albums, despite the presence of original guitarist Terry Bickers in […]
