expect delay
The current explosion of Japanese shoegaze bands can usually be traced back to the early 2010s and the Kinoko Teikoku supernova, but if you go further back in time you’ll find the real big bang began in the late ’90s – not quite early enough to be contemporaries of the UK forebears, but certainly immediate […]
I’m sure that the name of She’s Green is meant to elicit questions – who’s green? Okay, maybe just that one question. But another might be, why does everyone talk about Philadelphia and Austin as being the hotbeds of current American shoegaze when this five-piece is from Minneapolis? On their debut EP Wisteria, released last […]
YouTube channel Angura is a pretty terrific English-language entry point to the world of Japanese indie rock, and they just dropped an excellent mini-documentary about arguably the most successful Japanese indie band in the west right now, Mass Of The Fermenting Dregs. After all, how many other Japanese indie acts can boast sold-out large-venue shows […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
