Blue Smiley - Return

21st century shoegaze bands really haven't appealed to my 80s & 90s soul. I couldn't stand Deerhunter and Atlas Sound. Then there was a glut of groups which were so awful that I can't even recall their names. There was a Welsh group I heard once and liked. I didn't mind Belong and Winona Dryver had an excellent song. Then blackgaze and the whole doom and whatever metal crossed with Shoegaze... just nah... no thanks...nope... and I love me some old school and second wave Black Metal. M83 were sometimes ok whatever their sub-genre was. I've never checked Grouper's Liz Harris in her shoegaze outfit Helen which is weird because i'd probably like them. I didn't understand how Spirit Of The Beehive's consummate throwback to 90s slacker alt-rock & psychedelic grunge got tagged shoegaze but whatever...

So that brings us to Blue Smiley who were contemporaries of Spirit Of The Beehive in Philadelphia during the mid 2010s. Blue Smiley's Return mini album from 2016 is probably the only innovative shoegaze record of the new millennium. They did the impossible and made shoegaze fresh, fun, exciting and unique again. Its got heavy use and abuse of that chorus effect (sorry I'm no gear head, is it chorus?), frantic shimmering jangles, helium cloud synths and ecstatic lawn mowing lead breaks. 

  

If the Pale Saints were fully obsessed with all the fluttery bits of guitaring from rock's history, had the brevity and dexterity of Minutemen and were produced by Scott Cortez it might have sounded like this. This is some of the most buoyant shoegazery put to tape. The sonic shapeshifting's like squishing marshmallows. These fizzy to fuzzy and back again tunes burst into life like fireflies, just a flash and then they're gone.

.

Talk about leaving you wanting more, not long after the release of this all too brief album of supreme sherbet bomb shoegaze the band's mastermind Brian Nowell died. He was just 26. The twenty minutes of Return has already proved influential though, inspiring the current crop of groups in Philadelphia including They Are Gutting A Body Of Water, A Country Western and Full Body 2. 

Flying Saucer Attack

Flying Saucer Attack - Everywhere Was Everything (1994)

This is right in the sweet spot of all the converging things noise-pop, shoegaze, space rock, lo-fi, drone-y psych-folk and whatever else I've forgotten. Such fresh exciting territory at the time, it gave new hope for those of us still wanting the ultimate in psychedelic pop noise.

Flying Saucer Attack - For Silence (1995)

Probably my favourite FSA jam from their second LP Further. Starts out out all mellow, lo-fi & folky then ends up in a meteor shower space rock storm. Peak FSA.

Cocteau Twins 1984

Cocteau Twins - The Spangle Maker (1984)

You can't ignore this musical statement from 1984. You can ignore all the cliches ever written about the band though. All you need to do is listen and you will realise why so many idiots have made fools of themselves trying to come up with superlative adjectives to explain their awe while listening to Cocteau Twins. 

Cocteau Twins - Pearly Dewdrops Drop (1984)

Is this their best tune? Glistening guitar waterfalls cascading into fluffy clouds, celestial alliteration and ecstatic glossolalia coalesce in this sublime, enigmatic and magic music.  

I have recently read a lot of absolute crap on the internet since I started posting stuff about Twin Peaks, Cocteau Twins, dreampop, noise-pop, shoegaze etc. I have the knowledge because I was there in the 80s and 90s when it all happened. However finding old reviews written at the time these records were released is impossible. I've always thought the level of information and discourse about music on Pitchfork, allmusic, Trouser Press, wikipedia was poor but boy are they are scraping the barrel way worse than ever now. So many bad writers with so little insight. The internet had such potential with regard to music, its history and the history of of writing about music but it's time to face facts: It's pretty crap. Potential not realised. I would have thought every obscure fanzine from the 80s & 90s would have been scanned and uploaded to the web by now creating an unprecedented abundance of material for fans to revel in. Where are all the great music resources? Am I just not finding them or are they just not there?  

I just read a feature article about Cocteau Twins on, I think, a Chicago newspaper's website. The story was so wrong it was backwards. The writer was asserting how much the Cocteaus were influenced by The Jesus & Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine and how they integrated various aspects of each of these bands into their own aesthetic. It was strange because the author was obviously a fan of the group, or at least the Heaven Or Las Vegas LP, and had a good understanding of what made them so great but had this part of their story so fundamentally wrong. The funny thing is, this was posted a couple of years ago and the incorrect article has not been taken down or corrected...

Cocteau Twins - Otterley (1984)

One of the Cocteau's most restrained efforts but also one of their most atmospheric. This dark tone is deliciously eldritch. Surely this is another track that Angelo Badalamenti loved as that haunting vibe was all over Julee Cruise's Floating Into The Night and Twin Peaks.

Cocteau Twins - Pandora (1984)

Hang on I nearly forgot this one, it might be their best tune. Luxuriate in the subtle impressionistic psychedelia of the most perfect kind. The shoegaze brigade totally missed this memo.  

Flying Saucer Attack - 1993

Flying Saucer Attack - Soaring High (1993)

Hard to believe FSA's debut single is 30 years old. This was a much needed injection of youthful exuberance into a flailing noise-pop, shoegaze, neo-psych scene at the time. Underneath the foggy hiss and distorted reverb is perhaps an indie pop gem. The swathes and waves of beautiful noise, reminiscent of early Jesus & Mary Chain and early AR Kane, are fused with the ghostly remnants of a Barney Sumner-esque pop tune. Soaring High indeed.

Flying Saucer Attack - Wish (1993)

The second single starts out all calm with low key distorted jangling and soft choir boy vocals but that soon surges into a maelstrom of supreme mangled psychedelic space rock. Such fun. Now that I'm old though, I'm wondering if they needed to rinse & repeat that outlined description or maybe they could have just ended the song at the halfway mark. Yeah nah, just listened to it again and the second round of cacophonous psych space rock is even better so er... rock on FSA.

Flying Saucer Attack - Oceans (1993)

The b-side does what is says on the tin ie. it's oceanic. Textures, ebbs and flows as opposed to going for the jugular of the previous two tunes with quiet to loud pay off dynamics. This is indebted to AR Kane's Sixty Nine, Kosmische, The Residents' Eskimo, the Xpressway catalogue and their no-fi production aesthetics. 

Cocteau Twins 1983

Cocteau Twins - Sugar Hiccup (1983)

What's amazing about this most exquisite pop tune is that it's a blueprint for what was to become The Cocteau Twins most famous record Heaven Or Las Vegas which was still 7 years away at this stage. It's also the signpost for all future great Cocteau Twins tunes.

Sugar Hiccup is a truly historic moment in pop. This is where Cocteau Twins emerged out of the post-punk and goth jungle with a lustrous template of future pop which would eventually lead them to becoming music icons.

Someone asked me in the mid 90s "Why on earth are you still listening to this?" As if it was the most anachronistic and lame thing to be spending my time doing. As if to say "You left high school five years ago. Grow up. This is so 80s it's embarrassing that you are still listening to this right now" This was a dumb comment then, as it is now.

What they were really saying was: "Timmy why are you listening to one of the most delightful tunes in history of pop music?"

Timmy: "Gee I dunno because it's the best!"

For new artists The Cocteau Twins are still a popular name to drop as an inspiration in interviews apparently. They ended up becoming one of the most influential groups ever. The thing is nobody who has employed a Cocteau aesthetic has ever bettered them. Not one artist influenced by them has come anywhere near capturing their essence. That would be impossible due to their supreme uniqueness. Even capturing their spirit or showing a proper understanding what they were achieving artistically seems elusive to the countless artists who have cited them as influence.  

Cocteau Twins - When Momma Was Moth (1983)

If you stripped the vocals and drums off here, this would sound like a Burzum intro from 1992. 

Also this is produced by John Fryer, just before The Cocteau Twins took over producing their own records. Nobody talks about him any more but he was good at the ole producing and stuff. I mean this fella fiddled the knobs on Song To The Siren as well as for 80s legends Fad Gadget, Depeche Mode, Clan Of Xymox etc. He later produced Nine Inch Nails & Pale Saints.

Impressively Cocteau guitarist Robin Guthrie quickly became a consummate producer so by 1984 he was also producing other artists. By the time he got to 1987 he had produced some legendary records for some great artists like Felt, Gun Club, Edwyn Collins, Dif Juz & AR Kane. Not a bad roll call for somebody who'd been producing for less than five years.

Anyway this has an epic nocturnal vibe. Their goth-y post-punk moments are underrated. Also very bloody strange.

Roy Montgomery - Scenes From The South Island

Roy Montgomery - Winding It Out On The High Country (1995)

My favourite thing is when he does the space-rock jams. He's just so good at it. The way he gets his guitar to sound like a cosmic orchestra with just a few fx is remarkable. 

Why are the aliens landing in an isolated corner of an island at the end of the earth?  

Roy Montgomery - Twilight Conversation (1995)

A wonderfully restrained atmospheric excursion where every meditative second is captivating. Pure hermetic psychedelia.

 

Roy Montgomery - The Road To Diamond Harbour

This is the vibe. The Two Lane Blacktop/Zabriskie Point/Vanishing Point vibe. Blow out the mutherfuckin cobwebs like we're on the xpressway with fellow travellers Pete Gutteridge and Chris Heazlewood. Motorin to the end of the earth until we fall off.

*The sound of this recording is what it's all about. The two albums, the previously posted Temple IV and Scenes Of A South Island, were recoded during the same sessions. Together they are masterpiece of four track sound engineering. My best mate from high school was a sound engineer he could probably tell you the ins and outs of why this album sounds so great. Me, I've just got layman's terms and crap poetic analogies. The guitar tone and guitar sound are like nothing I've ever heard. This is a subtle thing but if you go ahead to Montgomery's early 00s recordings the guitar just doesn't sound like this. Kinda like being wrapped up in a warm blanket on a brisk night on a windswept ocean cliff. 

Roy Montgomery - Temple IV

Roy Montgomery - Departing The Body (1995)

I thought this was the best thing he'd ever done back in the 90s. Sure I haven't listened to a new Roy Montgomery LP for twenty years but I reckon this tune woulda been hard to surpass. After shoegaze had bitten the dust in the early 90s you had to go other places to find similarly spirited music. One direction for those who wanted more blissed out guitar shenanigans was the whole space rock and noise-y psych drone scene with labels like Drunken Fish, VHF Records and Kranky. 

I guess Flying Saucer Attack were seen as the avatars for this aesthetic change-up but in reality they were just continuing what had been an underground scene for many years with particular strongholds in New Zealand and America. This aesthetic had been particularly strong in the recent past with labels like Xpressway, Siltbreeze and Ajax flying the flag for no-fi diy psych drone ambient noise. 

Roy Montgomery had been around for 15 years as part of the infamous NZ band The Pin Group. He was destined to be somewhat immortal after The Pin Group's single Ambivalence was the first ever release on the soon to be iconic Flying Nun label in 1981. 

Fast forward to the mid 90s and among Kranky's first 10 releases were three albums that included Montgomery: Dadamah's This Is Not A Dream, Dissolve's That That Is... Is (Not) and his second solo album Temple IV. So he was definitely a pivotal figure in this milieu. 

Departing The Body was on Temple IV which was Kranky catalogue number KRANK 009. Back when Kranky was still the best kept secret in town before they went overground and signed alt-rock blockbuster groups Godspeed You Black Emperor & Low. Temple IV is just Montgomery, his guitar, some fx and a four track. He created an idiosyncratic, warm, mesmerising and evocative sound. Montgomery's personal musical vision, despite having some superficial similarities to contemporaneous groups on these labels, was not really like anybody else's at the time.

Roy Montromery - Jaguar Meets Snake (1995)

This one's pretty bloody good too. Temple IV is chock-a-block full of splendid lo-fi four track jams. 

Roy Montgomery - Fantasia On A Theme By Sandy Bull (1996)

This was a pretty monumental tripped out psychedelic improv jam back in the day. It still sounds pretty fuckin choice mate! How he keeps up the momentum up for over 20 minutes is quite a talent. This was on the epic triple LP compilation Harmony Of The Spheres on Drunken Fish. Montgomery featured alongside other space cadets Jessamine, Charalambides, Bardo Pond, Loren Conners and Flying Saucer Attack each doing a side long jam. 

Astrobrite

THE 90s ARCHIVE COMPILATIONS

Astrobrite - Crasher

Well that's undeniably impressive. A lost monster of late shoegaze that got found.

 Ok so this is Scott Cortez the mastermind behind LovesLiesCrushing with his other 90s project Astrobrite. In the actual 90s I was not aware he had another group. I mean they existed somewhere in America in the 90s releasing only a coupla singles and a handful of hand dubbed limited run cassettes. It's pretty amazing that this tune, recorded in 1995, remained on an obscure fan mail out tape until it turned up on the cd compilation Crush in 2001. 

The rest of Crush is culled from his 1995 tape archive. If you worship at the alter of Glider, Tremelo, JAMC, Ultra Vivid Scene, anything that sounds like Alan Moulder recorded it and you want more, Crush is for you. 

Astrobrite - Orange Creamsickle 

In 2004 Scott Cortez was raiding his archive again. This time he excavated tunes from Astrobrite's first couple of years 1993/94. The result was the compilation Pinkshinyultrablast which was issued on the Japanese label Vinyl Junkie Recordings. 

Pinkshinyultrablast's got plenty of noise-pop/shoegaze shenanigans plus tinges of pop, psych and glam. It's all about the sound design though, his unique organisation of sound. Cortez moves around his dense sonic layers like few rock musicians do. He got the memo from To Here Knows When and ran with it. Sounds are often placed alongside one another for juxtaposition purposes as opposed to being blended. It's all about the contrast of textures and tones, unconventional EQing, odd sound-field placement etc. all intuitively crafted for a rare immersive listening experience.

Along with MBV, JAMC, Cocteau Twins, Durutti Column, Japan, John Hassell, Fripp, Belew et al. his other major influence is film sound design and soundtracks.  

It has been noted that perhaps Fennesz was influenced by Cortez's unique approach to sound.

 

Astrobrite - Lollipop

Another one from Pinkshinyultrablast. Quite a spectacular sonic onslaught. Pop hooks doused in distorted noise. That's noise-pop.

Astrobrite - Green Duster and Mazinga

In 2011 Scott Cortez raided his 90s archive once again and came up with the compilation Boombox Supernova. He calls it a "lost album of trademark blurry fuzzed out drone from the early years, circa 94-98". Who am I to disagree. This is some of the vaguest most bleached out shoegaze ever. Boombox Supernova isn't a rock record like the previously mentioned collections Crush & Pinkshinyultrablast are. The tracks here are like the cosmic ambient interludes from Loveless or maybe what you would expect a totally blown out 1984 Robin Guthrie demo to sound like. Fleeting treble-y wisps of ethereal fog. I actually think it's the least derivative of the three 90s archive albums that Astrobrite have released and it's my favourite.

 

Boombox Supernova - Astrobrite

The stellar title track.

Lovesliescrushing - Bloweyelashwish

Crushing

You can tell this is from 92 or 93. It's just before the last remaining stragglers of the second wave succumb to a divergent crossroads and intermingle further flavours to dilute the purity of their shoegazery. At this moment though it's just an unadulterated distorted dream haze with a disorienting undertow. To get such an incredible sound out of a 4 track Scott Cortez musta be some kind of whizz. 

The awfully named Lovesliescrushing were an American shoegaze duo. I remember this cd from the 90s because an ex-girlfriend had it and the clunky aesthetics of the project used to capture my attention. It was just not quite right, almost a parody, with all these frou-frou song titles with words joined together (like the band's name) ie. babysbreath, darkglassdolleyes, youreyesimmaculate, bloweyelashwish etc. Perhaps it now has ironic charm. Having said that I think the cover is a pretty cool 4AD knockoff. 

Anyway LLC were very competent with their My Bloody Valentine and Cocteau-y replicas. It's like we're listening to this wall of sound from inside the amp. They were admirably on sonic point but there was something a bit too distant about their approach though. When you listen to Kevin Shields and Belinda Butcher you feel like you know where they're at however Lovesliescrushing seem a bit cold and aloof. Then again perhaps being slightly alien was the point.

The spectacular sounding bloweyelashwish (1994) LP has its fans though and has had several reissues over the years making it a cult item amongst the shoegazery fraternity.

Iwantyou

I like how Lovesliescrushing don't only just adhere to the Loveless template. This fabulous track takes its inspiration from the rumbling dubby bass of Debbie Goodge circa My Bloody Valentine's Isn't Anything and Feed Me With Your Kiss EP. An entire album in this style might have been mind blowing but the rest of the tunes mostly stick to a highly distorted Loveless & Cocteaus through the lens of Slowdive recipe with even the occasional hint of prog. 

If you're into your superfluous shoegaze and just need way more of it in your life, then bloweyelashwish is probably gonna be for you if it isn't already.

Closedown - Nearfield (1994)

Closedown - Bumblebee 

Sometimes it's hard to know whether a shoegaze band is just poor at imitating My Bloody Valentine or if they really were just trying be an ultra-pallid tribute to Chapterhouse. And essentially it doesn't matter because you're either in or out when it comes to superfluous Johnny come lately 90s shoegazers. You know who the legends, innovators and inspirations are but you just want more and sometimes any old lazy fx worship (and singers so beyond ethereal they are but wisps in their very own Cocteau wind) will do.

I previously thought Closedown were the ultimate pale Slowdive imitators but you know what? Re-listening to them again recently there seems to be something a little bit special about this 90s LA band. Read into that what what you will. Their Nearsfield cd is a late shoegaze gem. If the crappy three instrumental tracks, with the terrible space-y synth that made them sound like a K-Tel Pink Floyd, had been removed they might have become legendary. Suffice to say their self styled primitive Eno bandmate shoulda been talked out of his silly experiments. The rest of the tunes however just flow along in lovely waves and a daydream haze. Nice.

MISSING SONG

Closedown - Moon

A heavenly oceanic rock jam of the highest order. Ultimate tone.

Closedown - Red Oval

A dubby bass swirls beneath an insidious hypnotic swell, suddenly a maelstrom is upon you. Peak shoegazery.

Closedown - Mouth

What a mesmerising trip out into the interstellar waves of the cosmic vortex.

Closedown - Empyreal

Their coulda-been pop moment. 

Closedown - Transmission

Rays of light glisten on the ocean during the new dawn of the earth...er sorry not sorry.