Even on the first 30 seconds of Prism Shores’s debut EP the Montreal quartet’s preternatural gift for great guitar jangle is apparent. It’s all there: Crisply arpeggiated chords played with hints of echo and distortion, plus a heaping helping of melancholy — catchy, comforting, a cozy jacket with its collar upturned on an overcast day.
Thirty seconds does not a catalog make, of course, and Prism Shores have been gently pushing their sound outward ever since. Their debut full-length, 2022’s Inside My Diving Bell, added a bit of post-punk heft by turning up the rhythm section, while last year’s excellent Out from Underneath found the band building a sturdier wall of sound by bringing in additional voices, synths, and strings for texture, and some crunchy shoegaze swirl.
Category: shoegaze
When deary, the dreampop three-piece composed of Ben Easton (guitar), Dottie Cockram (vocals, guitar) and Harry Catchpole (drums), named their debut album Birding, it wasn’t just as an homage to our feathered friends, they were referencing the sense of expansion, wonder, and abandon their music evokes. They chose the title to draw attention to the direct impact humans have on the world around us, whether that be nature, or ourselves.
“I got really into reading about birds and all these historical stories and poetry about them,” says singer/guitarist Dottie. “You find these beautiful images of birds that represent hope, but they’re also animals. Some of them, like vultures and crows, are a sign of death to some people. They represent all these different…
The second act of The Julies has been one of the most surprising and unlikely comebacks in recent memory, but then “surprising and unlikely” is kind of the group’s whole M.O.
Hailing from the storied rock ‘n’ roll town of…Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, and with a sound heavily indebted to Britpop, the Julies’ most beloved work is an EP that was released in 1996 after they’d broken up, and which steadily amassed a cult following. It was a reissue of that EP, called Lovelife, in 2020 by the label Lost in Ohio that spurred the group back into action. And if their 2023 album Always & Always sounded, to these ears, tentative in some places — the sound of a band cranking the gears back up to see what they could do — Cherisher is big, loud, and…
One of the clearest examples of an album that crafts a strange and beautiful world not quite like any other is Rocketship’s 1996 full-length debut A Certain Smile, A Certain Sadness. Even upon arrival, this was an experience unto itself, and 30 years later, these eight songs of bittersweet bliss still feel new.
Rocketship spiked their deliciously melodic indiepop with buzzing organs, spacey interstitials and motorik repetition, aligning them with mid-90s peers like Stereolab and Unrest. “A Certain Smile, A Certain Sadness” is an album of unrepentantly vulnerable melodies, unusual seventh chords, lingering ambient interludes, and soft sentiments released at a time when unfriendly, self-conscious punk rock was the order of the day…
“Hypnosis Tapes” opens with a vacuum cleaner played in reverse — an inside joke, apparently — before the fuzzy guitars and humming synths layer in, stacking blips and pockets of sound until you realize you’ve stopped paying attention to anything else. Mute Swan named the opening track appropriately. It immediately puts you into a trance.
That pull defines Skin Slip, the Tucson band’s sophomore album and the final recorded work of founding guitarist Thom Sloane, who passed in 2024. Frontman Mike Barnett has said these are their best songs, Sloane’s best playing. He’s not overselling it. The album was recorded before Sloane’s death, and it sounds like a band locked in — joyfully testing how far their sound can stretch and change shape without losing their identity.
When Crimson Whisper emerged out of the ether in 2024, it was with an EP of synthy, metallic textures, muscular live drums, and gossamer vocals, making for a giddy version of shoegaze that incorporated some dream pop and post-punk vibes. As intangible as their sound was the lack of background on the project. That EP, Flutter, was followed the next year by a mini-album and another EP. The Shelflife label stepped in to give the band their first label release, Flutter & Beautify, a track-for-track compilation of their two EPs. Meanwhile, it was revealed that Crimson Whisper consists of San Francisco-based singer Na Lim and an unnamed member of an “established shoegaze band.” The mysteriousness extended to Beautify, which on occasion incorporated…
After building momentum over a few years of local shows and an international tour, Hong Kong shoegaze quintet Lucid Express returns with their second album, Instant Comfort. Blurrier and less glossy than their 2021 debut, the new record is situated at the sweet spot of screwed-down dream pop, ethereal vocals draped over lush guitars and synths, with a few tense, discordant edges.
Instant Comfort was recorded in the band’s studio, an island within an island, perched in an industrial district outside central Hong Kong, with views of both skyscrapers and the Chinese border. It’s a sanctuary from the grinding realities of the city, and their music likewise plays like a delicate and immersive retreat, a space that feels temporarily above reality. Vocalist Kim Ho’s…
“Three people will die listening to this album,” the Bandcamp description of Nashpaints’ first record since 2020, Everyone Good is Called Molly, reads. “Zzz they will endup in the same place.” There’s no backstory to Finn Carraher McDonald, only mystery and angelic voicings spread across decaying pop tapes with a butter knife.
Lead single “Boyfriend First” is this seven-minute mass of swirling noise with guitar streaks you’d have to break your nails just to make. There’s a lot of color in here even as the static fattens and the synths undress, because McDonald has melodies coming out the eyes. “Boyfriend First” sounds more like Natalie Imbruglia covering Deerhunter-or maybe it’s Deerhunter covering Natalie Imbruglia-in a sewer tunnel than the Duretti Column…
Numero present ’90s shoegaze band Should’s ’98 debut ‘Feed Like Fishes’ + 10 period bonus tracks.
The folks in Phoenix’s Half String talked up this trio when they were Austin, TX’s shiFt (before they moved north to various universities and gave up their name because of another band called Shift). And it’s easy to see why: Should would have fit perfectly into Arizona’s former “beautiful noise,” post-dream pop scene.
Even without the interestingly sedate but grasping cover of the Wedding Present’s “Spangle” (and, on another record, 18th Dye’s “Merger”), their sound makes it apparent that they can match the English in pairing inventive, modern guitars to lulling tunes for nighttime singing. You could see “Sarah Missing” appearing on a Slowdive…
Back in the early nineties, when Kevin Shields and My Bloody Valentine came up with their Loveless album, they practically broke the back of Creation Records, which soon after went bankrupt. Yet, nobody at the time envisioned what kind of influence that album would have decades after its initial release.
Its ripple effects keep washing up on listeners to this day, and the latest proof comes in the form of Come Back Down, the new album by Nashville (yes, that Nashville) duo Total Wife. It is too easy to say that Luna Kupper and Ash Richter, who comprise Total Wife, are just ‘simple’ fans of MBV and all things that were good about the original shoegaze for two reasons.
First of all, following in the footsteps of…
Between Whitelands‘ first and second albums, it evolved from an unfocused alt/indie solo project into a Slowdive-inspired shoegaze four-piece that landed on the Sonic Cathedral label. That second album, Night-Bound Eyes Are Blind to the Day, made new fans including Slowdive’s Neil Halstead, who toured with the group in 2024. Whitelands singer/guitarist Etienne Quartey-Papafio and band further develop their sound on third album Sunlight Echoes, which finds them taking their audioscapes in brighter, dream poppier directions on occasion while also expanding their swirling, hazier atmospheres. Quartey-Papafio’s lyrics remain sociopolitical in nature, as he bears witness to the genocide in Gaza on the buzzy, clattering, and angsty “Dark Horse,” and…
Canadian duo Softcult’s gorgeous debut album takes its title from the famous Alexander Den Heijer quote: “When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.” The idea of fearless change in pursuit of something better is a mission statement Mercedes and Phoenix Arn-Horn know well. The twins spent more than a decade playing in pop–rock group Courage My Love, but walked away in 2020 after life on a major label got too stifling to continue.
Softcult arrived shortly after in 2021 with Another Bish, a spiky dream-pop anthem that saw the pair refusing to be tamed. Four grungy, Riot Grrl-influenced EPs followed alongside handmade zines, a close-knit online community and tours supporting Muse and Incubus.
Like with any other rock genre (or sub-genre), the death of psychedelic rock has been proclaimed so many times that the proclamation itself became redundant. The reasons may seem quite simple – the appeal of psych rock remains to this day, whether in its original or ever-coming changes in shape or form, with the original core (and ideas) remaining intact in one or more elements that define psych rock as such.
With Under Dark Skies, their latest album, Los Angeles outfit Tombstones in Their Eyes just prove the point. With the band going through intense personal changes (including the passing of guitarist Paul Boutin this October), the band still firmly remains in the songwriting hands of John Trainor, one of its original founders,…
Souvlaki is Slowdive’s second studio album, originally released in 1993.
Though not as big and swirling as Just for a Day, there’s more of an attempt to put advanced song structure and melody in place rather than just craft infinitely appealing, occasionally thunderous mood music. Everything is simplified, as if Brian Eno’s presence on two songs – he contributes keyboards and treatments and co-wrote one tune after turning down the band’s invitation to produce – hammered home the better aspects of “ambient” music. This is no Music for Airports though.
On the opening “Alison,” the largely uplifting “When the Sun Hits,” and the darkly blissful “Machine Gun,” Slowdive are still capable of mouth-opening, spine-tingling flourishes.
From their home in Belgium, Slow Crush have carved out a place at the forefront of modern shoegaze. The band’s distinct sound, built on shimmering textures and propulsive rhythms, has earned them a dedicated global following.
After a few years of deliberate quiet and reflection, they’re ready to re-emerge with something new and transformative. Their latest album, Thirst, released on Pure Noise Records, is a powerful leap forward. The band decamped to The Ranch in Southampton, U.K., to work with producer Lewis Johns, creating a ten-track cascade of sound that is both heavier and more emotionally resonant than anything they’ve done before.
…The Belgian quartet’s vocalist/bassist Isa Holliday says that the overarching themes on…
In the same way that the legendary label, 4AD had their in-house collective, This Mortal Coil, a revolving door of music makers generally associated with it, so John Michael Zorko gathers around him many of the great and good who orbit the Projekt Records sun to weave together the sonic beauty of that defines his Falling You project.
And it is not just the form that draws comparison to that earliest of British independent labels, the music found on Metanoia, the latest album, could easily have been one of the 4AD stable, back in the day. Metanoia means to change, but more specifically, a transformation forged from adversity, an idea first found in the writing of ancient Greece, and specifically in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which this album takes as…
Following the release of their celebrated debut album, 2024’s Triple Seven, noisy, romantic indie stylists Wishy return less than a year later with something old and something new. The compilation Paradise on Planet Popstar brings together their 2023 EP, Paradise, and six new songs dubbed Planet Popstar. Spoiler alert: the latter’s ultra-fuzzy, gushing title track (“Love at the speed of light”) is one of the highlights here.
But first, in case you missed it, Paradise offers five slightly melancholier tracks that demonstrate that Wishy arrived as a concept pretty much fully formed by what was their second EP, with its intriguing mix of boy songs, girl songs, boy-girl songs, hazy dream pop, buzzy shoegaze, bouncy jangle, and rich harmonic palettes…
Just for a Day is the debut studio album by English rock band Slowdive, originally released on 2nd September 1991 by Creation Records.
Just for a Day is Slowdive’s first album, and it shows; when one listens to the magnificent sound of Souvlaki or the brilliant experimentation of Pygmalion, it becomes clear that Just for a Day was only a step toward the greatness they would later achieve. Its sound is quite like Souvlaki’s – swelling waves of flanged guitars, layers of wispy vocals floating in and out of the mix, and sweet lazy pop songs – but the production sometimes turns the band’s plush, sweet sound into the sort of cheap and cheesy pleasantness one might expect from a new age artist. A few tracks hint at the sound that would be fully achieved on Souvlaki…
There is so much noise coming at you all the time these days. The constant bombardment of stuff you aren’t interested in while you try to get things done, it’s exhausting. Greet Death, Michigan shoegazers, are taking on the constant noise of life with their own noise. Their newest album, Die in Love, out via Deathwish Inc., is their answer to two of life’s biggest noisemakers, love and death. Greet Death offer their perspectives on these age-old topics in ways that are both all too familiar and yet uniquely their own.
Die in Love opens with its eponymous track, which contains immediate, MBV-esque noise. This is an often cited touch point for any shoegaze album, but it’s always a welcome influence. “Same but Different Now” is about a feeling most…
Nick Quan’s song “Heavensafe,” which runs big feelings through a bigger pedalboard, features a funny declaration: “I’ve turned to slop again.”
This past August, when the extraordinary guitarist released Warbrained, shoegaze might have been saying so, too. By then, its latest — and most puzzling — progeny was “cloud rock,” a budding vanguard that subverted its central extremes: numbness first, and noise, if at all, second. On record, Quan, a digi-rock savant who has toured with Slowdive, sounds groggy yet ridiculously technical, like a sleep-deprived Berklee student on a bender.
When a simplistic song, “life imitates life,” blew up on TikTok in 2023, they responded with a complex album, that year’s Stepdream,…