Shoegaze is back: From My Bloody Valentine to A Place to Bury Strangers
“Shoegaze” lives! Briefly in vogue in the U.K. during the early ‘90s, “shoegaze” was a snarky, rock-critic brand for a generation of bands who stared at their shoes onstage while enveloping gauzy melodies inside a cocoon of heavily distorted guitars. Stacked up alongside more marketable movements such as Seattle grunge and the Oasis-led Brit-pop of the early to mid-‘90s, shoegaze wound up in a commercial cul de sac, a sound that enjoyed a brief flicker of attention and attracted a dedicated cult audience, but faded from mainstream view almost as quickly as it began.
Yet the music made by the best bands in the movement --- My Bloody Valentine, Ride, Slowdive, Lush – had an enduring influence. When My Bloody Valentine reunited in 2008, it played to the biggest audiences of its career. What’s more, band leader Kevin Shields said he’s working on the long-awaited follow-up to the Valentine’s masterpiece, the 1991 release “Loveless” – though when, if ever, we’ll see that album remains in doubt. But shoegaze is back in force, with the emergence of a new crop of bands who want to make their own “Loveless.”
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