Best Shoegazing Albums Poll

Do you agree with this list ?

Best Showgazing Albums:
1. My Bloody Valentine - loveless [creation] 1991
2. Ride - nowhere [creation] 1990
3. Slowdive - just for a day [creation] 1991
4. Chapterhouse - whirlpool [dedicated] 1991
5. Lush - spooky [4ad] 1992

i like con dolore - this sad movie :((

Quoth vrongel:
Do you agree with this list ?

Best Showgazing Albums:
1. My Bloody Valentine - loveless [creation] 1991
2. Ride - nowhere [creation] 1990
3. Slowdive - just for a day [creation] 1991
4. Chapterhouse - whirlpool [dedicated] 1991
5. Lush - spooky [4ad] 1992


wow, i couldn't agree more with your top 4. nice choices. I'm going to put a twist in here for #5 and say Dead Cities... by M83.

Many of mine have already been mentioned, so i'll one add one more that has been ignored (so far)

Cast - All Change

my 10 would be (in alphabetical order cause I can't decide the placings)

Amusement Parks On Fire - Amusement Parks On Fire
Boo Radleys - Everything's alright forever
Flying Saucer Attack - Flying Saucer Attack
My Bloody Valentine - Isn't anything or Loveless depending on mood
Lilys - In the presence of nothing
Lush - Gala _{(ok, not a proper album)}
Ride - Nowhere
Slowdive - Souvlaki
Swervedriver - Mezcal Head
The Telescopes - Taste

nice post shoobridge.
i agree with quite a lot of your views, although quite how you never fell in love with Slowdive if you were around at the time I don't know.

i think at the time, the shoegazing thing for me was more about EPs and 12"s.
sure i got the albums too, but when i think of that time, i think of buying and repeatedly playing the 12"s more than the LPs.
so i'm going to do it that way! like best shoegazing records
:)

slowdive: slowdive, morningrise, holding our breath.
their first 3 eps. amazing! i prefer these (they were collected as 'blue day', but with some songs missing) to 'just for a day'. actually, apart from the much later pygmalion (which i don't really class as shoegazing), i still think it's their best stuff. if i was going to plump for a shoegaze album by them, i'd say souvlaki. still, it's not as good as the first eps.

boo radleys: 'boo up!', 'every heaven'.
again, the radleys' best stuff. 'tortoiseshell', 'the finest kiss' 'foster's van' 'everybird'. i don't think everything's alright forever lived up to this stuff. these two eps were awesome.

chapterhouse: 'pearl'
the song pearl is a shoegaze classic! compounded by the fact that rachel goswel from slowdive did backing vocals. i mean how much more qualification do you need?!?
the haunting b-side from it though, still wipe me out when i listen to it.
'come heaven' and 'in my arms' are my two favourite chapterhouse songs (though i'm not sure they're strictly shoegazing songs!)

my bloody valentine: 'feed me with your kiss', 'you made me realise', 'glider', 'tremolo'
ok, so feed me, and you made me, were a lot earlier than the official shoegazing period, but didn't they get re-released? i know all my mates had them, and we all played them to death. i can't seperate those two records from the loveless stuff in my mind, when i'm thinking of that period. i'd definitely say that feed me, and you made me are MBV's best stuff, as much as i love the loveless stuff (including the EPs)

curve: 'blindfold', 'frozen', 'cherry'.
ok, maybe not so much cherry as the other two. but those two records were amazing. soon afterwards, we all realised that curve were a one trick pony, and that all their records (apart from the amazing 'chinese burn') were going to sound EXACTLY the same. but hearing those first two eps was wicked.

lush: 'black spring'.
i never really got into lush in a big way, i just didn't rate them as much as the other bands around. but this record was wicked. again, i could stomach an ep of theirs, but not the album!

telescopes: 'celeste', 'flying', 'everso'
i love this era telescopes. i love the untitled LP that gets slated! it remains one of my all-time favourite records. but also, you got the chord book with the album, so you could like be in shoegazing bands with your mates! :)
(well, admitedly, it's not strictly a shoegazing record. i'd say 'flying' was though.)
the celeste bassline is amazing!

swervedriver: 'rave down'
now you could argue that they aren't proper shoegazing, and more rocky. (and some already have!) but they were lumped together with the shoegazing bands, by the press at the time. and they have the swirly guitar stuff going on, albeit with a harder edge.
cracking band though!

ride: 'ride', 'play', 'fall'
for a sart, fall had the amazing 'nowhere' song, that wasn't on the vinyl release of the 'nowhere' LP! and the original 'ride' ep was pretty much at the start of the whole thing. again, i liked the LP nowhere, but it wasn't as important as the EPs to me.

there's ONE exception to the EP thing!

cocteau twins: heaven or las vegas
i'd still rate this as one of my favourite albums of all time. it's easily my favourite cocteau twins record (although i know people will disagree with that!)

honourable mentions go to catherine wheel for 'black metallic' and also, and you're going to disagree here spacemen 3 for 'recurring'. now it's not strictly shoegazing, (well ok, it's not shoegazing at all!) but i remember them as almost part of that scene. the spirit of it. the spaced out-ness of it.
i went to see spiritualised when they were gigging during the spacemen 3 split, before they released laser guided melodies. they were really loud! really guitary and definitely shoegazery!


*phew*

OK, so it's a long post, and slightly off topic too!
i just hope that talking about those eps, and sitting around in your mates bedrooms listening to them as they came out, brings back similar memories for other people too!
:)

Quoth avalyn2:finally, check out the Sonic Cathedral London club night, now doing a mini-tour, and their logo of all that classic cover art http://soniccathedral.co.uk/images/flyers/images/erol.jpg
awesome. cheers for the heads up!
i'm round that way (well, at bethnal green) on a thursday, for some night schoolin', so i'll try and make it over.

loveless > shoegaze

(album, not song)

Quoth durhammag:
Hi all. Am new to this forum and I am going to be deeply, deeply contentious right from the off but......

My Bloody Valentine were NOT a shoegazing band!!!! When they released Isn't Anything, it was simply so off the radar of what was going on at the time, it started a snowball. This snowball gained momentum and bands like Ride, Boo Radleys et al emerged, simply trying to ape the sonic landscape that MBV created on Isn't Anything. Isn't Anything owed more to the feedback heavy bedrock of The Jesus and Mary Chain than to anything that followed (see Feed Me with your Kiss or When you Wake). and was nearer to it's original influence than it was to it's imitators. In the intervening 4 years between Isn't Anything and Loveless, the shoe-gazing thing grew with the emergence of the bands mentioned above until Loveless was released in 1992 and exposed every other band for the copyists that they were. Loveless took the original idea and interlaced it with the emerging "dance" elements to create a truely astonishing album.

Now, I am not saying all of the other bands were bad, far from it, but I remember how generic they were, indeed culminating in the Scene that Celebrated Itself.

This will either create absolutely no reaction, dismissed as a ramble, or hopefully, some debate.

Rock Family trees: Ride --> MBV --> Jesus and Mary Chain --> Bo Diddley. So can we intimate that Bo Diddley wa the Godfather of Shoegaze?!?



+1

MBV is far more akin to Sonic Youth than Jesus & Mary Chain. IMO.

Amen.

hammock's kenotic definitely ranks pretty high up there. souvlaki is an easy no. 1 though.

1. MBV Loveless
2. Slowdive - Souvlaki
3. Ride - Going Blank Again
4. Catherine Wheel - Ferment
5. Boo Radleys - Giant Steps
6. Slowdive - Just for a Day
7. Swervedriver - Raise
8. Chapterhouse - Whirlpool
9. Pale Saints - IN Ribbons
10. Radio Dept - Pulling Our Weight EP