I remember dabbling in shoegaze back in the day, right before it got obliterated by grunge, but I do have a few favorites from that time. Slowdive was a good band who didn’t quite get their due. Check out the Pitchfork documentary on Souvlaki, arguably their best album:

On recommendation from Pitchfork, I tried out this album by a band called Quannic, which is a young guy making shoe gaze-adjacent guitar music on his own. I’m really enjoying most of this album, alhtough it gets a little weak towards the end. Apprently he toured with Slowdive, which sounds like it would be a great fit.

Strange, I wouldn’t have guessed this: kids using TikTok have exploded the popularity of shoegaze. Old-school bands like Slowdive are making a comeback (they started long before TikTok, actually) but new ones are sprouting up based on snippets included in video shorts.

Most compelling of all, is that the bulk of shoegaze’s fastest-growing acts are a cadre of super-young artists who most shoegaze fans over the age of 25 have likely never even heard of. All of 2023’s breakout stars are teenage solo artists making music in their bedrooms, bucking the conventional identity of shoegaze as “band”-centric music with a barrier to entry amounting to the cost of a pedalboard and a Jazzmaster guitar.

Slowdive, a shoegaze band from Back In The Day, broke up after releasing a clasic album in the mid 90’s and reformed themselves about ten years ago. They’ve just released some singles off a forthcoming album, called Everything Is Alive, and I really dig a couple of them. They’re both similar to and different that what came before—alife has all the sonic chemistry that drew me to the band.

And I really like the groove of a tune called the slab, which sounds nothing like their previous work.

Previously.