Best Shoegaze Albums 2023 (2024)

FAQs

Who is the father of shoegaze? ›

The Jesus And Mary Chain's debut album Psychocandy (1985) is largely considered the precursor of shoegaze.

Since its release, Loveless has been widely cited by critics as one of the greatest albums of all time, a landmark work of the shoegaze subgenre, and as a significant influence on various subsequent artists.

The 30-year-old subgenre has found new life in the hands of indie rockers, digicore artists, TikToking teens, and reunited first-wavers. A monkey in the zoo, defiantly staring down passersby.

Shoegaze, a genre that emerged in the late 1980s in the United Kingdom, is a sonic tapestry that blends noise, ambience, and emotion. It's a music style characterised by its ethereal soundscapes, muffled vocals, and heavy use of guitar effects.

The coining of the term "The Scene That Celebrates Itself" was in many ways the beginning of the end for the first wave of shoegazers. The bands became perceived by critics as over-privileged, self-indulgent, and middle-class.

Shoegaze is not a goth genre, but some important albums in gothic music are similar to shoegaze (Loveless from My Bloody Valentine). The shoegaze emerged at the end of the 80's. It is generally characterized by distorted riffs, overdriven guitars.

The band has a diverse, densely layered sound, which evolved throughout their career and has contained elements of gothic rock, heavy metal, grunge, psychedelic rock, progressive rock, shoegaze, dream pop, and electronica overall, with Corgan as the group's primary songwriter.

Their music has been classified as garage rock, garage punk, gothic rock, shoegaze and post-punk revival. The band have released five studio albums: Strange House (2007), Primary Colours (2009), Skying (2011), Luminous (2014) and V (2017) all of which charted within the UK Top 40.

My Bloody Valentine are regarded by some as the pioneers of the alternative rock subgenre known as shoegaze, a term coined by Sounds journalists in the 1990s to describe certain bands' "motionless performing style, where they stood on stage and stared at the floor".

To be clear, neither Duster, Beach House, nor Deftones are explicitly shoegaze — the genre typified by smeary guitar squalls and celestial vocals bathed in reverb, as pioneered by My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, and Ride in the early '90s, and mutated by several generations of indie bands in the decades since.

Who pioneered shoegaze? ›

The first taste of real shoegaze music came in 1988 from an Irish band called My Bloody Valentine, who are recognized today as pioneers of the genre.

What began as a niche genre in the 1980s has evolved into a global phenomenon, with its dreamy soundscapes continuing to captivate listeners today. As long as artists continue to push the boundaries of expression, shoegaze will remain a vital and influential force in the world of music.

Mazzy Star - So Tonight I Might See (1993)

With hazy guitar and a certain disparate nature, in many ways, this album was also defined by its trademark shoegaze atmospherics, a 'proto-shoegaze' album of the most ethereal quality.

Musical style and influences

While the group's early material was folk-tinged pop, they became more rock-oriented after the rhythm section joined. Generally, the band's musical style has been described as alternative rock, indie rock, and shoegaze, with elements of dream pop, folk, grunge, pop, and electronic.