The Essence were always perceived as Cure copycats, and rightly so. But then again they always wrote great songs, and at their best (A Monument Of Trust) they could tackle glimmering drama with ease. So it was with Nothing Lasts Forever, making it's case with bruised and elegiac pop ("Separation"), spiraling mood-swings ("How You Make Me Hate"), autumnal paeans ("September"), shimmering dramas ("Out Of Grace"), sparkling sorrowful sighs ("Everything"), triumphant pop that rose like a phoenix out of it's ashes ("Never Let Go"), wind-torn rain-soaked landscapes ("Thirty Second Song"), fragile farewells ("All Is Empty" and so on.
Get it here.
Slowdive diluted their sound somewhat in Souvlaki but, what they lacked in density, they made up in emotional gravitational pull.
"Alison" was a shoegaze paean that flickered like a small flame in the wind, before incandescing itself in the chorus. Then "Machine Gun" was a tender hymn that floated like a feather in the atmosphere. In contrast, "40 Days" traveled in space in supersonic speeds and was wrapped in motion blur. "Sing", co-written by Brian Eno, employed a twirl of electronics to emulate a state of weightlessness, before picking up speed in an endless fall in space.
"Souvlaki Space Station" continued the trend, now burning itself in this infinite fall in space. "When The Sun Hits" mourned for the fall and loss, eventually losing itself in the process. "Altogether" had lost it's senses, taking comfort in the temporary refuge of an internal cocoon. Even this embankment wasn't to last. "Melon Yellow" was falling too fast, too soon, into this internal abyss. "Dagger" certainly didn't offer any solace. By now the flickering flame of "Alison" was all but gone and all that was left was the memory of the flame, which in turn was fading into nothingness.
A masterpiece. Get it here.
My Bloody Valentine was the one band to push the shoegaze sound to it's limits. The other was Slowdive. Loveless was their grand statement.
"Only Shallow" was a dream-pop dissevered with monstrous fuzz acid-rock outbursts. In "Loomer", their dream-pop became an amorphous toxic fuzz cloud. Then, after the loop intermezzo "Touched", "To Here Knows When" rose triumphantly like purging steam towards the sky; essentially this was the previous amorphous cloud having gotten rid of the fuzz and vocals, and having transubstantiated higher in the stratosphere to pure ethereal ecstatic sound.
When compared to these bold sonic experiments, "When You Sleep" was classic shoegaze (i.e. fuzz ridden dream-pop). Again, from this relatively standard moment, "I Only Said" exploded with giant whirlwinds of pure soaring, melodic, spiritual elation; if new-age music relaxed the spirit, then My Bloody Valentine's music washed off the spirit with white light from heaven, uniting it with the great one in a dizzying nirvana.
And again, this was followed by a more normal shoegaze track, "Come In Alone", which also reminded of 60's psychedelia. "Sometimes" was also fairly standard, though aided by a superb melody and a more pensive tone. The ectoplasmic nature of their music returned with "Blown A Wish", which was akin to a gospel floating in the airwaves in search of a heaven. And finally, in "What You Want" they merged their two guises: one, the superb shoegaze pop-psychedelia and, two, the impalpable ecstatic harmonic structure.
A triumph.
NOTE: Sorry folks, link removed by request.
Nowhere is generally considered one of the landmarks of shoegaze (aka an evolution of dream-pop, more psychedelic and enshrouded in colossal doses of distortion). It started with "Seagull", which was basically the shoegaze adaptation of a hippie anthem - typically buried in a thick veil of distorted effluviums. All the while "Kaleidoscope" winked to the Merseybeat sound - though again drenched in ecstatic and exhilarating distortion. "In A Different Place" was less good, essentially a shoegaze contemplative ballad, but they rebounded - and how - with the mesmerizing psychedelic acrobatics of "Dreams Burn Down" - replete with spectacular guitar fireworks splashing through the sky and then hanging in suspended animation.
Get it here.
Justin Broadrick's and Jarboe's J2 offered at least two masterpieces.
Firstly, "Decay", a Jarboe litany combined with disturbing loops, which slowly picks up pace until it forms a symphonic vortex of sorts, and then gets more and more intense and inhuman, a virtual black hole that warps everything. Bearing in mind where Jarboe and Broadrick come from, this is a worthy heir to both the Swans and Godflesh.
The second highlight, "Romp", features gospel influenced vocals and soaring symphonic synthesizers. Then these two elements blur and coalesce, creating a hyper-realist emotional environment. The end result wouldn't sound unlike Morcheeba covering Jesu while on a spiritual ecstasy.
The rest of the songs are not as intense. Nevertheless, the industrial trip-hop "Let Go", the supersonic rave-raga "Tribal Limo, "Magick Girl" (with emphatic hard-rock guitars and a multilayered dreamy electro pattern), and "8mmSweetBitter" (which is grainy ambient slowcore and dream-pop, but with soul vocals) are hardly without charm.
EDIT: Dead link because of complaints to Rapidshare.
Amidst an overly clinical (the electronic kind) or melodramatic (the GYBE kind) post-rock climate, the Giddy Motors re-consolidated what rock music is all about. Thus the hellish growls and fragmented structure of "Magmanic" returned to the no-wave and the noise-rock of the 80's - if not the progressive-rock of the 70's. Indeed, the loose structure of the noir no-funk "Hit Car" was genuinely menacing and demented. "Bottle Opener" added brains to the recipe - with refracted reflections of lounge, an elliptical punk-funk footing, and warped electronics.This trend continued in "Cranium Crux", essentially a noise-rock band playing trip-hop cocktail-lounge. Nevertheless, the noise spasm resurrected in "Sassy" - replete with insane growling and howling. Their noir side also reappeared in the complected thriller boogie "Dog Hands". "Venus Medallist" was another surprise, an elegant strings ballad that wouldn't sound out of place in a Rachel's album. "Whirled By Curses" was the most eloquent yet, whereas after a Slint-ian introduction it veers into a noise salsa, then into a Birthday Party-like noise-funk, then into a magnified noise anthem and so on.Get it here.
James Chance and the Contortions were among the apostles of the no-wave. "Designed To Kill" was a visceral no-funk that utilized a semi-progressive structure, atonal saxophone and seething guitar work, as well as wild screams. "My Infatuation" used an even more deflating and arhythmic structure, with looser guitar and saxophone. "I Don't Want to Be Happy" was the most zappy yet - a veritable frenetic chase. Minus the feverish rhythm, their music reached levels of paroxysm and hallucination in "Anesthetic". With the rhythm added, it felt like the 50's rock 'n' roll dance of a madman in "Contort Yourself". Ditto for "Throw Me Away", that felt like a jazz-funk orchestra on amphetamines, an axis of discordance that continued in "Roving Eye", and in the sharp polygonal edges of "Twice Removed" (that even included some noir-swing).Get it here.
