The 10 best Shoegaze tracks of all time
Shoegaze
Guitar bands who buried the song under effects pedals and sang like they were in the next room. Named as an insult by the British music press in 1990, and reclaimed by roughly every guitar band since.
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My Bloody Valentine / Only Shallow
Four snare hits and then the most disorienting guitar sound ever pressed to record. Kevin Shields bent pitch with a tremolo arm until the instrument stopped behaving like a guitar.
My Bloody Valentine / Soon
A dance groove underneath a wall of detuned noise. Brian Eno called it the vaguest music ever to have been a hit, and meant it as the compliment it is.
Ride / Vapour Trail
A string coda arrives in the last minute and reframes everything before it. The most conventionally beautiful song the scene produced, and the least afraid of being one.
Cocteau Twins / Cherry-Coloured Funk
Elizabeth Fraser sings in a language she invented and communicates more than most lyricists manage in English. The template shoegaze spent a decade chasing.
The Jesus and Mary Chain / Just Like Honey
A Ronettes drum intro drowned in feedback. Predates the scene by years and supplies its founding idea: bury a perfect pop song and let people dig.
Slowdive / Souvlaki Space Station
Dub techniques applied to guitar music, with Eno's fingerprints somewhere in the background. The most spatially adventurous thing anyone in the scene attempted.
Chapterhouse / Pearl
A sampled breakbeat welded to a wall of guitars, years before anyone called that a genre. Shoegaze's most convincing argument that it belonged on a dancefloor.
Swervedriver / Duel
Shoegaze with actual muscle and an American road-movie sensibility. Heavier than its peers and unfairly overlooked because it refused to sound fragile.