Soon: Edweena
I first heard Edweena’s song “Thunderboy” a few weeks ago, and immediately fell in love with its youthful, uplifting and illuminated beauty. Last week I finally listened to the Swedish band’s debut LP “Solar Days and Lunar Nights”, which came out in September, and realized they have made a whole album based on the same […]
Soon: The Cherry Wave
The formula sounds simple: “I’d fill each track with a few layers of noise, then write a song to play under the noise.” This is how Paul, The Cherry Wave’s vocalist/guitarist, describes his early song writing efforts. Nothing much seems to have changed: the typical Cherry Wave song still consists of a really melodic riff […]
Exceptions Committee
The Israeli Blogger Ido Shacham has asked in a recent post: could Hebrew be the next Icelandic? He was referring to the enthusiastic international media coverage given to the debut album of Vaadat Charigim (Exceptions Committee), an exciting new Israeli shoegaze band who sing exclusively in Hebrew, and to some media attention given to my […]
Shoegazers of the World Unite
To mark the publication of Morrissey’s Autobiography, I wanted to go back to the Smiths and look at them from a shoegazing angle. The Smiths meant so much to me at some point, that until today, when I hear the first notes of their albums Meat Is Murder or The Queen Is Dead, I’m immediately […]
Candle: The Tupolev Ghost
For all I know, the Tupolev Ghost might be horrified to find themselves featured in a shoegaze-related blog. After all, their influence list includes such muscular noise propagators as Lightning Bolt, Slayer and Shellac. Though now that the band has broken up and become a genuine ghost, it might not matter so much anymore. Formed […]
Rainy Grey
“I like the indefinite, the boundless. I like continual uncertainty” – Gerhard Richter Continuing my exploration of shoegaze painting, I’d like to write about some thoughts I had on seeing Gerhard Richter’s exhibition “Panorama” at the Centre Pompidou in Paris last year. The connection between Richter’s painting and shoegaze/post-punk music had first been intriguingly suggested […]