Best Shoegazing Albums Poll

Perhaps as a testament to the diversity of the genre I'll totally disagree with all of these lists and won't include a single artist from any of them because I'm not a big fan of most (not all) of these bands:

1. Cocteau Twins - Victorialand - Kevin Shields nailed the wall of sound, but Robin Guthrie nailed the dreamy sound characteristic of the genre. Lazy Calm is the best example.

2. Airiel - The Battle of Sealand - Track 10, Red Friends is my favourite. Absolutely amazing track.

3. Ulrich Schnauss - Goodbye - Absolute masterpiece in my opinion... so many amazing tracks. Once again, the comparisons to Cocteau Twins are much more obvious than MBV, although there are some. Favourite track is Shine.

4. Landing - Seasons - These guys really aren't wellknown enough. They don't rock at all and sound much more like CT than MBV with post rock/windy & carl-esque ambient leanings. Favourite track is First Snow.

5. Auburn Lull - Alone I Admire - Very ambient, quiet, minimal... mistook them for a really quiet, dreamy indie band like Helios the first time I heard them, but they are definitely shoegazer and a total standout band. Track - Grange Arcade or Desert.

6. The Daysleepers s/t - Dreamy, solid brand new shoegaze. I've read a lot of negative reviews stating these guys don't create enough for the genre but I totally disagree with that criticism. All we need is another blatant MBV ripoff, these guys definitely don't fall into that camp. Track - Release The Kraken or Tiger In The Sea

7. Songs of Green Pheasant - Another band that has totally escaped any sort of underground fame. Their first album totally beats out the second in my opinion, but is still pretty decent. Track - Pink By White or Wintered.

8. Air Formation - Daylight Storms

9. Asobi Seksu - Hush. While I like Hush the most, Red Sea is still my favourite song. I find them really hit or miss, I really dislike some of their stuff but tracks like Red Sea or Familiar Light totally blow me away.

10. Pia Fraus - In Solarium - Not their most popular album but my favourite for sure. Track - 400 & 57.

durhammag said:
Hi all. Am new to this forum and I am going to be deeply, deeply contentious right from the off but......

My Bloody Valentine were NOT a shoegazing band!!!! When they released Isn't Anything, it was simply so off the radar of what was going on at the time, it started a snowball. This snowball gained momentum and bands like Ride, Boo Radleys et al emerged, simply trying to ape the sonic landscape that MBV created on Isn't Anything. Isn't Anything owed more to the feedback heavy bedrock of The Jesus and Mary Chain than to anything that followed (see Feed Me with your Kiss or When you Wake). and was nearer to it's original influence than it was to it's imitators. In the intervening 4 years between Isn't Anything and Loveless, the shoe-gazing thing grew with the emergence of the bands mentioned above until Loveless was released in 1992 and exposed every other band for the copyists that they were. Loveless took the original idea and interlaced it with the emerging "dance" elements to create a truely astonishing album.

Now, I am not saying all of the other bands were bad, far from it, but I remember how generic they were, indeed culminating in the Scene that Celebrated Itself.

This will either create absolutely no reaction, dismissed as a ramble, or hopefully, some debate.

Rock Family trees: Ride --> MBV --> Jesus and Mary Chain --> Bo Diddley. So can we intimate that Bo Diddley wa the Godfather of Shoegaze?!?



every single entity is the result of an infinitely long chain of causality... so can we intimate that cavemen beating bones on sabertooth skulls was the origin of shoegaze?

soo glad swervedriver was added. and whoever said (so many to read so this is from nowhere) swervedriver is another genre... what would you classify them? i'd say shoegaze is as close as it gets. shoegrungedelica i guess. didnt read every one but did read quite a bit and... WHERES METHODRONE.

mezcal head
swervedriver
loveless
isnt anything
methodrone
giant steps
horesdrawn wishes deserves some respect
nowhere
blue angel lounge
kids garden-further? shoegaze?
ejector seat reservation
family cat-tell em we're surfin?
bethany curve-gold
helio sequence?
mercury rev?
pavement?
first six by seven album? (was the best by far)
even sonic youth is a huge link into the genre

eventually it's "where does the boundary end." shoegaze's influence was monumental. i believe it coincided with the madchester scene and milestones such as screamadelica or between 10th and 11th and many many other bands/albums never would have materialized. MBV deserves much love in this respect. but yeah i could go on and on but i'll stop because the line is hazy... for example what about asteroid 4? they arent very shoegaze but they definitely have elements.

10 in no order and one album per band:

Eyedazzler - Alison's Halo
Taste - The Telescopes
The Sound of Young America - The Voices
Citrus - Asobi Seksu
Pinkshinyultrablast - Astrobrite
Occult Radiance - Fleeting Joys
Devastator - STAR
Echodrone - Skywave
Shot Forth Self Living - Medicine
Daylight Storms - Air Formation

was so hard to make this list... gah. so many favorites... left out Loveless, Nowhere, and Souvlaki for diversity reasons, though they're definitely top 10 worthy. also left out bands that are more dream pop, post-rock, alternative rock, etc. then shoegaze.

1. Loveless
2. Souvlaki
3. The Buried Life
4. Beat
5. Flying Saucer Attack