One day when I was in twelfth grade, I was driving my younger sisters around listening to music (likely mewithoutYou or Norma Jean based on the era). They asked me why I don’t listen to music with girls singing. I said, “that’s not true. I listen to this,” and put on Morella’s Forest. A few minutes in, they declared that that didn’t count.

As baffled as I was then, I now understand that they were asking more why I didn’t listen to poppier fare. And while there are plenty of pop hooks on this disc, I can forgive my sisters for being unable to hear it beneath the swirling hurricane of shoegaze guitars.

While Tooth & Nail is most widely regarded as a stronghold of pop punk, post-hardcore, and emo, they had a sizable shoegaze section on their roster in the 90s. Starflyer 59 is perhaps the most notable, and as the longest-running project on the label, they were a bit of a black sheep in the early 2000s among the likes of the Juliana Theory, Further Seems Forever, MxPx, Underoath, and others in that vein. But a few years prior, they wouldn’t have seemed as out of place, buoyed by similar projects like Velour 1000, Puller, and Morella’s Forest.

Morella’s Forest may not have ever gotten their flowers from the music historians canonizing the genre’s benchmarks (even Starflyer made it onto Pitchfork’s list). They were maybe too American and just a couple years too late into the decade for that sort of acclaim. But Super Deluxe is, for my money, one of the best shoegaze records put to tape. It is at once dreamy and inviting and noisy and abrasive. Where other Midwestern Yanks (read: Smashing Pumpkins) were reappropriating the walls of guitar noise of shoegaze into a more mainstream rock sound, Morella’s Forest embrace all of shoegaze’s weirdness.

“Hang Out” opens the record with a bang, drums and bass playing a punk rock pace while guitars shift between high-fuzzed chords and noisy stabs borrowed from Jawbox or Sonic Youth. Despite this chaos, Sydney Rentz’s vocals are smooth as silk and sweet as honey, offering an infectious melody into the whirlpool of noise. “Lush of Spring” pulls the tempo back with an easy tambourine-aided groove, guitar effects bubbling in the verses in between full-spectrum fuzz blasts in the refrain. Songs like “Wonder Boy” and “Oceania” lean heavily into the psychedelic side of shoegaze, with woozy modulation effects rocking the guitars like a boat in an uneasy current. “Glowing Green” pairs a phased bass melody with absolutely wicked guitar fuzz, with pleasantly disorienting results. “Stargazer” is a veritable dream pop epic, pairing the sweetest lows and most punishing highs on the record.

It feels more like Lush than My Bloody Valentine or Slowdive, and that might contribute to its obscurity. Lush remains chronically underappreciated themselves, regularly included as an afterthought of essential shoegaze bands. Likewise, Morella’s Forest seems relegated to cult favorites, uncelebrated outside of a small but dedicated circle of fans. But luckily, that fanbase is dedicated enough that a vinyl reissue isn’t a complete fool’s errand, because I’ve wanted this on wax for a long time. I even bought a sealed cassette copy in the last few years just to satisfy my desire to buy it again. But now that I have it on vinyl, it will be properly appreciated in regular rotation.