No matter how closely I scour the various corners of pop music history, there’s always something I miss. There are countless bands that have fallen through the cracks of year-end lists from various journalists, retrospectives, and trends on the music charts. And many of those bands are actually worth several damns, despite how much or little notoriety they achieved in their time.
One of these bands is Majesty Crush, a Detroit-based alt rock outfit that played local support to international shoegaze bands like The Verve, Mazzy Star, Chapterhouse, Curve (oh hey), and the immortal My Bloody Valentine. And while they weren’t themselves members of the British community that spawned shoegaze, their sound could definitely grandfather them in as canonized members of the scene.
As part of their effort to uncover these sorts of hidden legends, Numero Group has released Butterflies Don’t Fly Away, a document of Majesty Crush’s brief career that compiles their sole full-length Love 15 from 1993 with various EPs and B-sides.