Shoegaze

Record #833: Boris – W (2022)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Few bands are as prolific as Boris. The Japanese trio has done everything from shoegaze to synthpop to drone to thrash metal to harsh noise to garage rock to punk to hardcore to post rock to rockabilly (probably—I’m not actually sure if they’ve done any rockabilly, but probably). The sheer mass and diversity of their output makes for some great moments, but it makes it very difficult to call any of their albums essential. 

Sure, there are some legendary mile markers in their discography: most people point to Pink, I point to Noise. But for the most part, while their consistently enjoyable and impressive as a whole, most of the individual albums aren’t very distinctive from one another.

To that point, W is their twenty-seventh album—a number that doesn’t include their seemingly endless list of collaborative works. However, W feels unique enough even among Boris’s discography that it warranted adding it to my collection.

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Record #832: In Parallel – Broken Codes (2018)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

If you were looking at the resumés of the members of In Parallel to try to discern what they might sound like, you might be thrown for a loop. Sure, there might be enough shoegaze and post-punk devotion in Hopesfall and Celebrity’s catalogs that it would make sense, but you might expect Broken Codes to have some of their sharper edges as well.

But listening to the gauzy haze of guitars, drum machines, and syrupy smooth vocals, it’s hard to wish it was any grittier. This is the kind of trancelike, dreamy rock that is best consumed by letting it wash over you.

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Record #827: Gypsum – Gypsum (2021)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Working for a music site, I’m constantly inundated with press releases and review submissions. After a while, it all starts to bleed together, like a never-ending Pandora station with messed up seeds that plays in the background.

But every once in a while, something grabs my attention, like a nugget of gold in the muddy silt of a riverbed. As a mineral, Gypsum may not be very valuable, but the band that bears its name was enough to make me feel like an old timey prospector.

Their debut record came across my inbox and, after ignoring it until the week it was out, I was instantly enraptured by the genre-bending songwriting, rich atmospheres, kinetic grooves, and engrossing harmonies.

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Record #826: Diiv – Is The Is Are (2016)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Few records have hit me with the same immediate and enduring affection as Diiv’s Oshin. That record’s blend of post punk, shoegaze, Krautrock, and surf rock hit me like a truck full of bricks at first listen, and remains one of the richest albums in my collection with every repeated listen.

So it might seem odd that I didn’t devour their sophomore album, Is The Is Are, with as much voraciousness.
But that error is all mine, because the sophomore record takes the same elements and stretches them to fit an ambitious double album that is far more personal while remaining just as alluring.

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Record #825: Deafcult – Auras (2017)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Throughout the history of shoegaze, bands have tried hundreds of different techniques to create the huge blissful walls of sound the genre calls for. Of course there’s gliding, the method developed by Kevin Shields and aped by ever other shoegaze guitarist ever (guilty), but bands have also tried everything from walls of amps to layering dozens of takes of the guitar parts to more guitar pedals than one person should be able to understand.

Brisbane Australia’s Deafcult employ a novel method that’s genius in its simplicity: they just have four guitarists.

It’s an elegant, if obvious, solution and the results speak for themselves on the hazy, crushing atmospheres on Auras. 

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Record #822: Airs – Apart (2015)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

I’m starting to worry that my weak spot for noisy, crushing shoegaze is going to become fatal. Sometimes, I’ll hear a few seconds of fuzzy guitars with washed out vocals and start frantically searching for vinyl copies online.

That happened last week when I came upon Airs, the now-defunct “Loudest Band in San Francisco” on a playlist on Spotify and scoured the internet, eventually purchasing what seemed to be the only copy for sale online. In fact, given that Apart is the only release from Airs that saw a vinyl release, this was the only Airs wax for sale on the whole internet.

And I had to have it.

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Record #814: An Autumn for Crippled Children – All Fell Silent, Everything Went Quiet (2020)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Last year, I said that An Autumn for Crippled Children’s Try Not to Destroy Everything You Love should have stolen them the title of “The Cure of Heavy Metal” from post metallurgists A Year of No Light. That album’s heavy use of moody synths, drum machines, and melodramatic grand pianos betrayed a great love for the Goth Rock legends that mixed surprisingly well with the blistering black metal guitars and shrieked vocals.

On last year’s All Fell Silent, Everything Went Quiet, AAFCC leaned even further into the goth, new wave, and post punk influence, making this sound almost like a Cure-worship album with added black metal elements, rather than the other way around. In either case, it certainly works.

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Record #806: Mogwai – As the Love Continues (2021)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

At this point, Mogwai has had a long and illustrious career. They were pioneers of guitar-based post rock, laying the groundwork for hundreds of other bands. As the Love Continues, their tenth album (not including numerous soundtracks and EPs), was released on the 25th anniversary of their very first single.

But even with such an iconic tenure, there’s one thing that’s eluded them: mainstream commercial success. And while they’re not going to be headlining TRL any time soon, that changed this year when a Mogwai fans (including Elijah Wood) started a viral campaign to get their new album to the number one spot of the UK charts.

It worked, but not just because of celebrity endorsement. If ever there was a Mogwai album to peak the charts, it was this one, perfectly encapsulating everything the Glaswegian post rockers do best.

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Record #793: Deafheaven – Infinite Granite (2021)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

The backlash from “A Great Mass of Color” came so quickly, they might as well have been included in the press release. Black metal purists were quick to point to the undistorted guitars, lack of blast beats, and (gasp) clean vocals as proof that Deafheaven weren’t kvlt.

Subsequent singles rebutted the idea that it might be a one-off. And now that the album is out, we can see for ourselves that this softer palette weaves itself through the entire album. Even longtime fans have turned on them, saying this record sounds like an entirely different band. They’ve lost the plot. They’ve sold out.

And the whole time, I’ve said the same thing to them: besides the vocals, this is what Deafheaven has sounded like the whole time. 

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Record #785: Lantlôs – Wildhund (2021)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Lantlôs is German for “homeless,” or “without homeland,” and that name is certainly apt. Throughout their career, chameleonic German metal band has been stretching the borders of heavy music, unconcerned with citizenship in any genre. Their earlier albums, such as .neon and Agape were indelible entries in the blackgaze canon, featuring Alcest’s Neige on vocals. 2014’s Melting Sun was a transcendent work that shed itself of any of heavy music’s trope to create an album that was blissful while still being entirely heavy.

Seven years later, Lantlôs returns with Wildhund (German for “Wild Dog”), an album that uses all the same sonic textures to create what is almost a pop record. And even with all the band names they’ve dropped in the press materials, Wildhund sounds as without peer or homeland as they ever have.

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