Here’s an ethereal electronica cover of Slowdive’s “Machine Gun” by (if I’m decrypting the credits correctly) “Dick Isreal and The Soothsayer with Neon Signal.” So a teamup of three musical entities I’ve never heard of.
I think Amy Archibald is The Soothsayer, and has a beautiful (albeit highly processed) voice on this song. I’m guessing the “Lightwave” of the video title is the theoretical genre this belongs to. Whatever it is it’s very pretty…
Here’s New Zealand’s Baltier Space with the title track from their Robot World shoegaze album, which checks in on the crunchier side of classic shoegaze:
I was in the mood for mellow, and Eluvium‘s “Don’t Get Any Closer” (which has a definite ambient film score tinge to it) fits the mellow bill.
I was in the mood for something mellow, and Golden Garden‘s “Ghostwood” admirably fits the bill, even if the video comes in almost entirely on the cheap side of the “cheap but arty” continuum.
Lead singer Aubrey Rachel Violet Bramble (if in fact that’s a single person’s real name and not a real name + fake name combo) has the most obvious “little girl” voice this side of Alison Shaw of Cranes.
For your Sunday dose of Shoegaze, here’s San Francisco’s Slowness (who describe themselves as a “drone pop band”) with “Walls of Blue,” a steady-state song that sounds like an extended riff off the end of Pink Floyd’s “Time.”
Since I’ve reached the age where being “cool” is impossible anyway, I can link things others might find corny, like this version of The Tokens revisiting their big hit “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”:
This, of course, was an adaptation of Solomon Linda’s “Mbube”:
But the Tokens version is better and more interesting, despite the fact that they could be mistaken for 4 Jacks and a Jill. It’s obvious lead singer Jay Siegel still loves singing this song even after four decades.
But my favorite version, which sort of combines the sensibilities of the two, is Ladysmith Black Mombazo and all-girl acapella group The Mint Julips covering it, from a PBS special called Spike and Company Do It Acapella from back in 1990.
For your Sunday doze of shoegaze, here’s New York’s DIIV with the NSFW-ish “Wait.”
For your Sunday dose of shoegaze, here’s Black Tambourine’s “Throw Aggi Off The Bridge.”
Velveteen is a band from Germany most famous (for certain values of “famous”) for having their album hoaxed as a Death Cab for Cutie album. (Disclaimer: I couldn’t recognize a Death Cab for Cutie song with a gun to my head.) Correction: The band wrote to note they’re the London Velveteen, not the German one. “Poster Boy” is another video whose theme is “War is bad and stuff.” Or alternately, “stock footage from the Vietnam is pretty cheap.”
Here’s another dose of classic UK Shoegaze band Ride with “OX4.” Hard to understand how this never charted, as it has a perfect, catchy pop melody underpinning it.
It reminds me a little of Brain Eno’s early solo work…