Much has been said and written about the evils of classifying music by genre, and many writers have started out said articles with "much has been said about...", but despite the recursive criticism and the inherent social quagmire, genres persist in how we define music. If nothing else, genres are a shitty shortcut to move the conversation along. Sure, it's a shortcut filled with the dangers of broken glass, toxic fumes from a near by chemical plant and the occasional meth-addled drifter that will slice your throat for the Coke Zero nestled in your backpack's outer mesh pocket, but it is a shortcut nonetheless.
As I take a bite out of some of the select genres, their subsets, their derivatives, their god-genres, etc that I'm intrigued by, my feelings on the whole system of music identification will be made clear. Hopefully, these feelings will be refined into an accurate statement that articulates my simultaneous disdain and embrace of genres as avenues in discussing music.
The History:
I'd like to start this series of posts off with my most beloved and, perhaps, hated genres under the banner of ambient music: shoegaze and dream pop. The two are typically entwined because they both represent the sweeter side of ambient aesthetics in the pop and rock format. The opposite are noise and drone music (and all their stupid subsets), which represent a darker, harsher side. Naturally, the two sides tend to bed each other in a variety of ways and levels on intensity, but what I'd like to focus on here, are the artists and the culture that surrounds the predominantly consonant, warm and gorgeousness of shoegaze and dream pop.
Technically speaking, dream pop started to occur years before shoegaze was even an idea. With the wisdom and atmospheres of electronic ambient of the mid-to-late '70s planted in the young minds of a handful of aspiring artists, dream pop came into being in the early '80s alongside the explosion of the noise movement and post-punk. The Cocteau Twins and The Jesus and Mary Chain are called-upon champions of the style, providing the most adapted blueprint for what would be fully embraced as dream pop - equal parts moody, saccharine and chiming textures in sound, all shot through with soft vocal melodies that blended with the music but stayed slightly above as a prominent attraction.
The moniker "shoegaze" was given by the British press to late '80s bands that allegedly stared at their shoes during their entire performance. A lot of members of different bands during this time refuted the name on many levels, but the most basic was that they were concentrating on the correct pedals to use and listening for the changes in the songs. The genre, at this point in time, was exemplified by My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive, with significant pull by other bands like Ride, Lush, and Chapterhouse.
Shoegaze carries a lot of the same qualities as dream pop in terms of the importance of bright, shimmering textures and woozy vocals, but the are some key differences between them. For one thing, the drums typically blend in with the swirling textures of the song, meant to keep the rhythm and adhere to the pop song format, but only barely. More importantly, however, is the complete synthesis of the vocals in the mix and the bending, hypnotic usage of distortion and feedback. Another thing that differentiates shoegaze from dream pop is that shoegaze tends to ramble on and embrace the amorphous quality of ambient, while dream pop is succinct - the haze is controlled, almost like the power to lasso clouds had finally been harnessed.
The '90s saw a steep decline of interest in both genres. However, shoegaze carved a path for post-rock which became a force in it's own right. Shoegaze's presence was felt, but the image and the culture had significantly dwindled. It wasn't until around 2011 that a massive resurgence in both shoegaze and dream pop occurred. This wasn't necessarily a revitalization of the genres, but of ambient as a whole.
The Sound:
I set out this brief, omission-laden history to give a bit of context on my views on the sound and culture of the music. Since I'm so in love with the idea of shoegaze and dream pop music - the ethereal mixed with traces of familiarity, the abstraction and textures funneled into consonant joy - seeing them fail or become mediocre is particularly depressing. Since each genre is so reliant on mood and atmosphere, it has a dangerously high potential to be boring, tepid, total fluff. In fact, I've seen this occur in 90% of the shoegaze and dream pop artists that I've heard.
There seems to be a proliferation of the idea that either genre can rest on the laurels of chorus, delay and reverb. To many these guitar effects are automatic assembly lines of "cool", "alternative" or "interesting" songs, which leads to lazy songwriting and even lazier song structuring.With dream pop, there are legions of bands that think applying chorus and sheeny-bear reverb to typically hammy, generic pop songs constitutes as dream pop in it's truest sense. You won't have to search long to find one of these pretenders, all the sweetie-pie melodies and spritely, major chord guitar progressions splash right across your face but are forgotten by the time they slide off your cheeks. It's a pop band that has slightly reverse-engineered their sound in hopes of swindling a demographic that likes moody, atmospheric music.
The truth is, good dream pop (in my opinion) is born out of a genuine fusion between the familiar energy culled from pop's structure and the indescribable romance of ambient layers, injected like pie-filling into the center and then having it overflow from the inside out. It's not created when the ambient aspect is just a transparency plopped on top of the whole affair. It's amazing to me how many artists have tried and failed that formula in the past, and how many to this day still try and still fail. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart and The Dum Dum Girls are prime examples of cookie-cutter pop outfits, massaged by indie labels to just barely evoke the nostalgia of early jangle-bright stylings of My Bloody Valentine and The Smiths, and the doo-wop coating of The Jesus and Mary Chain. All of it in hopes that the tragically hip will nod in unison and say "That sounds killer. It's like '80s alternative, even though I don't exactly know what that means. I'll go buy a jacket from Urban Outfitters to suit my mood."
On the other hand, shoegaze has been adopted by droves of psychedelic, post-rock and post-metal (basically angry dudes that decided to totes mellow out) bands. It makes sense because shoegaze is less concerned with structure and more concerned with textural confluence - a journey to the center of yourself with faint sign-posts to guide you there or a boring, heat-bleached struggle through the desert, depending on the kind of ears you have. Shoegaze, as a result, is constantly butchered and alienates droves of people because they only hear the most dull, lifeless versions of it. It seems like every time I go to Facebook, I'm greeted with an ad on the side pane, telling me about some outfit in Texas, called Molasses or Space House or Sad Sloth, who are a "special" or "new" brand of shoegaze "that harnesses the power of the genre's mainstays, while forging a sound of their own". I'm already a hard-as-nails skeptic when it comes to music, so these particular words only conjure up resentment and mistrust.
Unfortunately, most of these knee-jerk reactions are founded. In fact, I would argue that most shoegaze bands turn out a kind of swill that is so inconsequential in it's effect, that they might as well have not made the music at all. The main issue is similar to that of dream pop, in that most shoegaze artists rest on the laurels of style and nostalgia that has been built up over the years. Who needs dynamic shifts in texture and engaging interweaves of soft vocals, when you simply have a loop pedal that repeats the same three guitar drones until the end of time? After all, it's all about the slow-burn, "tripped out" feeling that you get, right? It's this mentality that seals the fate of most shoegaze bands. It's as if they think 5 minutes between chord strikes uplift them to a new realm of "legitimate" indie musician, where they aren't hugely successful, but the 15 friends who like them and the friends of friends who only sort of care are enough to legitimize them as the second, super-secret coming of Kevin Shields.
The People:
Since shoegaze and dream pop (and ambient in general) have a tendency towards hypnotics, the genres unfortunately have attracted boatloads of drug enthusiasts. It's not to say that the presence of drugs in any kind of music is a surprise, but the pitfalls are quite plentiful with shoegaze/dream pop. The subculture has self-perpetuated this idea that the DIY drug experience is inextricably bound to the spine of the music. If you recall the stoners you went to high school with, who were into old tapestry bands like Pink Floyd, Captain Beefheart, The Velvet Underground, Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane and so on, you'll understand what a drug stigma can do to an art movement. Those stoners couldn't separate the emotions brought by the music and those brought by the drugs, because they didn't care to. The music was there to enhance their high, which rendered it secondary in their priorities. To me, that's not genuine love for a genre, or even music overall.
Drugs are never about progression, only temporary displacement, while art is meant to move you forward in some way or another, permanently. Unfortunately, both experiences start out the same and many don't bother to follow the hare all the way down the rabbit hole. Shoegaze and dream pop are about transporting you to new ethereal planes of intimacy and reconciliation, while keeping you pinned by the familiar thrum of the bass and crash of the drums. Shoegaze and dream pop on drugs is about looking at those emotions in a distorted kaleidoscope, laughing and saying to yourself, "yeah, I've experienced those before", but never going on to touch them in a meaningful way.
And where there are drugs there are inevitably going to be assortment of the hippy, crust and raver cultures. It's unfortunate, because it gives shoegaze and dream pop a sort of greasy, ramshackle quality that should be left to the likes of hardcore, bluegrass, new folk, etc. The music is too smooth and ghostly to connotate grimy commune children.
On the flip side of that, most shoegaze and dream pop fans are generally easy-going, low maintenance individuals. Some due to the aforementioned downers that they are consuming, but also the general permutation of mellow reflection that each genre tends to roll off. There aren't many condescending intellectuals or testy hotheads in this group of fans. In fact, shoegaze/dream pop is just one place where refugees of harder music tend to end up - tired of the impotent rage, tired of the highly defined, tired of the obnoxious quirk - looking for some solidarity. I like the idea that the music gives people a common arena to just relax, to just be. When you're swaying to the the waves of delay, there isn't a lot of opportunity for aggression or pretension, at least from the fan perspective.
Fair-weather hipsters are a different story. They still manage to think highly of themselves (whether part of a band or just a fan), even in genres that tout warm, cathartic vibes. Since late '80s and early '90s college rock is all the rage these days, you'll find the asshole quotient to reflect the popularization. And you know when hipsters start their own shoegaze/dream pop bands, just look at Cults:
I may be mistaken, but this band (amongst many others) sound like they didn't give a fuck about dream pop until it conveniently became popular again in the past two years, and they won't give a fuck about it when it's popularity has subsided. The band literally sound like slightly higher functioning thrift store employees started a band to be cool, to drink beer and to cash in on a trend. But I'm not going to repeat myself about the dummy bands in these genres. I pointed it out because it's symptomatic of the hipster culture that congeals over all subcultures, like an old, gross, parasitic cheese. It's a ravenous glob that seeks to devour all the cool from a particular thing and then move on when they feel the winds changing. Shoegaze and dream pop are no different.
