GutterPutter

Like the Big Bang, one of the most unique alternative genres got its start as scattered energies waiting to pop in the right conditions.

1979 marks the dramatic turning point in British cultural history. When the zeitgeist of punk rock is undergoing its creative evolution, it ends up colliding with the general election. One which saw the Conservative Party entering parliament under Margaret Thatcher as the newly-elected Prime Minister. It’s a small bit of common knowledge that many were opposed to her premiership and music artists and even record labels have joined in on the criticisms. Jeremy Trammer, senior lecturer at the University of Lorraine, wrote on the broad opposition made by the musicians by highlighting the variety in its criticisms via breaking it down into the three terms of direct “contacts”, the ideological “frictions”, and the confrontational “clashes”. 

Yet, Thatcher’s premiership is ultimately one which saw music be divided up in the kind of demographics who are able to work in it as a full-time job. The charts were dictated by  New Wave while it’s topped by the likes of Phil Collins from Genesis or names from the bubbling scene like Spandau Ballet. Summarily, the trend was that whoever made ballads with a cleaner, synth-influenced production will be the ones to make a bank. Such singles and even the artists themselves were disparaged by critics for its overwrought sense of drama and the songwriting was too reliant on soddy cliches.

The lion’s share of artistic acclaim goes to the underground scene where bands such as Joy Division or the Sound form what we now call post-punk. A broad genre which sought to combine punk’s DIY and anti-commercial ethos with a more kaleidoscopic range of musical influences from a spectrum of styles like dubbing. Some of the biggest stars to have emerged out of the original wave, the Smiths being the usual example, would go on to essentially mark the birth of indie pop/rock as we know it today in the United Kingdom through literate lyrics and a catchy kind of guitar riff. It was this resistance against both the conservative backlash against avant-garde art and the perceived watering-down of the music trend with corporate-tinkered tunes which sowed the seeds for one of alternative music’s most unique styles – shoegaze.

Shoegaze got its start when a handful flirted with guitar noise and feedback; one which led to the surge of noise pop, although a more psychedelic, mellow production soon led to dream pop’s arrival. Key among the artists who tackled the fledging genre was Scotland’s the Jesus and Mary Chain whose 1985 debut Psychocandy won acclaim for its bustling production. With an intensive array of reverbs and a monaural mix to blend the music altogether, the album sparked a fuse in many contemporaries. Bands like Loop and the House of Love soon followed in that direction as they added the Jesus and Mary Chain’s production to their music. In turn, noise pop became all the rage in underground British music and it typically blended in along the most explosive in post-punk. And it was from there when many of shoegaze’s biggest pioneers would first get a major dose of inspiration. Slowdive’s Neil Halsted and Rachel Goswell cited the Jesus and Mary Chain as among their favourite music acts in a 1991 interview in Berlin.

Another indirect contributor towards the birth of shoegaze was its staunch ties to the lower classes and society’s overlooked. Thatcher’s moves against the trade unions and its subsequent knock-on effect on the working class shaped the lives of young adults and teenagers then. Throughout the 1980s, many struggled to find employment, grew disillusioned to the point of partaking in student protests, and otherwise turned toward local authorities like the Greater London Council or state schools to form social groups. Later key shoegaze band Ride’s two frontmen, Andy Bell and Mark Gardener, initially got their first experience in making music together at Banbury Art College while listening to the Smiths in the mid-1980s. 

Some felt so isolated from the social climate that they turned towards overt condemnation. One of the earliest bands in shoegaze, Kitchen of Distinction, drew some controversy when frontman Patrick Fitzgerald wrote ‘Margaret’s Injection’ which fantasises about killing the then-Prime Minister. Fitzgerald was gay in the time when same-sex marriage was illegal and crises like AIDs/HIV or the Section 28 law silenced many like him of their right to self-expression. The band’s legacy as being among the first carried on the long-standing pride of the LGBT+ community’s creative willingness to go beyond the conventional boundary with music being no exception.

The resurgence of conservative values like familism, meritocracy, and aristocracy sets up the seed for alternative artists to not only be from the lower classes, but are more prone to challenging social mores. The 1980s have practically handed out an avenue for musicians to be more experimental, harsher, and vulgar in their songwriting especially in reaction to New Wave and dream pop. Aside from Kitchen of Distinction’s self-referentiality on Fitzgerald’s homosexuality, bands like Spacemen 3 and Breathless respectively took on neo-psychedelia and dream pop to reinterpret them through the lens of drug addiction and paranoia. Both themes ended up being common in many of the popular media at the time which had endured in the mainstream up to the next decade as films and albums like Trainspotting (directed by Danny Boyle) or OK Computer by Radiohead respectively tackle them.

Others, like A.R. Kane and A Primary Industry, went entirely out in a bohemian direction with their production which made them initial stalwarts of ethereal wave. Inspired by Phil Spector’s signature Wall of Sound style and the innovations of the Velvet Underground, they add a psychedelic twist which pushes the music’s unorthodoxy to its limit. A.R. Kane at least still possessed a kind of “normalcy” in its tune given that they were already one of the leading dream pop acts then with a hit single in ‘Pump Up the Volume’ – a 1987 one-time collaboration with electronic group Colourbox under the name of M|A|R|R|S. A Primary Industry however have dabbled with industrial music, funk rock, and ethereal wave in their only album Ultramarine which was released in 1986. A.R. Kane at least enjoyed some success with their work as their debut 69 became a minor hit and was since then remarked on as an instant classic which founds the ground for shoegaze. It was only until the last few years when A Primary Industry, long since disbanded with their members moving on to different projects, that they earned more notability for their forward-facing direction.

One last major contemporary of note who helped form shoegaze was a band whose members did not come from the UK, but had lived in Ireland until the early 1980s where, after moving around Europe, they had settled in London in 1985. My Bloody Valentine was once a noise pop project in the same vein as the Jesus and Mary Chain whose band leader Kevin Shields had long experimented with music. By 1987, the band also dabbled in gothic rock while opening for many acts that they soon overshadowed. Meanwhile, they mixed their music with unconventional guitar playing to which Shields coined ‘glide guitar’. It involves holding the vibrato bar while strumming to form a shimming wave in the sound. While progress was initially slow to the point where the band struggled to keep itself together, Bilinda Butcher and Debbie Googe were soon added as the guitarist-vocalist and bassist respectively.

The next year,  My Bloody Valentine finally struck gold with a contract to work under Creation Records under the management of Alan McGee. It was from there when the creative inspiration alongside a long experience of working with underground names began to truly take off. Spacemen 3’s Peter Kember talked about the band’s EP You Made Me Realised,  released in August, with excitement on how My Bloody Valentine didn’t so much take a step as they did make a leap. Only a few months later in November, Isn’t Anything finally came out as the long-awaited debut. And the acclaim was off the charts. The vocals are androgynous but seductive, the guitar noise is overwhelming yet wholly beautiful, the volume is expansive but it compels you to listen to it in its entirety. 

Up until 1988 when Isn’t Anything came out, British underground music was seeped in lower-class inventiveness and an anti-conformist attitude towards New Wave. It drenched itself in reverbs and feedback and all the required risqueness to push back against the return to traditional social norms. At least, that was how noise pop came to be as one of the country’s most popular genres to have never hit the charts. When My Bloody Valentine migrated over in 1985 and soon left a then-stunner of a fully fledged work, the dam was open. Shoegaze would soon dominate the alternative scene for the next decade.