GutterPutter

The 1990s marked a major turning point of British history – and I’m not necessarily thinking about Thatcherism coming to an end or the Cold War ceasing as the headlining subtext. While the Conservative Party’s reign throughout the past decade gradually made way for the more centrist New Labour governance in 1997, there still remained the lost generation of young adults whose social mobility happened to be limited and whose views differ dramatically from their immediate ancestors. However, they share the same bond with them through a clear tradition – music. Each decade saw underground scenes innovate new styles that stood out as voices of the time before it disseminated into more mainstream singles.

Among the fads in the 1990s was Britpop where largely working-class bands like Oasis or Suede wrote catchy Smith-esque indie pop tunes that encapsulate life in the United Kingdom. The sheer commercial success from songs like ‘Wonderwall’ or ‘The Beautiful Ones’ portray a glamorous time in which the country’s music scene has its shit together. The public are all in love with the songs, the critics hailed them as the second renaissance akin to the British Invasion three decades ago, and the studio executives let them off the leash with their imagination. The issue with that image however is that, similar to a certain historian David Geiringer’s examination on how the perceived optimism of the decade contrasted with the despondent or apathetic feelings of those who lived through it, the Britpop phenomenon failed to portray the murkier side of British music throughout the decade. Shoegaze encapsulated the direction much more succinctly to say the least.

The last time I wrote about the genre as part of Great Britain’s social history, I noted the significance of the dumbing down on youth culture when Thatcherism was at its peak. The limitations of social mobility and avenues for communal activities left many adolescents and young adults disillusioned with the country as a whole which in turn fuelled more socially charged themes and greater ambitions  in their music. In the 1980s, the fuels that sowed the seeds for shoegaze was dream pop, garage rock, and neo-psychedelia. The next decade saw numerous trends that made the genre flourish be it immediate or indirectly: Baggy, grunge, and space rock.

Youth culture in the 1990s was defined by the very circumstances that the generation was raised in. Much as the grunge movement in the United States brought anti-establishment and cynical sentiments to mainstream attention even if it’s more presentable, shoegaze instead comes off as yearning. Yearning perhaps of the camaraderie and romance that feels increasingly untenable at the time. The more popularly buzzing Britpop too looks into themes of friendship and love at the time albeit with a smug and sarcastic outlook towards them as part of life. The more broad space rock, having stuck around as a concept with its mainstream popularity coming from David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’, was rearing its head as its astrological imagery and airy reverbs lend credence to many styles. These trends form the building blocks for shoegaze as we know it to solidify into a recognisable sound on a spectral basis.

Shoegaze’s popularity during its breakthrough in the 1990s tend to be remembered as being polarizing to critics who find many of the bands’ live shows lacking in personality and much of the music coming off as being too bombastic. In fact, the genre’s very name comes from the musicians’ focus on their guitar pedals to make the most of their music rather than engage in showmanship in live performances although the origins are a bit murky (the most likely being from an NME review on Slowdive’s extended play Holding Our Breath in 1991). A 1992 featured article by Melody Maker on then-rising Irish power pop band Power of Dreams saw the group disparage the genre and its major acts like Slowdive and Chapterhouse over their more middle-class background and monostylised approach. This comes in spite of programmes set by the British government from the late 1980s via Thatcher’s government to boost students entering university to fill in roles for engineering and science on top of several band members like Slowdive’s Adrian Sell opting to leave their music career behind to prioritise other parts of their lives. 

The blossoming apex of shoegaze, with its numerous bands who want to blend dreamlike production and melody with guitar feedback and noise, created a term from journalists in the 1990s. The Scene That Celebrates Itself. Members and individual musicians were often seen attending each other’s concerts in an act of support and have collaborated together to make new songs rather than get into competitive rivalries with one another. Record labels like Creation Records, run by influential indie music executive Alan McGee, would enthusiastically sign them with full knowledge of their cult following. Such a term has been used both appraisingly and derisively (mostly the latter) by critics owing to the social context of the scene. Much of Ryan Pickard’s 2024 oral history book Shoegaze illustrates the camaraderie between the members whose music are regarded as part of the genre even if they find the label to be overgeneralising the nuances between each band with additional comments reinforcing the importance of more underground music genres to help shape the genre.

In 1990, following the release of a few extended plays, Ride dropped Nowhere to the public. While most music fans remember shoegaze now by its maximalist use of embrace of noise and feedback, the average album of the genre is more comparable to a typical alternative rock or jangle pop tune. While reverbs are well in the forefront, it’s not as though it commands an entire soundscape to swirl into a tsunami onto itself. Instead, it comes off more as “dream rock” in a way where the reverbs build on the ethereal production set by dream pop towards a more aggressive texture. Highlights like ‘Vapour Trail’ especially accentuate the beauty of the genre even at its most reserved form through its incorporation of Baggy’s danceable percussive rhythm as well as a mono mixing of all the instrumentation into one coherent wall of sound. It’s lush without all the storm that’s been brewing in the afteryears.

This “dream rock” type of shoegaze was more prominent back in the 1990s compared to the My Bloody Valentine excess of noise and reverb that we know of now. Bands such as Curve and Lush, while not completely inspired by Ride’s muted yet aggressive approach towards dream pop, saw themselves be elevated in popularity thanks to that as a benchmark. Others, like Kitchens of Distinction, were propelled more into underground notability with lyrics on queer identity allowing their legacy to prevail as being among a time capsule of growing representation with other works like Tony Kushner’s play Angels in America.  Even the ones outside the UK like the United States’ Swirlies and Canada’s Nemo are able to develop a cult following over its relative lack of sheer production emphasis. The combination of more romantic lyrics with a forlorn context befitted the feeling of being adrift at the time of neoliberalism at its peak.

It was only a year after Nowhere in 1991 when My Bloody Valentine, fresh and motivated from the creation of Isn’t Anything, hit hard with their sophomore effort in Loveless. It might not have the widespread reach in immediate adoption in style compared to Nowhere, but it is one that is found in nearly all shoegaze music today. Its bombastic reverbs and feedback from the guitar combined with the more androgynous vocals from frontman Kevin Shields creates a whole new universe for its textures. Shields himself was especially known for his auteur-like, near-dictatorial management of the album’s construction which had led to a popularisation of his guitar playing style called the glide guitar. He had inflated the budget so much that Creation Records dropped the band shortly after Loveless’s release. No longer does shoegaze come across as an ethereal yet noisy kind of rock. Rather, it sticks out as an ambitious, avant-garde artwork that pushes rock music to its productional extreme.

As mentioned, much of the shoegaze sound back then was more similar to Ride’s restrained approach to guitar feedback and pedal effects compared to the sheer volume and textures of My Bloody Valentine. There were still acts however whose music would be best described as being the first apprentices of the pioneer; many of them happen to be outside the UK funnily enough. In the then-newly founded Czech Republic following the collapse of the Soviet Union, acts like the Ecstasy of Saint Theresa or Here have shown the full extent of their creative zeitgeist through their ballooning percussion and additional layers of extra guitars and other instrumentation to further amplify their reach. Such a direction netted similarities to Loveless although it’s hard to say whether they’re wholly influenced by the album. The US saw later critical darling 12 Rods independently released Bliss as their very first album in 1993 where its more aggressive textures would surely remind fans of My Bloody Valentine for certain.

Among the most important bands to have emerged out of the first wave of shoegaze bands was Slowdive which consists of young adults whose style in particular blended My Bloody Valentine’s bouts of ethereal droniness with Scottish key influence the Cocteau Twin’s sheer dreaminess. Their 1993 sophomore effort Souvlaki, named after one quote from a skit by New York-based pranksters called the Jerky Boys, is now known as one of the greatest albums in the genre and is especially regarded as being the very archetype upon which many would build their distinct identity upon. It blends moments of euphoric rings from the pedal-affected reverbs with bouts of solitude and romance. Its intimate lyrics further add to the appeal of the record as a puzzle-like challenge where comprehending the lyrics only add to the mystique surrounding the record. It is, in many ways, a gem that could be enjoyed only by Generation X in light of the general disillusion felt with their lives.

While Souvlaki is now recognised as a masterpiece, its release summed up best the haemorrhaging support of the first wave of shoegaze. It’s met with mixed reviews at its release with many publications essentially opting for snarky quips rather than full breakdowns on what the band had fallen short of. Slowdive alongside the likes of the more Baggy-driven Chapterhouse and the more jangly Moose were overlooked by the alternative crowd as critics called the genre out of date. A Pitchfork documentary especially attributed the album’s failure to the exploding popularity of Britpop where the likes of Oasis and Blur were marketed as being authentic and for the working class compared to shoegaze being described as shallow and “middle-class”. Never mind the fact that it’s a distinctly underground endeavour with many of the musicians being perceived as such only thanks to the programmes set up for some attempts at social mobility. 

Britpop alongside grunge have helped to serve as the final nail to not just lock shoegaze out of any chance at being a major aspect of alternative rock in the last half of the 1990s. It too heralded the shift in interest over representation surrounding British music and its social context. As mentioned in the beginning of this article, the avenues for young adults to succeed in the 1990s proved limited with the closest being university programmes to encourage engagement with STEM subjects. With shoegaze standing out as one way for some to maintain their creative integrity and a devout cult following who doesn’t care about its lack of commercial appeal, the meteoric rise of the former two genres toward mainstream popularity cull a potential uprising in independent popularity in favour of retaining control over much of the music consumers.

Of course, this comes around to Britpop and grunge’s aesthetic. While shoegaze, even up to now, is best remembered for how a lot of its associated musicians tend to be more withdrawn from extravaganza, Britpop and grunge sticks out for how open many of its acts are in their views and their hijinks. You can have more authentic examples like Nirvana and their DIY ethos with Kurt Cobain having a punk-like mindset, but many of the events surrounding the bands are more prone to being covered on a publicised basis compared to shoegaze’s modesty. This leads to examples like Oasis with how its two frontmen in the Gallagher brothers often feud with each other, open accounts of the musicians becoming addicted to drugs, or how grunge’s indie spirit gets diluted from its mainstream exposure via MTV. 

Thus, the struggles that many young adults and teenagers would have to go through in a rapidly changing world would essentially become commodified. The pains of likely struggling to land a job, having a poor experience in education, or enjoying little to no avenues to socialise with friends get boiled down into marketable merchandise. Ones that corporations can use to give off the illusion of being rebellious or being proud of your local heritage when you are only offering a performance. Because shoegaze’s bombast comes entirely from the music alone and not from the public acts of its musicians, its commercial appeal is zilch even back in its first wave during the 1990s. It was an entirely independent ordeal that has little expectations on material success and that’s what keeps many grounded.

Bands reacted to the changing trends in many ways that further mirror the slithering out of young people having their own culture without intervention. My Bloody Valentine had disbanded due to Shields’s enrapture in creative control who then backed away from public attention for many years. Slowdive stuck to their creative liberty and opted to go for the left-turn Pygmalion in 1995 which was driven by electronic and ambient influences which is a commercial flop. They too disbanded afterwards with some of its members sticking together to perform under the name of Mojave 3. Ride, following with Creation Record’s trending success, sought to adapt to the times by embracing Britpop but they have never failed to reach the commercial heights of the genre’s leaders. In comes another disbandment from them. Major shoegaze acts have been completely left behind by a more corporate-friendly alternative that sanitised many of the woes young people have faced.

Granted, even with Britpop and grunge hitting an all-time high in popularity, you still have a handful of bands who made their albums that’s recognisably shoegaze by the end of the 1990s. This is a story for another time, but the tsunami-like trends marked the collapse of the Scene That Celebrated Itself. Many would depart towards different projects or quiet jobs, some saw their lives ended tragically, while others rose up to carry on the essence of shoegaze. It would be until the 2000s when an electronica-driven variant would give way for the genre to at least enjoy a niche spot within the indie/alternative music scene – and thereby leaves the door ajar for a potential comeback for when a new generation of audience sense a level of relatability unlike anything else before.