d a i k o n w a v e

a music blog

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Shoegaze and Dream Pop Month in Review - March 2021

Think I'll try making one of these each month.

Albums:

IAN SWEET - Show Me How You Disappear

genres: dream pop, electronic, bedroom pop, indie rock

More rock and electronic than dreamy, I’d say. But by far my favorite album of the month. So it goes up to the tippy top.

Flyying Colours - Fantasy Country

genres: shoegaze, noise pop, psychedelic

for fans of: ringo deathstarr, american and british shoegaze. Highly recommend

My Lucky Day - All Shimmer In a Day

genres: shoegaze, twee, jangle pop

Super twee, with twice the jangle!

Mint Julep - In a Deep and Dreamless State

genres: dream pop, psychedelic

very very beautiful, hauntingly so

Acidclank - Vivid

genres: dream pop, electronic, synth pop

Sounds very inspired by late Supercar and a lot of modern jpop. Some really catchy tunes

Parannoul - To See the Next Part of the Dream

genres: shoegaze, emo gaze, punk

A really really cool angsty take on emo gaze. Ian Cohen approved! For fans of punpun :’)

Dust Moth - Rising // Sailing

genres: doomgaze, slowcore

Heavy, ambient. Not too slow, not too loud. Just right

Citrus Clouds - Collider

genres: shoegaze

Dope band name! Album was pretty straightforward, nothing too non-standard.

 Glitterer - Life is not a Lesson

genres: fuzz pop, noise pop, garage rock, emo

Solo project of Ned Russin from Title Fight. You know it GOES

Seoul Magic Club - Hope

genres: bedroom pop, dream pop, spacey twee

Technically released back in February, but absolutely incredible. Needed to be mentioned

EPs:

Isla Invisible - EP2

Leaving Time - Leaving Time

All Under Heaven - Collider

Moon Cowboy - Hope EP

Discoveries from the past:

Blume Popo - 黙示録 - Really fantastic release from last year. Mathy, fast, angsty, clever! I was sleepin

Civic - Toilet Monster - All hail the toilet monster! For fans of supercar

Palestar - ?Mind the Landscapes! - Shoegaze and post rock meets OK Computer

Fusigi - Solitary Wonderland - Chiptune post rock shoegaze

Callupsie - Callupsie - emo post math

Also why is the tumblr post editor so damn slow!? Freezes every other word I type

[steezybeezy]

Rest in power, SOPHIE

I never thought that losing someone I've never met could make me feel like I lost a part of myself. When I heard that SOPHIE died, it was like a part of me died with her. Many of my heroes have died by now, Anthony Bourdain, David Bowie, David Berman, Ben Raemers, to name a few. Each meant something different to me. But SOPHIE, it wasn't her time to go. She shouldn't have died a martyr like this. SOPHIE meant so much to the world, right now. A transfemme artist at the peak of her abilities, who was influencing every corner of music and art and society, and only had bright things ahead of her. SOPHIE changed the world by creating safe spaces for queers like me. Whether indoors in a club, or outside in society, SOPHIE and her music made inclusivity a reality. By being herself and not giving a fuck, she was a role model for everyone who felt different. She was supposed to continue making music for decades. She was still pushing the boundaries. Nobody could touch her. Now all that is left in the wake of her passing is a gigantic hole, one that I don't see anybody being able to fill.

 I understand a little better what Amine was alluding to, when he said that when Kobe passed, it was like a part of him died. It was like his innocence just, evaporated. I feel like, more than ever, time is of the essence. And how I spend my time is the most important guiding light in my life. Like, I don't want to waste another moment. I want to live with purpose, and chase my dreams. Cause you never know when everything you take for granted just disappears in the blink of an eye, just like that. SOPHIE meant a lot more to me than I had realized. She can still make me feel better. I didn't just lose a role model, I lost a part of me, a part I don't think I'll ever regain. All I can do right now is bump your music all day, on the daily.

 Rest in peace, rest in power SOPHIE. You will not be forgotten. It's okay to cry.

[steezybeezy]

Haif Waif - Lavender

What happens we lose something precious to us? What do we do, and where do we go from there? I think that to experience a great loss, is a kind of a terrible fate that every person must face at least once in their lifetime. It could be anything, an object, a feeling, a home, a person. Sometimes, the subject of loss is not even lost at all, it's still there, but has changed so much that we don't even recognize it anymore. On Lavender, Half Waif confronts what it means to navigate a period of loss and upheaval, and, just as importantly, who to navigate it with. It is an album of sparse, yet unbelievably lush and gorgeous textures, synths, and Nandi Rose's stunning, ghostly vocal performance. You can tell immediately, this is an album that was crafted with utmost precision and care. Yet, at the same time, it is the sound of an artist spilling everything out on the floor. It is raw, refined, explosive, exploratory, and polished, all at once. With this album, Half Waif channels her past one last time, before leaping forwards. The result is a heartbreakingly exhilarating and cathartic listen, from end to end.

Click the album art to open the album in Spotify, and support the artist here:

https://halfwaif.bandcamp.com/album/lavender

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Instagram post by Sick Mind's Media Official • Apr 16, 2020 at 11:01am UTC

10.5k Likes, 44 Comments - Sick Mind's Media Official (@sickmindsmedia) on Instagram

p much

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Tokyo Shoegazer - Moondiver

Here we are! We've made it to the end of our journey through my favorite shoegaze albums of 2019. And boy are we in for a treat, cause we're ending it off with a real doozy. Rounding off my favorite 3 shoegaze albums of 2019 is Moondiver, the comeback album from the one and only Tokyo Shoegazer, masters of the loud and heavy. Shoegaze is one of those genres that can really span the spectrum of loudness. On the soft, sticky, sugary and sure to satisfy the most melancholic sweet tooth end we had Uchu Nekoko's Kimi ni You ni Ikeretara, with its candy coated guitars and vocals. Then there was monocism's Fukou, which was a uniquely refreshing and airy breeze that whisks you away to faraway lands. But sometimes, I want shoegaze to punish, I want something to pummel me into the ground. And trust me, Moondiver delivers the hammer. On Moondiver, Tokyo Shoegazer had one mantra - to make their fuckin guitars SCREAM. The result is 40 minutes of pure teeth shattering bliss, from the thunderous guitar wails on Your Relief to the earth shaking Moondive, possibly my favorite shoegaze track of 2019. It's heavy, enrapturing, and unforgiving, with layers upon layers of the most distorted, reverb'ed out sounds you will hear. Crank the volume to 11 and get comfortable, cause this album is going to bring you to your knees.

 With that, my little shoegaze adventure of 2019 comes to a close. But as we all know, shoegazers around the globe are just getting started. And the shoegaze gods will almost certainly bring us gifts of noise as wonderful as these in 2020. Count on it. Until then, here's three more albums to add to your collection. Bon voyage, and happy reverberations!

[steezybeezy]

monocism - 風光 -  Fukou (Wind Light)

Continuing on our shoegaze journey of 2019, we arrive at the long-awaited new monocism album 風光 -  Fukou, or Wind Light. Sometimes, I like to think shoegaze can capture the forces of nature. The soft patter of rain, the velvet bite of snow, the crashing of waves. With Wind Light, monocism does the title justice, every track sounds like the rush of swirling winds carrying you away like leaves dancing in the fall breeze. It's airy, refreshing, it feels like shaking off all the dust and cleansing the body with a rush of pure ether. And yet, the wind does not follow one direction but dances, for there is something utterly unpredictable about this album, unmistakably unique for the genre, which are the totally irregular, math rock influenced time signatures and hooks. They take sounds that already puts you in the clouds and whisk you every which way, an album that is as surprising as it is fun to listen to. Undeniably creative, absolutely full of wonder, Wind Light sounds like a reset on all that is heavy in the world. An album that will take you places you never thought to go.

Listen to the album and support the artist here:

https://monocism.bandcamp.com/releases

[steezybeezy]

宇宙ネコ子 (Uchu nekoko) - 君のように生きれたら (Kimi no You ni Ikiretara)

Welcome to part 1 of my favorite shoegaze albums of 2019! Every year is a banner year for s h o e g a z i n g, but this year in particular saw the Japanese shoegaze scene really shine. It then may come as no surprise that my top 3 shoegaze albums of 2019 all come from the land of the rising sun. Enough blabber, let’s diiv into it.

 宇宙ネコ子 (Uchu nekoko), or Space Cat, are one of the few bands that were auto-recommended to me by YouTube. And I have to say, this was the one time I wasn't completely angry at YouTube's recommendation algorithm. That was back in maybe 2016 or 2017, and I've been in love with this individual (group?) ever since. My absolute favorite song off their debut album was the title track, 日々のあわ (Hibi no Awa), a total sugar rush of just this most perfect, saccharine amalgamation of 90s shoegaze and noise pop and Japanese pop music. Right off the first arpeggio, I never stood a chance, I was putty in its hands. While the rest of the album was great, it had quite a varied sound, with songs ranging from city pop to alt rock. But I had a sweet tooth for the Hibi no Awa sound, and I needed my fix! Little did I know they were hard at work on a follow on…

 Three years later, and the day my sweet tooth has been waiting for has finally ARRIVED! Uchu Nekoko's second album, 君のように生きれたら (Kimi no You ni Ikiretara), was easily my most anticipated Japanese album of 2019. If Hibi no Awa was the sugar rush, Kimi no You ni Ikiretara absolutely rotted my teeth from the inside out. Dreamy beyond belief, reverb thick as molasses, hooks as sticky as honey, this is the stuff that shoegaze wet dreams are made of. Kimi no You ni Ikiretara takes you on a journey of swirling guitars and a voice that sounds like being thrown in a vat of caramel and slowly melting away. (seriously might be my favorite vocalist in all of shoegaze). If there is such a thing as sugary sweet, shoegazey, dream pop perfection, this is it right here.

Support the artist here:

https://uchunekoko.bandcamp.com/releases

[steezybeezy]

(Sandy) Alex G - House of Sugar

To quote a friend:

“This album sucked me in and sucked me dry”

[steezybeezy]

Vampire Weekend - Father of the Bride

One day, our institutions will fall. Leadership will falter, people will cease to trust. Empires will crumble, crushed by the weight of the world. But for now, we trudge on. Vampire Weekend have always been a young band, a band of young faces, tackling big, pretentious ideas with wide open eyes and afro-pop beats, taking a stance in the world. On this record, though, one might be forgiven to think that they are settling down. One might mistake the americana tunes and jammy riffs as the sound of a band known for discontent, falling into complacency. But I disagree. I hear a band angrier and more agitated than ever, not just with the state of the world, but also with themselves. I hear the cries for help, pleas for sanity, the clawing for something that makes some fucking sense. I hear a band growing older, feeling more displaced by their own settling into conformity, finding discomfort in their comfort. Because who could bear to sit still, in the midst of this all, and yet, in the end, feel powerless to take the stand, but this generation. There is a sense of urgency in this record, for those who listen for it, to fix the system, to make peace, before it's too late. Oh yeah, and also the songs are all catchy as fuck

[steezybeezy]

boygenius - boygenius

Have you ever wondered what superheroes look like in real life? Standing on that stage, the night I saw Boygenius, were three superheroes. There are no words to describe how inspirational Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus are to me, just as individual artists. Together, they ascend into the supernatural. I wouldn't be surprised if making music was just a side gig, and that their actual day jobs are as extraterrestrial interstellar space patrol officers, defending the universe from the claws of evil. Maybe that's why they wrote a song called "Bite the Hand." Anyways, thank you Julien, thank you Phoebe, thank you Lucy, thanks for the music and for protecting this little rock called Earth. Hope you visit us again soon during your galactic travels.

[steezybeezy]

Mitski - Be the Cowboy

I remember quite vividly the first time I listened to Mitski's music. It was at my friend's hazy, smoke filled college apartment, hanging out, eating cheap pizza, fooling around on the guitar and watching some It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. He put her music on, and in that dark room, her voice rang out loud and clear, both in defiance to the world, but also somehow gasping for air. That was 2015, right after the release of Bury Me at Makeout Creek (still to this day, my favorite Mitski record). Fast forward four whole years. I am now an enormous Mitski fan. Enamored. Nothing about her voice has changed, but her music and her story and everything about her has only grown on me, and now she's making some of her most riveting, exciting, spellbinding music yet. Listening to Be the Cowboy, I am certain are no limits to what she can achieve. An album as varied and explorative as her own personality, this one's an album for the ages. My favorite album of 2018, hands down. Have a listen, you won't be disappointed.

[steezybeezy]

Saba - Care for Me

This is one of those albums that I think about when I'm feeling down. This is winter grey skies, cold days, dark and stormy nights. Scorching summer blacktop and searing heat like a knife stabbed through the ribs. This is about the isolation, loneliness, pessimism, the mundane and the tragic, the daily struggle. But most of all, this is about getting past all that and moving forwards. This is about hopefulness, family. The stories that intertwine people and make us human. One of the most deeply personal, thoughtful, introspective albums to come out in the last decade. Thank you Saba, for reminding us to take care of each other and ourselves.

[steezybeezy]

AW HELL YEA

[steezybeezy]

Sugar Plant - Headlights

Sugar plant return after a nearly two decade-long absence and take their music to even more hauntingly beautiful, atmospheric, trance-inducing heights. This album is so lush and tranquil that I get a kind of a natural high from listening to it. Instead of writing a technical review, I thought it might be more appropriate (and a lot more fun) to try and capture the mood of this album through a poetic narrative, while sprinkling in a few lyrics from the album. Without further ado, here is my attempt:

 Emerging from fog

Under the moon's spotlight

A shadowy figure dances and

Glides into focus

Two spinning wheels

Shimmering

Flows

Along a river of light

Towards a pristine sea

Running on the shore

Moments I lost

Please, never return

Echoes of a world

In limbo

[steezybeezy]

Sunset Rollercoaster - Cassa Nova

3:26pm on a Tuesday and I'm stuck in lab, hunched over staring into a computer screen. Summer rains come and go. My vision blurring and posture degenerating, this album comes on. Suddenly, the outside world fades away and I am transported to a retro arcade game world. As the synths swell, I find myself on a neon bike, foot to the pedal, speeding off into a sherbet sunset. Grooves melt over me like an orange smoothie. The rain outside ceases to exist. In my mind, there's a disco funk dance party going on and nobody is invited.

Between the '70s grooves, jazzy bass lines and nostalgia, it's almost hard to believe the year is 2018 and the band, Sunset Rollercoaster, is made of a bunch of skinny, blissed-out Taiwanese boys. They sound absolutely unstoppable in this disco manifesto, like they have plugged into a disco time warp and are broadcasting it directly into your eardrums. From the first breakdown on opening track "Almost Mature '87" to peak danceability on "Angel Disco Love," not a moment is spared to distract from this dance floor daydream. Then, without much warning at all, they hit the brakes on "Slow," a quiet, introspective song, punctuating the party with a moment of dim sentimentality, my absolute favorite moment on the album. Seamlessly, the snares reform and kick back into gear as "Slow" transitions into "Oriental," and the ride rolls on.

Before our very eyes, a different time, a different place, is being recreated in our current space. Whether it's the stylings of Motown or Japanese city pop, more and more modern artists are looking back and crafting a vintage sound for the modern era, perhaps unexpectedly from a generation of artists so young, they weren't even born before the heyday of their musical heroes. Then again, perhaps it's not so strange for us to yearn for a bygone era, one that shimmers and glows in the night. Everything old is new again, isn't that such a fine and natural sight?

[steezybeezy]

Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks - Sparkle Hard

Three pm on a Sunday and the rain from last night is gone. It's my first time on a bike in years. I get on and pedal for all of five seconds before I almost fall off the curb, and am soberly reminded that I never really learned how to properly ride a bike to begin with. Turning around, I see that nobody noticed my blunder, and with a sigh of relief, pivot the bike and get back on. This time, I get the hang of it, and awkwardly cruise down the sidewalk towards my friends. It's midday in Manhattan and we're riding through some nasty traffic. The bike lane seems to get thinner and thinner, until it's finally absorbed into the car lane. My nerves are slightly on edge as an indifferent cab driver suddenly swings his door open at us causing me to swerve. I'm alright, but I do make a mental note to check my underwear later.

Now it's two pm on a Wednesday and I'm listening to Stephen Malkmus croon "another beautiful bike lane" over some minor chords. Given my most recent biking experience, I'm unsure whether laughing or crying is more appropriate. Especially when considering that "Bike Lane" is a little jingle about the murder of Freddie Gray at the hands of some very bad cops. The irony in Malkmus, a very middle-aged, very Caucasian Portlander, penning a song about Freddie Gray a full three years after the fact can be a tough pill to swallow, or at the very least, garner some "huh?"s. Whether to laugh or cry, I never really know.

Being a tough pill to swallow seems to be a recurrent theme in Malkmus' music. It's not always easy to digest what Malkmus is singing, how facetious or satiric he's being, and whether it does any good to sift for the truth. "Men are scum, I won't deny. May you be shit-faced the day you die" he sings over a happy little tune on "Middle America," and I wonder from whose perspective he sings from, and who he's referring to. All I can say for sure is that if there's any one thing I've noticed about his lyrics, it's that he revels in shitty situations and even shittier people. Often he begs the question: who doesn't have a little bit of shit on them?

The answer is probably him, probably you, and probably me. A bit of provoking can bleed out a lot in people, if you know where to cut. And it seems that on Sparkle Hard, what incites Malkmus is a self-perceived declining of his own relevance with age. That's how I interpret much of the lyrics anyways. The theme is unsurprising - Malkmus knows his place in the indie rock canon, as frontman of the great 90s indie rock band Pavement, then going solo in the early aughts, and now fronting the Jicks. It's easy to paint Malkmus as an aging artist who is narcissistically hanging on to his past, but then again, that's more likely than not exactly what he wants you to think. After all, Malkmus is a troll amongst trolls, and humor has always been an integral part of his music.

Ever since the early days of Pavement, Malkmus has been crafting a career out of out-smarting his audience. And you know what, I rather like that. Being out-smarted by someone who is clearly more clever than myself is kind of masochistically fun. His music reminds me not to take myself or anybody else so seriously. Life is absurd enough as it is, why not embrace the absurdity? Perhaps that attitude is the secret behind the longevity of Malkmus' success, or at least his sanity. That's my hypothesis, at least. Regardless of my hypothesizing, one thing is clear from listening through the album. Sparkle Hard is another consistently great album, from a consistently great artist. Hope you write at least 10 more, Mr. Malkmus.