For the past few years, we’ve been stoked to see a resurgence in shoegaze and dream pop in a new generation of bands. The Wall of Sound is growing and every year, we’re finding more and more rad music that’s layered in dreamy fuzz, crashing percussion, and crushing guitars. With this three-part interview feature, Gaze Into a New Generation of Sound, we want to shine a light on some of these bands. Some have been around for a while and some are brand new, but all of them play music that has us enthralled.
COLD GAWD
Shoegaze makes you feel like you’ve been transported somewhere else. Whether that’s another dimension or just another place on this earth where you feel you can be lost in a good way.
Besides trends in music feeling somewhat cyclical I don’t know if I can explain the shoegaze/dream pop revival. But I can tell you, in the early 2010s when I got into it, it felt like it was that next level of music. The nuance to songs in this genre is insane — you’re asking yourself, where is that noise coming from, what pedal makes this/that sound, and it leads to so much discovery. There are so many layers to pull back on shoegaze and I’d like to think that is something that interests the people getting into the sound now.
On the new record, we use a lot of autotune and that’s straight from listening to Astroworld and 808s non-stop at the beginning of 2023.
Live, we’re trying to pop off, so that way the crowd pops off. I be jumping into the crowd, more than I should, to let people know you can do that, too. We need more stage diving in 2024 and beyond at all Cold Gawd shows.
The music community is deep and everyone fucks with each other. Out here in LA, everyone is out and it’s always daps and “how are you’s” in a genuine way, which I’ve never experienced in a scene before. Growing up, it was always some crabs in a bucket shit, and I think everyone actively works to big each other up whenever we can.
My biggest inspirations within the genre have to be Luster, Kraus, and After, because I believe all they do is make the best songs. I couldn’t tell you a song by any of those people that I don’t like, because I love all of them, and I strive to be a hitmaker like all the homies.
[Text by Matt Wainwright]
COLD GAWD: I’ll Drown On This Earth
Label: DAIS Records
STAB
My mom told me that MBV’s “Feed Me With Your Kiss” was too weird and I wouldn’t like it. So naturally I forced myself to listen and was immediately taken aback by their soft as snow but warm inside sound. They seemed like they were pushing the guitar as far as it could go while still being catchy as hell. That’s what drew me into shoegaze.
Stab is from tornado alley: loud swirling guitar and feedback and cymbals. I played guitar in a lot of heavy bands and mainly listen to rap now (Lucki, Che, osamason). I’m not sure if it reflects in our music, but lyrically and rhythmically, it’s all there.
I try to give people an experience bigger than just loud music. All my songs mean something, and I hope that gets across. The energy we send out is to stand for something and just try. Nihilism is lame. Look like you’re having fun. Give a damn.
I’ve been lucky enough to develop an international support system. Love to my Smoking Room and Bay fam. Flip Wilson in Hotline TNT, my Tacoma/LA boys, and JWAR/Philly.
[Text by DJ Karp]
STAB: Quarter Life Crisis
DA/ZE
I had never heard of shoegaze before as a teen/young adult. When I first listened to it, I loved how it made me feel validated with the issues I was dealing with. As if my suffering had a soundtrack.
I’ve always been a rabbit-hole type of person, so when I found out that bands like MBV and Slowdive had female guitarists/musicians in the band, I was immediately happy that there was a genre of music where women are respected in an otherwise male-dominated genre.
Music is circular. What was going on 30 years ago with society/change, now we’re going through the same thing. People are dealing with loneliness, political crap, and world transformations, and music is changing (for better or worse). People find comfort in the familiar. A wall of noise feels like something to block out the BS going on outside and inside of your head. And it’s more effective in a guitar-based genre like shoegaze versus hyperpop, haha. Trends always come back, and right now the trend is def the 90s to early 2000s.
I grew up with metal and hardcore roots, and I also am a broken woman (haha). DA/ZE has its own flavor of shoegaze, where we are heavy but also tender. I feel that because I am so personal and so vulnerable, I create extremely nostalgic music, because I write from a place of trauma and hurt. I push for silliness and kindness and awareness of Mexican daughter trauma, and the baggage that comes with breaking the cycles of abuse. I will always be a role model for young girls, women, femmes, and I will push more of us to write and take up space and tell our stories. I’m a big believer that creativity leads to healing.
[Text by Nikki Isabelle]
DA/ZE: She Said
Label: Neon BloodBath Records
Artwork: keeley laures
DRAAG
As a child, I (Adrian) was obsessed with anything that droned. Heaters, planes, unusual machinery from a distance. I always found it oddly satisfying to my ears. Years later, I discovered a few bands in the shoegaze/dream pop genre that implemented sounds that reminded me of what I heard as a child, but with a pop ethos, so I naturally gravitated towards it.
When I (Jessica) got into shoegaze for the first time, I was captivated by the feeling of being in pain and in bliss at the same time. I couldn’t get enough of that contradicting feeling.
It’s the heavy distortion, monotonic rhythms. Magic.
To be honest, we find a lot of shoegaze music to be bland and one-dimensional. I find a select few shoegaze artists/bands who inspire us. We find a lot of bands in the genre falling short in the songwriting department, with more emphasis on vibe and aesthetics. Which is cool, but with the addition of TikTok shoegaze, it’s been pretty uninspiring. So I don’t know. Every now and then, you’ll find that one shoegaze band that hits the mark and stands the test of time.
But the ebbs and flows of music genres never surprises. Let the kids have their feels.
We don’t listen to a lot of guitar music. We try to avoid it — only to come back to the guitar in a more unconventional way. We also naturally like to bring a lot of textures into the music, probably because we all like industrial, ASMR, field recordings, samples, DIY noise machines/circuit bending, etc.
All members have unique music interests. So to mesh it all only seems natural. Call it nostalgic recall? Add the doom, sprinkle some industrial, and break beats. Garnish with pop accessibility. Douse in high-frequency distortion waves.
Our music is born out of a lot of discomfort, resentment, and anger. So I think the audience is receiving a lot of that energy. It’s never intentional, it’s just the way it is. A friend described it as “tension and release,” so like a cathartic experience.
Our live energy feels friendly and isolating.
Our musician community is relatively tight and small, but it’s grown over the years. For a very long time, I had a hard time relating to the music being played around me. Over time, we’ve met a lot of artists/musicians around the country who have inspired us. To name a few: Goon, Tagabow, Chanel Beads, Cryogeyser, Pendant, Wednesday, MJ Lenderman, A Country Western. They just write really good songs that could be played in any genre and it still would sound good.
[Text by Adrian Acosta and Jessica Huang]
DRAAG: Actually, the quiet is nice
Label: Julia’s War
OLD COKE
CHRIS: I stumbled onto Dream Pop around 2012 through bands on Captured Tracks, like Beach Fossils, DIIV, and Wild Nothing. Being into heavier music, naturally, I looked into finding heavier Dream Pop which I found out was called “shoegaze” which then led me to Nothing, Whirr, Hum, Ovlov, Weed, MBV, and Slowdive.
I think what draws me into shoegaze is the atmosphere and sappy melodies all being blasted at you at full volume. It’s also the use of effects to create atypical guitar sounds and dreamy melodies. There’s a ton of Maj 7ths, 9ths, and 11ths in this genre and something about that Maj 7th chord feels like homebase to me. It’s not sad or happy, it’s mellow and makes me want to glance at the distance.
PAUL: The heavy/dreamy chord progressions and the layering of the tracks brought me into shoegaze. Coming from mainly an indie/alt-rock background, shoegaze seemed to be adding a lot more interesting textures on top of the music I grew up listening to.
CHRIS: I think that the nature and aesthetic of shoegaze fits what a lot of younger people are feeling currently. It feels very introverted but it allows for someone to easily express emotions without necessarily diving into emo territory. It seems like people are using this music as an escape from whatever may be going on in their lives — there’s a lot of melancholy in the sound and sometimes people want to listen to music that feels the way that they feel.
PAUL: I think TikTok had a lot of influence by adding “shoegaze” sounds over videos, but also the classic shoegaze artists (Slowdive/Swirlies/Drop Nineteens) all starting to come back for new tours/albums are helping revitalize the original scene while influencing the new wave of shoegaze.
CHRIS: We all listen to a lot of different genres and bands. We send each other songs and projects that we think are cool, and I usually go ahead and take notes on those. Sometimes, I’ll take something like a song structure and focus on that, other times I may think “What if we had a shoegaze song with this thrash metal drum beat?” Other times, I take inspiration from my favorite artists and try to conceptualize how they would approach a song in this new shoegaze landscape. I’m always open to adding sounds and there is a lot of stuff to grab from, but it’ll be interesting to maybe start working with samples and even synths somewhere down the line.
PAUL: For playing bass, I’ve been listening to a lot of Unwound and hearing what Vern was able to do with a pushing counter-melody on bass. I’ve been wanting to recreate that in a shoegaze context
CHRIS: A lot of the last EP and some of the newer stuff was about losing connection with someone you care about. When I sing those songs, I get taken back to the emotion I had when I wrote them. So, I’d say there’s a depressing but fired-up energy we have when we play live. I’ve always been impressed with bands I’ve seen that are so energetic that they create a feeling of wanting to move around, so I always aim to try to put out energy through our tempo and movements to hopefully invoke that feeling in someone in the crowd.
PAUL: I try to make sure I’m locked in with the rest of the band and let the energy and feel of the music take over into my performance. My main goal is to take the stage and perform better than the last show.
CHRIS: This newer shoegaze community is amazing, everyone is a fan of each other’s band and is super friendly and supportive. Every band we’ve played with that’s come through Chicago and even the bands in California have been great. Lots of times, people in the audience are super cool too, it’s fun being able to chat about this type of music and share each other’s projects.
In terms of peers that inspire me:
Modern Color and All Under Heaven have some great songwriting. Day Aches has this cool grunge sound that I think they’re nailing. Ringo Deathstarr showed us some cool guitar tricks that I’ve been trying to mess around with. Cursetheknife, Glaze, and Ovlov have some songs that have been stuck in my head for a minute. The people in Glare were super cool to hang with. Scott in Astrobrite has been cool showing me some of his black magic tricks for guitar tones. Ryan in Sleepwalk inspired me to start making our posters and merch through some Photoshop skills he’s shared with me. There are too many to list…
PAUL: It’s an exciting community. A lot of people I interact with are making music right now and everyone is always uplifting each other’s music. I think what inspires me the most is everything constantly grinding either with shows or new music (or both) in a way that we need to keep staying busy to keep up.
[Text by Chris and Paul]
OLD COKE: Seasonal
Label: Summer Darling Tapes
FOREVER ☆
I think growing up listening to more extreme genres of music like power violence, black metal, and d-beat always had me looking for the next intense thing. I don’t remember exactly how or when it happened, but it was definitely the MBV sound that caught my attention. Learning that a band could create such a monstrous aggressive sound and atmosphere all while not being directly perceived as an “extreme band” (at least by those who have never seen them live) was fascinating to me and I was instantly hooked.
I think a lot of the shoegaze revival has to do with the nostalgic appeal of 90’s music and culture. The whole entire look of the original shoegaze era was very “cool.” And it’s cool to be into cool things. At this very given moment, I would say that younger people have been biting the Smashing Pumpkins/Hum sound a lot more than the Creation Records/4AD sound like everyone was trying to do a handful of years ago. I think a lot of credit needs to go to current bands like Whirr and Nothing for really opening that rabbit hole for a lot of people.
Being heavily involved in the hardcore and metal scene as well as the DJ / dance music scene has left its mark on how we operate the band. Drum ‘n Bass and Jungle are the most obvious influences in our sound, but most people aren’t aware of the more extreme influences. It’s where the speed and aggression come from. It is the sound of raw energy. So combine all that together, along with my love for car culture (especially Japanese and German luxury vehicles), and you get Forever★.
We have not played live yet, but when we do, it will be an explosion of light and sound. Like a 20-minute jolt of energy or rush of adrenaline. A full-on audial assault.
I’m involved in so many different communities it’s hard to speak on just one. As far as Kansas City in general goes, the DIY scene has been great lately. Shows are packed out, lots of new bands being formed within our crew, lots of fun DJ parties are constantly popping up. Things are on the up. Our friends in Narrow Head have been touring nonstop all over the world lately, which has been really cool to watch over the years. Shout out Rubio for believing in our vision and absolutely killing every single mix for us.
[Text by David Chavez]
FOREVER ☆: 3 SERIES
Label: à La Carte Records
BLOSSOM
The drama of shoegaze has always stuck out to me. The huge chords, long decaying reverb, and longing lyrics.
Shoegaze has this angst that music from the 90s seemed to have, like the grunge scene. I think Hardcore also had a lot to do with the shoegaze resurgence as well, people in the hardcore scene finding it and getting into it and starting bands.
I’m just experimenting and trying to incorporate other things here and there that compliment what has already been there previously. It’s what the genre rose from.
I feel like water can be incorporated into lots of music visually. Everything looks dramatic underwater, like when your hair is in slow motion as it moves. I want our sound to feel like you’re in waves of sound coming at you constantly.
Photo by Eden Cvengros (@sittinginthegrass)
Everyone is pretty present with what’s going on in the shoegaze scene here. People seem to be very devoted to what bands are doing right now. I’ve only been surrounded with this scene since 2021, but It feels like it’s been expanding as “the genre that celebrates itself.”
[Text by Mateo Ruiz]
BLOSSOM: Florecer
Label: Really Rad Records
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