Wednesday, October 17, 2007

My new favorite band is Slowdive. This happened at around the tenth viewing of the below video for "Alison" last time. I would say it's about as good as shoegaze gets, which is very good. Something about the gently lolling chorus and the accompanying My Bloody Valentine-like searing guitar makes me wish I like didn't have a body or something. Know what I mean? Like really good music in this genre, MBV, early early Verve, Ride and yeah I'll include Cocteau Twins, it hangs in the air, barely existing and yet completely resonant. And the video's a pretty good approximation. There may some drug that can abbreviated to it's first letter involved. But what the hell do I know about that kinda thing? Oh yeah and two Slowdive songs appeared in The Doom Generation. The one at the credits, Blue Skied an' Clear, was also really good but then something on YouTube claimed to be it and it wasn't the song I remember. Check out "Allison".

4 comments:

Jim K. said...

Wow....cool. Thanks.
Definitely MBV-like, but the
guitsrs are less ovewhelming and
the voice-sound is obsessed on..
..very nice! Kevin Shields
(of MBV) did a lot on the
"Lost in Translation" soundtrack..
..check out the amazon samples.
A lot of 90's shoe-g, some synth
atmospherics.

Robert J. said...

they also use the one good track that Squarepusher ever put out, which was only like 1:14 or something.

Mike Hauser said...

I don't know man, Big Loada's got some pretty awesome breakbeat action. (Remember when everyone was saying breakbeat? Also breakbeat is two letters away from being "breakfast".)

Yeah Jim, not as MBV as loveless MBV etc. But "Allison" at least seems like one of those moments where the whoele shogaze thing, woozy melodies/harmonies, narcotic guitar distortion, and that one moment where you can practically hear Rimbaud and Keats arguing about the Book of Isaiah at 2 in the morning, where the whole thing blissfully clicked. Or something.

richard lopez said...

i'm a fan of slowdive too. they're debut album, i think it's their debut, 'just for a day' is a mesmerizing masterpiece. the band takes a few listens to get, but once got the listener gets hooked.

another of my fave, superfave, shoegazer band is lush. i've posted a video of a live set of their song sweetness and light earlier this month.