Evidently I just can’t get enough of Slowdive covers. Here’s the now defunct (or on hiatus) Center of the Sun doing a crunchy, guitar-drenched cover of “Machine Gun.”
They also did a cover of Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You.” Obviously this is a band on my wavelength…
Silvania is Peruvian duo currently resident in Spain (and not a manufacturer of inferior lightbulbs). “Trilce” is from the “floaty, spacy” branch of Shoegaze.
I hope you like religious statuary…
Chicago-based Airiel’s newest EP, Kid Games, features some truly beautiful work. including “Funereals,” which has an ethereal wall-of-sound that reminds me of Popol Vu’s soundtrack to Aquirre: The Wrath of God.
Here again is Austin’s own The Asteroid Shop with a live version of their song “Dandelion.” Imagine a cross between Mazzy Star and The National.
The guitar sound is fine, but they would be helped by having a female co-singer to harmonize with. They could really use a Hope Sandoval…
Every now and then you run across something curious enough that you go “Hmm, people should know about this!’
The band Steam Powered Giraffe is just such an entity. I mean, how many other retro pantomime Steampunk harmony bands are there out there?
An example:
Here’s “Fire Fire,” a little outer-space disaster ditty:
I like the harmonies, but overall they’re a little softer than the mainstream of music I care for.
You wonder what the popularity plateau for a band like this is. There are a surprising number of Steampunk conventions popping up around the country, but the answer may be something like the Asylum Street Spankers, who had almost a two decade career where they both made a living and never had a song or album chart.
Here’s old-school UK Shoegaze band Bleach with “Surround.”
Time for another dose of the High Violets:
“Bad” is my favorite U2 song. This version, recorded in East Rutherford, NJ, on April 15th, 1985, is far from my favorite, but at 18 minutes and 17 seconds its certainly the longest. It has a winning batshit crazy intensity, with Bono throwing in riffs to “Waiting For My Man,” “Ruby Tuesday,” “Hide Your Love Away” and “Sympathy for the Devil,” plus freeform lyrics that seem to have improvised on the spot, since they show up nowhere before or after.
And it all pretty much works against the base “Bad” riff.
Come on down…
Today is the 79th anniversary of Elvis Presley’s birth. To celebrate, enjoy the trailer for Bubba Ho Tep. And if you haven’t seen Bubba Ho Tep yet, why not?
This is going to stretch the definition of Shoegaze, since “Put Your Sad Down” leans more heavily in the TechnoPop direction (imagine a cross between Sarah McLaughlin and 1984-era Eurythmics, with maybe of soupcon of Peter Gabriel’s “Shaking the Tree”). But School of Seven Bells made their bones as a Shoegaze/Dreampop outfit, and after listening to the opening, I decided I needed to have it. It’s off their five song EP of the same name, and Alejandra Deheza’s auto-harmonies are very tasty indeed.
If you find yourself losing patience with it, skip from any time after 2:30 or so to 9:20
I’ll also have to check out their new album Ghostory.
Sadly, Benjamin Curtis, one of band’s the two founding members, died of lymphoma in December.