Malory is a second-wave Shoegazer band from Germany. Though they get compared to Slowdive a lot, “Floating” strikes me as about halfway between Echodrone and Midsummer. I could do without the French spoken word bit at the beginning, but the part that kicks in after 1:50 is pretty tasty.
This breaks up what is likely to be a big Thrushes kick…
Thrush is a relatively new band out of Baltimore. They sound a bit like Jesus and Mary Chain by way of Ride and Slowdive, with maybe a bit of Mazzy Star.
I’m really digging Japan’s Lemon Chair. Plus it’s after 1 AM Sunday morning and I’m feeling lazy.
Previous Lemon’s Chair offerings here.
I thought that last week’s Italian shoegazer entry worked well enough that we should go back to the boot for this week’s entry, Abiku’s “Bocciòlo”L
See how easy it is to do a music video? All you need is a hot girl jogging and swimming!
Starframes’ “Cielo Drive” seems like a beautiful, upbeat song if you don’t recognize the context of the address (which the video gets to a bit over two minutes in).
This is off their album Ethereal Underground. The band itself is out of Naples, Italy, but their main domain seems to have expired.
I’m getting a bit of a Neutral Milk Hotel vibe from them, which is a good thing.
A while back I put up Tokyo Shoegazer’s “Bright.” Here’s “Back to My Place,” another long song, that starts off all ethereal but just after 2:30 in turns back into a soaring, reverb-drenched wall of shoegazer guitar goodness.
Off their debut album 「crystallize」, which is available through iTunes.
I thought the previous dose of Japan’s Lemon’s Chair worked pretty well, so here they are with “Vividness.” The beginning and end are soft and noodly, but the center is jam-packed with magisterial sludge of rich, gooey Shoegaze goodness.
Today is the birthday of the greatest trumpeter, and one of the most distinctive vocalists, who ever lived, Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong, who would have been 111 today. He didn’t invent Dixieland Jazz, he only perfected it.
I don’ see a live video of him performing “Someday You’ll Be Sorry,” so here is singing “Adios Muchachos,” which shows both his trumpet and vocal prowess to good effect.
Here’s another obscure Japanese Shooegaze band, Lily of the Valley, with “IOK-1” performed live at the Apple store in Shibuya. I think the echoey acoustics of the place actually adds to the song’s charm.
They hail from Sendai, which was the region hardest hit during the earthquake/tsunami. This tune, and some others from them, are available on iTunes.
I liked last week’s dose of Dreamend so much that I’ve been trolling through their various YouTube offerings, including this offering, which sounds less Shoegazer than some sort of demented bluegrass by way of Neutral Milk Hotel, with maybe a soupcon of Jane’s Addiction thrown in for good measure.
Oh, the video is plenty strange too, which is always a plus.