Lately I feel like I’ve been trying to make cases for under-appreciated shoegaze acts of the genre’s original era in my write-ups on Chapterhouse and The Boo Radleys. But in all fairness, both of those bands had their share of success, and to this day are still thriving. If we’re talking about legends of the scene that never got their fair shake though, I think Swallow might actually top such a list.

Formed in the early 1990s by Louise Trehy, who co-founded Setanta Records, and Mike Mason, who directed videos for and designed live projections for Slowdive, Spiritualized, Spacemen 3 and Big Black, Swallow were offered a record deal by 4AD’s Ivo Watts-Russell before they were even ready for one. Signed purely on a demo they recorded on a 4-track, the duo were thrust into making a debut album sheerly on their new boss’s confidence in them becoming the next Cocteau Twins.

Produced by John Fryer (Depeche Mode, Cocteau Twins, Nine Inch Nails), Swallow’s debut album wasn’t an easy one to make. Trehy got lost in the process of providing vocals for music that became “enormous” under Fryer’s direction. The album sounded so much grander and different to what they initially imagined that they immediately asked Watts-Russell to rerecord it.

Once it was released in July 1992 (featuring artwork designed by 4AD’s in-house team of 23 Envelope, then Vaughan Oliver and Chris Bigg), Blow arrived just as shoegaze was peaking both critically and commercially. Despite the album’s fresh and inventive spin on the shoegaze sound, Swallow did not become the lucrative moneymaker 4AD was hoping for. And regardless of the positive reviews, the press seemed more interested in using Swallow to belittle their label’s fading influence.

Months later, Swallow managed to radically edit and remix some of the album’s songs for a CD-only companion titled Blowback, but this marked what would be the end of their relationship with 4AD. Two years later, they were signed by Geoff Travis to Rough Trade and released the Hush EP, but as the mid-’90s hit, both the band and label were coming to an end.

I can’t remember exactly when I first picked up a CD copy of Blow, but I can remember that it was purchased without hearing a note of the music. It was the strangely familiar feeling I got from seeing the 23 Envelope on the album’s cover that convinced me it was worth any sum of money.

I can remember, however, how much of a struggle it was to find out anything about Swallow, aside from the credits (this was before the internet had . everything) and the fact that The Chemical Brothers sampled them on “One Too Mornings,” a song I fell madly in love with. All I really knew was that Blow was a perfect 4AD album, consisting of exquisitely-crafted, experimental pop music that gave me the same kind of exhilaration as Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine, This Mortal Coil, Lush and Slowdive.

But Swallow never received the same level of acclaim. While Blow found a modest cult following by heads, it has remained in relative obscurity for decades. In fact, I’ve often thought of it as the most glossed-over shoegaze album of all time. The truest example of an “IYKYK” album.

Thankfully, 4AD has stepped up and given Swallow’s masterpiece its long overdue roses by completely emptying the vault for its reissue. Under the adjusted title of Blown, the album comes both remastered and expanded to include Blowback and an additional two-track single, Sleepers. And with that, a much-needed vinyl repress.

Where did the idea for the reissue of Blow come from? Did 4AD approach you or did you approach them?

Mike Mason: It was a bit of both. I think I said to Louise, “Is it the 30th anniversary? Should we do something?” Then we just asked the same question to 4AD, and then Jason [White, general manager] said, “Funny, you should say that…Yes, let’s do something. We can get the original tapes out of the vaults and see what you can do.” It was a funny time, just after the pandemic or during, I can’t remember, time wise. But the whole process took a long time because everything in the music world was recovering from the pandemic. And there was a lot of backlog with everything. I don’t think we knew what we were going to do. Basically, he just said, “Here the tapes. We will digitize them to see what you can do.” And that was the initial starting point.

When Swallow began, things moved so quickly for the two of you. You basically just recorded some songs, sent it to 4AD and then had a record deal offered to you immediately.

Louise Trehy: I think it was ten days or something. We were just lucky because there wasn’t really a hierarchy. Ivo would open the mail. And he was going up to Edinburgh to see Cocteau Twins in the studio, and said he was gonna listen to it in the car. He listened to it once on the drive, and then he got in touch. And then when he came back, he said he really liked it. I think Mike was on tour, so I went in to meet with Ivo, thinking he might want an EP, because everybody was doing EPs at the time. I think we’d only given him “Peakaboo” and “Tastes Like Honey,” maybe “Blow,” which was another song that we had discarded. Maybe “Show Your Mind.” Literally the first three songs we made. And then he said, “Why don’t you just come and do an album?” But that was four months after we’d started working together.

Mike: Ivo said, “Can you do an album?” And we just said yes. We had to then get the album ready as soon as possible.

How prepared were you for that kind of offer?

Mike: Not prepared at all. We had ideas of songs, but the songs were not finished, and the lyrics certainly weren’t finished. I can cobble things together on the spot, but there were a few things we actually made up in the studio. I didn’t feel we were ready to do it. So, yeah, there were a few tracks we actually made up on the spot, like “Lovesleep.”

Louise: That was all though. We lied. We said we had enough songs.

Mike: It was all on 4-track. We sort of had a way of working, a routine. I would go downstairs, and then Louise would go in, and I’d just write a load of music, and then Louise would pick the one she liked, and then I’d do a new version of it. There would be two or sometimes three versions of a song, and then that was it, then it was done.

Tell me about the Eventide Harmonizer. How important was that in helping you find your sound?

Mike: In our studio we just used… I actually just bought them again, an Alesis MIDIverb, and we linked them all together to get reverb, distortion, stuff like that. And that was it. So when we went to the studio to work with John Fryer, he had his way of working, and they had two Eventide machines there, which I guess were the ones the Cocteau Twins used because it’s the same studio, the same producer. And I think he was plugging everything through that, which is what gave it the sort of similar sound to 4AD and Cocteau Twins. I think when it came out the Cocteau Twins references were mainly because the process and the sonics were very similar to them and that Eventide, spangly sound. It wasn’t initially there on our demos but that that’s what happened in the studio.

I’m not sure if you’ve read Martin Aston’s Facing the Other Way, though I know you were interviewed for it. You don’t describe that studio experience as a pleasant one. How do you look back to your time working with John Fryer?

Louise: Were we complaining about it? I’m sure I’m complaining about it in that book. I haven’t read that book. I regret doing the interview. But I hadn’t really been in the studio before, and the mistake I think we made was that the lyrics weren’t finished and I didn’t put down a guide vocal. So when it came to doing the songs, there was this huge sound that I felt lost in. Some things had happened that, like the structure might change a little bit, or the tempo was a bit faster, but I didn’t know why it didn’t fit in. So while Mike thrived in the studio, I struggled.

Mike: We did all the music at first, and laid everything down, and then we maybe shouldn’t have worked that way. I mean John Fryer was the producer, he was sort of saying, “Let’s just take the song apart, we’ll take these guitar lines, separate them out, and lay it out.” And it became a big sound, when on our demos, it was a much more intimate, textual sound, quite lo-fi and gritty. And that sort of grittiness went and it became bigger and wider. So it did change, and I think Louise struggled a bit. We had to redo vocals in London. That’s what the studio experience was like.

You said that John made the music sound bigger. In the book, Aston wrote that Ivo requested more bass on the album, neither of which you had planned for.

Mike: We had no bass. It was only a guitar and drum machine. But then they said, “Have a go putting bass on.” There was a bass guitar there. And so, we did put bass on some of the tracks, but originally it was just guitar, drum machine and a vocal.

How was your relationship with 4AD while you were making Blow?

Mike: I think when we trying to find a way of working there was a bit of frustration, with us wanting to do things again or try things a different way. I think Ivo might have been getting a bit frustrated. He did get to a point where he said, “No, that’s it. I like what you’ve done.” He did say that. He liked our record and said he wanted to put it out. But then he said, “But if you want to mess around in the studio, go ahead.” And that’s how Blowback started.

So initially you had some reservations about how the finished album sounded, and he let you record Blowback as a consolation?

Louise: I wanted to rerecord the whole thing again. That wasn’t gonna happen though.

Mike: Basically when we went back to the tapes to do our messing around, all the guitar sounds and everything, that’s all printed onto tape. Like if somebody was mixing an album, the effects and the way you mix, all that is done afterwards. You spin it through your up boards, and then you do your mixdown, blah, blah. But basically we were printing down to tape the whole sound. All the reverbs, all the Eventides, all the sound, that was printed down to tape. We couldn’t get rid of it. So all we could do was pull it all back and do a more minimal experimental thing. So we we were listening to things like Brian Eno and stuff like that. We wanted to make it more experimental, so that’s what Blowback was.

Having listened to this album for 30 years, I was quite surprised to hear that Louise, you apparently struggled with your vocals?

Louise: Well, a lot of it had to do with the fact that we were going into the Cocteau Twins studio. I didn’t think I was up to the 4AD kind of singers. I wasn’t one of those. I was more like Miki [Berenyi of Lush], those kinds of singers. And I think Ivo was a little disappointed.

Mike: You have to remember, 4AD was a little bit in a transitional period because Cocteau Twins had left. What else was going on? So Ivo was bringing in some new artists and maybe he was looking for us to be a hit band.

Louise: I don’t know if he thought we would be a hit band, but he thought we had a lot of potential when he signed us. And then we didn’t kind of go the way he thought it would. I don’t know.

I think timing has a lot to do with it too, right? Because Blow came out in 1992 and shoegaze was at its height, but also grunge was becoming very popular, along with British indie music like Suede and PJ Harvey. The music press was focussing more on other types of music. So I feel like you had the music, but the timing just wasn’t right.

Mike: I think we did get attention. I think that the only criticism I remember was the comparison to Cocteau Twins. I think people were thinking that maybe Ivo was trying to replace them in some way. We didn’t really get bad press, I don’t think.

Louise: But I don’t think we got championed the way Slowdive and the other bands did at the height of shoegaze. We didn’t get that. And I felt that we were used as a scapegoat in some ways by Melody Maker and NME, just to have a go at 4AD. There wasn’t really a lot written about the album. It was more of a dig at 4AD and that kind of music being over.

Mike: But we also weren’t a gigging band. We did a few gigs, but a lot of those other bands were actually gigging all the time and doing big shows. There were only two of us. When we first started playing, all I had was a cassette recorder with some drums on it, and it was just total noise, chaos, which was actually probably more interesting. I think Ivo saw us and it was just chaotic noise. Maybe we should have done that on the actual album. It all happened very quickly. We wrote the songs really quickly. We weren’t a gigging band, so it was difficult for us, and we were always struggling to pull it all together.

The only review I could find was from Select, which gave it 4/5 but insinuated that the names of the band and album made were sexual connotations. Was that something you were asked about by journalists?

Louise: Oddly no. Not back then. But now, if you’re trying to Google it...

Right. 23Envelope designed the album cover. It has a very distinct 4AD look to it. Did you them any input or did they just run with it?

No, [Vaughan Oliver and Chris Bigg] came up with it. We did actually change something. One thing. The initial cover with the bit of meat, the liver, was totally naked flesh. And we asked if they could tone it down somehow, and then they rephotographed it with tissue paper. That was our only input.

Louise: I think it came off Helen Chadwick’s exhibition, “Piss Flowers.” She also had “Viral Landscapes” and those pictures of meat with blonde hair pieces and stuff.

Mike: We loved Chris and Vaughan. They were such great people.

Louise: You wouldn’t go in with ideas for them though.

Mike: No, no. They were so nuts, and so lovely. They were such lovely people. It was just great to hang out and have a laugh at them, ‘cause we’d just crack up and love anything.

And the artwork’s been slightly altered for the reissue, correct?

Mike: A little bit, yeah. It’s all new. It’s new mixes. We remixed it, and we finished the actual “Blow” track. It wasn’t finished. So I had to work out a way of finishing that track, which took a lot of work. And also the actual tape was damaged. So getting the sound out of those tapes was really difficult, because everything was distorted, a lot of the magnetic material had been destroyed, and I had to redo stuff. If you listen closely, you can hear damaged sounds..

I was actually wondering where the song “Blow” came from, because it wasn’t on the original album.

Mike: I’ll tell you where the inspiration for that song came from. Musically it was a track by The Fall called “Hip Priest.” I thought that was such a great track and thought, “How could we do a track like that?” So that song is me trying to do something like “Hip Priest,” but as Swallow. What I liked about that song was that it has these very quiet passages, and then this chaotic noise that just came in really loud, and then went back to quiet again. I was trying to do something similar to that. And then for the ending, I wanted the song to go right to the end of the groove, like a riff that just goes on and on. I wanted to go on for like 20 minutes.

Has your relationship changed with the album now that it’s been remastered and everything is packaged all together?

Mike: Well, I can listen to it for the first time. I couldn’t really listen to it before; it was too difficult. When you’re working with 4AD, and then it all goes wrong, that is a really difficult point in your life. So I didn’t want to revisit that. It felt a little bit fragile and that’s not really what we wanted. I think what we’ve managed to do is push it more into your face, make it a bit stronger. And now I can listen to it and enjoy it.

Louise: Neither of us listened to it for years. And we started going through the tapes again, because Mike moved closer to me a few years ago. We both got rid of bad partners and we were allowed to see each other and do music together again. I think when I first went down to your place, and we just sat there at the desk, it was fun. It was like going back 30 years, just the two of us again, going, “Oh, that part’s a bit ropey, but it’s fine because our playing and our abilities were limited at the time.” There are some great moments. I did really like going through it track by track and making peace with it.

4AD and the music press labelled Swallow as a shoegaze act. How did you feel about being called shoegaze?

Louise: I think we thought we were on the edges of it. The Valentines claimed they weren’t shoegaze at all, never were. People think that’s all that was happening at the time. I think Miki from Lush said this as well, but we were all seeing other bands at the same time.

Mike: Yeah, I was seeing Sun Ra at the Mean Fiddler and the full ballet. All of our friends and people we were working with were all doing our own thing. Like Curve, Spiritualized, Slowdive and all that, we were all doing our own thing. We weren’t just listening to that music. We listened to all sorts of stuff. Our worlds were much broader than that.

I’ve always felt that Blow was one of the more under-appreciated albums of that era. Do you feel like it ever got its due?

Mike: I think we knew we wrote good songs. We knew that and it’s a shame that things fell apart with Rough Trade. It would have been good if we carried on a bit longer because I think we’re good songwriters. It’s just a shame.

Louise: The timing was always wrong for both of us, because after Rough Trade, I think you lost confidence. We were recording at home because we had that 16-track. I was actually more confident.

Mike: I was sort of having a nervous breakdown at that point because everything seemed to be collapsing. There was a funding problem with Rough Trade, and they went down. So everything just kept falling apart, and then I was starting to have panic attack, and I couldn’t cope. So that was a very difficult point, really.

You mentioned Rough Trade, which released your EP Hush in 1994. Years later you compiled that in a digital album called Soft. Do you have any plans to try and reissue Soft too?

Mike: Soft was never complete. We hadn’t actually finished it. We did try and put out some digital version of it, but we didn’t actually finish the recordings.

Louise: You put out Soft without telling me.

Mike: I did, yeah. That was just when the internet was starting to break for releasing music. I think it was MySpace or something like that. But I did speak to Amy and I said, we’ve got all these songs we did for Rough Trade and that they were unfinished, and she said, “Oh, maybe you should try and finish them one day.” So, they are there. Something could happen one day.

I know Swallow played some gigs with Sugar, Medicine, and Mazzy Star, who were also on Rough Trade at one point. What do you remember about playing live?

Mike: The best gig we ever did was with Mazzy Star. We weren’t great live. It was all a bit chaotic. But we finished the Mazzy Star tour in London at the Marquee and we got through the gig. It was the best thing we’d ever done and I was really chuffed that I hadn’t screwed up because I was always screwing up on the guitar. And Geoff Travis came backstage, and he said to me, “Mike, do you ever think of getting somebody else to play the guitar?” And that shattered everything I thought about my performance.

Louise: We didn’t have a band, but then with Mazzy Star we had Alex [Mitchell] and Steve [Monti] playing with us and they were really tight. So we’d gotten much better.

Mike: We actually improved on that tour. At the end of it, we realized that yeah, we could actually do it if we just kept at it. But the other performances were completely chaotic.

Louise: Because we were borrowing equipment…

Has there been any discussion of you two playing gigs to coincide with the reissue?

Mike: Well, yeah, I want to. I did try and do a Swallow song… We’ve just got out of these difficult relationships, and I’ve only just managed to be able to get onto a stage and do music again. So I was doing experimental music in Birmingham and then I tried to do “Lovesleep” as an instrumental, thrown into a sort of an experimental thing, and it sort of worked. And I realized, yeah, we could do it. It would be nice to try and do something. Unfortunately, I’ve had a bit of difficulty in the run up to this album because my mother died and I haven’t been able to do anything else. Otherwise, I would have been trying to put some music together. But I haven’t had the chance to do it. So maybe at the end of the year, I can try some way of supporting the release. I’m not sure.

Finally, what did it mean to have The Chemical Brothers sample "Peekaboo" and "Follow Me Down" for “One Too Many Mornings”?

Louise: We didn’t know who they were [at the time].

Mike: When they sampled it first, they weren’t The Chemical Brothers. They were The Dust Brothers. It was on one of their EPs [Fourteenth Century Sky]. So I told my friend Alex, who was a guitarist from Curve and made electronic music after that, “These guys, The Dust Brothers have just sampled us.” And it wasn’t just that track. They pulled guitars and stuff from Blowback, loads of it. And Alex said, “They’re very famous!” But like Louise said, we didn’t know they were. They were obviously breaking, this new sort of dance act, and everyone was talking about them, but we weren’t listening to that sort of music.

Louise: I remember when we heard it, we thought, “Well, we couldn’t have done that.” We thought it was great.

I imagine there were some royalties paid to you for sampling the music?

Louise: Their manager rang up and said to Mike, who’s terrible with money, “We’ll give you £200 for permission to use this song.”

Mike: And I was like, “Yes! £200!”

Louise: He told me this and I was like, “No!” So I went back and rang them up to get a royalty share. But then they started cutting the royalties.

Mike: So we don’t get much money from it at all anymore. But we did at the beginning.

Louise: And they put a nice comment on my Instagram.

Of all the shoegaze bands to emerge from the UK in the early 1990s, an argument could be made that The Boo Radleys are the most overlooked. Rarely is the Merseyside band mentioned in the same breath as trailblazers such as My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive, other than in the history of Creation Records. And while it’s easy to call them one of the better Britpop bands, I’ve always felt they were one of the better shoegaze bands too.

Those days of shoegaze didn’t last long for the Boos or most of their peers. Come 1993, The Scene That Celebrates Itself was already becoming passé not just with the press - which had moved on to writing about grunge and a new homegrown brand of indie music - but also the musicians responsible for making it.

A number of acts associated with it chose to evolve beyond the behind the walls of sound. Ride turned into The Byrds then broke up; Moose went jangly; Chapterhouse embraced acid house; Slowdive dabbled with ambient before transforming into a dreamy alt-country band; and Lush became a chart-topping indie-pop group. But when it comes to any of those bands, their days as shoegazers is what they’re often remembered for most.

That’s not the case for The Boo Radleys. To most people, they are remembered for their association with Britpop, not shoegaze.

I don’t think anyone in 1992 would have predicted that the Boos would become the most popular band of the bunch, post-shoegaze, but it happened. Instead of keeping the melodies buried under layers of reverb and distortion, they followed their love of The Beatles and pursued a more pop-leaning direction through an experimental lens, where beautifully crafted melodies (and hooks, big hooks) were just part of a weird and wonderful journey.

With 1993’s Giant Steps, a bold and ambitious smorgasbord of psychedelia, dub, ‘60s pop, jazz, and yes, even a bit of shoegaze, The Boo Radleys not only beat the odds (and their unconvinced label boss Alan McGee), they eventually became one of the faces of the bubbling Britpop scene. Their next album, 1995’s Wake Up!, became a staple of the era, pushing them to the top of the charts (and Top of the Pops), and seeing them share magazine covers and TV appearances alongside England’s biggest bands like Blur, Pulp and Elastica.

The Boo Radleys’ story generally begins with Giant Steps and the success that followed in the mid’-’90s, while their formative “shoegaze” years are held to one sentence in most retrospective write-ups. I find it’s such shame too because there is plenty of music to discover before “Lazarus” made them indie darlings.

The band’s debut album, 1990’s Ichabod and I (released on Action Records), really was them finding their feet and mimicking their influences: pre-Loveless My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. It’s rather hurried noise-pop that at times lacks in both focus and songs, but it did convince Rough Trade to sign them before the label was forced to shut down for a decade.

Their time on Rough Trade didn’t last long, but it did result in Learning To Walk, a stellar compilation consisting of the Kaleidoscope, Every Heaven and Boo! Up EPs. There is some solid stuff on that collection, including the band’s first display of amorous pop in “The Finest Kiss,” a proto-grungegazer called “Bluebird,” the MBV-esque “Forster’s Van” and a blistering cover of New Order’s “True Faith,” cheekily named “Boo! Faith,” which sounded eerily like Swervedriver’s Raise.

The Boo Radleys’ second full-length, Everything’s Alright Forever, however, remains to be one of my favourite albums of the original shoegaze era (and if I’m being honest, I’d likely take it over anything by Lush, Pale Saints, and possibly even Ride.) Their debut for Creation hardly moved the needle at the time of its release, but truth be told, it has never really found much of an audience the way other ’90s shoegaze albums have. Basically it’s one of the most slept-on albums of its time. And I get why it’s been overshadowed by the band’s albums that came after, because The Boo Radleys were an excellent Britpop band. But they were also a good shoegaze band too!

Everything’s Alright Forever is almost kept like a secret, even though the Boos shared a label with Slowdive, Swervedriver, Medicine, Ride and My Bloody Valentine, all of whom are regularly name-dropped as influences on newer bands.

What’s funny is that guitarist and main songwriter Martin Carr thought his band was the cream of the Creation crop, even though at the time they were clearly amongst the label’s second tier of bands.

“We didn’t think there were any bands on Creation that were nearly as good as us,” Carr told David Cavanagh, author of The Creation Records Story: My Magpie Eyes are Hungry for the Prize. “The Valentines had left. Primal Scream - we didn’t expect them ever to make a record again, for some reason. After Screamadelica I couldn’t imagine what they would do. And as regards Ride, I thought ‘Leave Them All Behind’ was terrible one-note rubbish!”

The cache of being on Creation has worked wonders for bands over the years, however, it’s done little to remind people of what the Boos achieved prior to Britpop. Back then, in a bid to build some hype for both the band and Creation, the label’s press officer purposely dubbed Carr “the new Kevin Shields,” for his keen sonic ear and sheepish demeanour.

NME took the bait in its review of the album, paying a back-handed compliment to the band by calling them “a My Bloody Valentine Creation can afford.” Although it might not boggle minds the way listening to Loveless does time and time again, Everything’s Alright Forever is quite an inventive and tuneful shoegaze record compared to others both then and now. How many shoegazers made the decision to feature a Flamenco-inspired trumpet solo on the opening track of their album? That’s how the band chose to kick it off with “Spaniard,” a slow-burning intro that climaxes with a wailing turn by legendary trumpet player Roddy Lorimer. (Check his CV: The Rolling Stones, Blur, Spice Girls, Tom Jones, The Pale Fountains, S Club 7, Primal Scream and Mr. Blobby.)

Everything’s Alright Forever runs a tad long, but likely because it is full of so many ideas that translate into many high points. The enterprising, creative juices that formed Giant Steps, which many consider a true masterpiece, didn’t just come out of thin air. Second track “Towards the Light” is a nice, brief canapé of soft, fuzzy guitars that lead into a blistering Carr solo coda. It’s followed by “Losing It (Song for Abigail),” which spends its first half as MBV-esque ambient noise, before mutating into an affable pop ditty. They explore more noise on “Room at the Top,” channeling the clamorous droning of Flying Saucer Attack.

From there, the album begins to flex its melodic muscle. “Memory Babe” is a pensive love song, bolstered by a winsome chorus and spiralling, harmonic noise. “Skyscraper” is likely the truest example of shoegaze the Boos ever put to tape, with a traditional tempo, fuzzy guitars, and a bold Crazy Horse-ish solo for good measure. “I Feel Nothing” and “Song for the Morning to Sing” both foreshadow the more expansive direction they would pursue on Giant Steps, one that they were already contemplating as they were recording.

Carr would later tell The Quietus, “We said we weren’t going to do shoegaze anymore even before Everything’s Alright Forever. But we got a producer in, and that album ended up having a much more shoegazey sound than we’d intended or wanted. That was why we decided we were going to produce ourselves after that – no more producers.”

That producer was Ed Buller, best known for his work on Suede’s best albums, Pulp’s His ‘n’ Hers, as well as mixing Slowdive’s Souvlaki and engineering Lush’s second EP, Sweetness and Light. In many ways, he was the right person for the job.

Buller let them indulge themselves, but in turn managed to get two of the band’s best singles out of them. “Does This Hurt?” is arguably one of the most overtly emotional songs in the shoegaze canon. With its alluring melody and driving rhythm, it yanks the heartstrings with frontman Sice calling out to an ex that “you smashed your dreams and now you’ve taken mine.”

“Lazy Day,” meanwhile, could and maybe should have been saved for the Britpop years. Just shy of reaching the two-minute mark, Carr wrote a perfect guitar hook that challenges even “It’s Lulu” or “Lazarus” in an earworm battle. Brooklyn Vegan called it “arguably the best 94 seconds in all of ’90s shoegaze,” and I wholeheartedly agree. Clearly a sign of what was to come.

It’s also worth noting that the Boos recorded a handful of good-to-great B-sides around the same time. “Lazy Day” was the headline track on the four-track Adrenalin EP, which also includes the disorientatingly beautiful “Vegas” and “Whiplashed,” an indolent slice of shoegaze-pop that mushrooms into a colourful explosion of brass and woodwinds. “Feels Like Tomorrow,” though, is the real show-stealer; equal parts My Bloody Valentine’s “Feed Me With Your Kiss,” Blur’s “Popscene” and Nirvana’s “Breed,” it’s a scorching example of just how grunge-y the Boos could get. (No wonder they were invited to do Lollapalooza in the U.S.)

The Boo! Forever EP is also worth hunting down. Once again led by one of Everything’s standouts, “Does This Hurt?,” the midtempo title track waltzes along as Carr’s guitar builds up a burst of harmonious wonder; the swift “Buffalo Bill” is one-part pedal clamour, the other symphonic bombast; and “Sunfly II (Walking With the Kings)” sounds like a lost Chemical Brothers collaboration, packing big beats, flute riffs and zooming synths.

Naturally, The Boo Radleys felt they were better off moving on from being part of any shoegazing scene. Carr would tell the Creation Records blog, “I hated the term, I hated all of those terms and would have nothing to do with them. It would be an insult to lump MBV in with our generation of bands, who were pretty much MBV copyists. None of those bands, ourselves included, were a tenth as original as the Valentines.”

He actually found most of shoegaze to be an insult, and again, wasn’t afraid to throw some of his own at poor labelmates Ride. “My Bloody Valentine and Ride in the same sentence makes me laugh until milk comes out me nose,” he added. “I liked Ride up until the first album then lost interest, I like pop music. I loved Swervedriver, I thought they were one of the best bands on Creation.”

Interestingly enough, it was another underrated, ex-shoegaze band that exposed The Boo Radleys to the music that would go on to shape their future.

“When we were recording Everything’s Alright Forever, Moose, the band, were in the next studio. We used to hang out with them and they played us Pet Sounds. I’d never heard Pet Sounds before – I thought the Beach Boys were a joke,” Carr told The Quietus. “I just thought they were quite naff – fat guys in stripy shirts doing surfing songs, it just meant nothing to me. But Pet Sounds was amazing… Then I got a copy of Surf’s Up and that really did it for me. That was a big influence on Giant Steps – we were really into that album. That and Hit To Death In The Future Head by Flaming Lips, it was those two albums that really informed Giant Steps.”

From that moment on, The Boo Radleys transformed into a hit-making juggernaut, making themselves at home in the UK charts until they split up in 1999.

The band would reunite in 2021, though without Martin Carr - who chose not to take part - and have since put out three albums in the last four years. While they’ve leaned more towards melodic, quirky pop-rock, it’s interesting to see them revisit songs from Everything’s Alright Forever, namely “Spaniard” and “Lazy Day,” in their live sets. The band seems to have come to the realization that despite distancing themselves from that earlier material at points in their career, they wrote some damn good songs on that second album, songs people should know.

Shoegaze has no shortage of iconic bands, but Chapterhouse are unquestionably unsung heroes of the scene that celebrated itself. While the “Big Four” bands of shoegaze are generally considered My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Ride and Lush, Chapterhouse were one of the original bands to earn the distinction (or humiliation, depending on who you ask) of being labeled “shoegazers” by the UK press.

Formed in 1987, by a bunch of teenagers from Reading - Stephen Patman, Andrew Sherriff, Simon Rowe, Ashley Bates and Jon Curtis - the band was originally named Incest (yes, for real!) with a raucous, drone-y garage rock sound that screamed like it was the bastard child of The Stooges and Spacemen 3. But as they matured, so did their sound, which developed into something more melodic and beguiling. Some EPs - Freefall, Sunburst and Pearl - earned them a lot of ink in the music weeklies, with “Pearl” even cracking the UK singles charts, and earning airplay on both MTV’s 120 Minutes and MuchMusic.

Chumming around with local indie bands like Lush, Moose, Ride, Slowdive and Swervedriver caught the eye of journalists who quickly came up with a name for this new, hypnotic brand of psychedelic rock they were cooking up. But despite the insistence of the music press, Chapterhouse weren’t really part of shoegaze for long. While their debut album, 1991’s Whirlpool, definitely ranks as a stone-cold shoegaze classic, the band were constantly tinkering with their music, dipping their toes in everything from acid house to ‘60s-inspired psych-pop to ambient music. Their next single “Mesmerise” (one of my favourite tracks of the 1990s) saw them ditch the crescendoing guitars to masterfully build a vibe-y, Balearic tune with help from a pensive, John Barry piano sample. One could argue the track influenced a hundred chillwave artists, but shoegaze by definition it was not.

By the time their second album, Blood Music, dropped in 1993, Chapterhouse were a very different band, adding dub, baggy and club influences into their sound, resulting in a real mixed bag. After running into a hampering legal issue and failing to deliver a hit, the writing was on the wall. Even with an album’s worth of demos in the bag, Chapterhouse called it quits in 1995.

The band didn’t exactly fade away following their split. Even though they had next to no involvement, Chapterhouse fans were treated to multiple compilations and reissues in the following years, including 1996’s Rownderbowt, 2007’s The Best of Chapterhouse and 2018’s Whirlpool: The Original Recordings. An unexpected reunion tour in 2010 allowed them to have - seemingly - a victory lap, playing shows with nu-gazer and obvious fan Ulrich Schnauss. Eventually, members gathered in 2023 to have the final say with Chronology, the ultimate collection featuring the albums, singles, B-sides, remixes and those demos recorded towards the end.

But as 2024 arrived, Chapterhouse began talks of reuniting. Nat Cramp of Sonic Cathedral offered to release the band’s earliest recordings, the White House Demos EP, the following year, which then led to a full-on band reunion. Now Now Patman, Sherriff and Bates, together with Greg Moore and Joe Light on bass and guitar, have set sail on a UK and North American tour calledWhirlpool 35, celebrating their debut album’s 35th birthday by performing it in full. In addition, they will play multiple dates for this year’s Slide Away Festival, in the U.S., alongside dormant alt-rock gods Hum and the event’s organizers and shoegaze bad boys Nothing.

The band was first called Incest when it was formed. I’ve gotta ask - who thought Incest was a good name for a band?

Stephen Patman: We were teenagers at the time, mainly doing covers of Stooges and some tracks off the Nuggets compilations. And it was basically for our first two shows. The guy who ran the studio we rehearsed in said, “You guys should play a gig,” and then we basically booked a show in a pub a couple of doors down. We just came up with the name based on this whole gang of friends in Reading who had all gone out with each other. It was a bit of an incestuous, dating thing. So it wasn’t based on any family situation. But it was only for two gigs before we changed it to Chapterhouse.

Our third show was supporting The Jazz Butcher, and our fourth gig was opening for Spaceman 3. Sonic, or Pete, took our number and gave it to their manager, Gerald Palmer, who started representing us. So, it was a good move on our front [to change the name]. But yeah, that name was very short-lived and kind of tongue-in-cheek, really.

You mentioned starting out playing all these old garage songs. What led to the transition from this noisy, garage rock sound to the dreamier, more dance-influenced rock of Whirlpool?

Well, it was just a natural progression in the way that we just wrote more songs. We got better and wrote more nuanced material that was slightly more, um, I suppose intelligent and less juvenile. We were 18 when we recorded that early stuff, so in the process of the two or three years following on from that we were just writing more. I suppose we were less scared of not needing to hide behind a wall of noise as much.

As you improved as musicians and songwriters, was there anything going on around you that helped shape that sound?

Well, I think that all of those bands that we were listening to, like Cocteau Twins, The Jesus & Mary Chain, The Velvet Underground, Echo & The Bunnymen, and even Bauhaus and Siouxsie & The Banshees, more ethereal and psychedelic music, was really what we felt we were doing. We wanted to make psychedelic music, but in a more modern way. Otherworldly drug influence music was what drew us in. We always loved ’60s harmonies like The Byrds, Love and The Beatles. So trying to add those kinds of harmonies was also a big change for us. We were also really into Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr, which combined noise and melodies, along with that early Primal Scream, which was more jangly Byrds-y stuff.

Also that was when the Yamaha FX500 came out, which in itself inspired us in some new ways. You could plug into it and get these really lush sounds, which, we couldn’t get from pedals at the time. It was more just basic stuff, like distortion, fuzz, chorus, and whatever. But the FX500 was a big shift for us. It was almost what Robin [Guthrie] had been doing for years, but he was using studio equipment rather than pedals. And this processor combined all that studio equipment into one box for guitars. I remember Neil [Halstead] and Christian [Savill] from Slowdive bought one as well, and one of the settings on that effect unit was basically Slowdive.

A few years ago a comp of Whirlpool’s original recordings was released. Do you feel that captures that transitional period for the band?

We didn’t release it and we wouldn’t have wanted it released. The manager I mentioned - Gerald Palmer - funded the recordings, and he owns the copyrights and the unfinished recordings, which we then went on to finish as Whirlpool. And those are literally just monitor mixes. When we finished for the day, we just laid down a tape of the rough mix. That’s what that album is, and it was never meant to be heard. And we can’t do anything about it.

That’s Space Age Recordings, the label that releases all of the Spacemen 3 albums, right?

Yes, that’s right. Most of them are the same recordings, but we then moved to a better studio, and worked on it again and recorded them the way they were meant to sound.

I’ve always wanted to ask you about the John Bonham beat in “Pearl.” How hard was it to clear that sample from “When the Levee Breaks”?

It wasn’t hard at all because it’s not got any musical elements to it. So it’s not really infringing copyright. Back then the drum beats weren’t something that you would get sued over. The one track we did have an issue with was “Mesmerise,” where we sampled “This Way Mary” by John Barry and Don Black. Our managers thought that no one had heard that stuff and that we didn’t need to clear it. And we were like, “Really? It literally starts exactly the same as the original, the first four bars of the track.” So, of course it was going to be found out, but both John Barry and Don Black were really cool about it. They basically didn’t do anything except say we want half of the royalties, which we didn’t have any issue with. We were happy to do that. It was actually quite generous of them. As far as break beats go, I still think even now they’re not really considered to be something that’s worth suing over because they don’t have any musical content to them.

What can you tell me about the cat on the cover of Whirlpool? Where did the concept come from to use the cat?

We basically brought the artwork to the record label. They had a guy that they were using called Marc Pechart, who went under the name of Albert Tupelo. He was a graphic designer that worked for the music press at the time. And so, we took the marbling and the photo from the first EP, and he basically did the layout and the band logo. Then the next one moved on from there, where we picked an El Greco painting, because Andy was studying art history at the time and he was really influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites. And then with the third EP, we took the same marbling, turned it yellow, and Marc introduced the picture of the cat for the first time.

For the album, Marc came up with another picture of his cat. It was a nice picture, but we felt that it needed something more to it. Andy and I were really influenced by The Graduate, which has a scene where Dustin Hoffman’s lying on an air mattress in the pool. The camera pans up away from him and it’s this deep, unnatural blue coloured water. We thought that that would be a good colour to sink the cat into. So Andy and I went to an image bank, which was basically just drawers full of coloured slides, and found what we thought was the perfect rippling, blue water image. We reproduced the image of the cat, but because it was a black and white photo, the black of the photo is water and that’s why it feels like it’s sunk into the water. So that was a collaboration Marc bringing the cat and then us sort of taking it where we wanted it to go.

Did you ever meet the Whirlpool cat?

No, we didn’t, actually. Unfortunately, Marc passed away last year. We hadn’t actually seen him since then and when we went to our second album, Blood Music, the label employed a graphics company, a team of graphics people working within a company. They were a bit like lawyers. We didn’t really have any contact with Marc again after that.

Rownderbowt, the comp you released back in 1996 with the close-up of the cat’s face, has always been one of my favourite album covers. Was that cover an outtake or an extension of the cover for Whirlpool?

So that record was released after we split up, and without any consultation with us. I believe that Russell was still in contact with one of the label managers, they were good friends. So I’ve got a feeling he might have had some involvement in it. But the first I heard of it was from someone who said to me, “Oh, have you seen that record?” And I was like, “No.” So we had no involvement in the sleeve. But obviously it was derived from that concept.

Oh wow, that’s really unfortunate. I wanted to ask you about the Reading Festival in 1991 when you performed after Nirvana, in your hometown, no less. What do you remember about that moment?

Well, we hadn’t played Reading for quite a while because we’d been up in London and we’d been pretty much touring the rest of the country until then. So the Reading Festival was a hometown show, but in front of 45,000 faithful. So it was pretty intimidating. We’d never played in front of that many people. Nirvana, at that point, hadn’t released Nevermind yet, but we were aware of them because we both recorded Velvet Underground covers for a compilation album. And so we’d heard that cover and a couple of tracks off Bleach. But we were really into bands like Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, Mudhoney, Tad, and all of the Sub Pop stuff too, so we knew them a little. But they weren’t really high on our radar, to be honest.

One thing I do remember is that Kurt threw himself in the air and into the drum kit. I think he busted his arm because of it too. So they came off 20 minutes early and we were suddenly told that we had to go on earlier than we’d expected. That was a bit of a shocker because we were still very young and quite intimidated by the whole thing. I do remember it was quite windy, and the weather wasn’t particularly nice. It was all a bit of a blur, but we thought it went really well. I think a lot of people in retrospect look at it as us being overshadowed by Nirvana’s performance, but at the time we didn’t feel like that at all. And oddly enough, about a month later, we went on tour in the States and played with them again. It was us, Smashing pumpkins and Nirvana on a bill in Boston for a radio station’s [WFNX] birthday party. So we hung out and played with them that night, but it was also the night that Nevermind came out.

Then towards the end of the tour, we were in L.A., and our record label was driving me and Andy somewhere with the top down along the Sunset Strip and “Smells Like Team Spirit” came on the radio. We were like, “Oh fuck! That sounds really slick!” Our memories of them was that they sounded really raw and almost like a demo. So my first impression was that it sounded really commercial. But then from that moment on it all just went crazy for them. And that was in the span of a month, all of that happened. And then they played again next year and it was a very big moment. They were the headliners.

With your second album, Blood Music, Chapterhouse went in a very different direction. What led you to dig deeper into a more electronic, beat-heavy sound?

Well, we had already used break beats on our first record. “Falling Down” had [The Soul Searchers’] “Ashley’s Roachclip” break on it, and at some of those early shows when we were playing with Spaceman 3 we did a cover of “Theme From S’Express,” which was basically an early UK house track. Oddly enough, that track was produced by Pascal Gabriel, who produced some tracks on our second album. Plus, I think we were all children of disco. In the late ’70s when we were eight, nine and ten, disco was in full force, and we were really into stuff like Sly & The Family Stone and Funkadelic. Back then indie music was very white, but black music was a big influence on us. I remember every disco record, because at that point your brain is just a sponge. So having a groove was never a big issue for us.

Also, Andy got much more interested in house music. Living down in the west country with his girlfriend, there was a big dance music scene there with a lot of raves in the fields and illegal parties cropping up, where you’d be told the location that afternoon. So he was very much more into the electronic side of dance. I wasn’t so much, but I really liked the chill out stuff like The Orb and what The KLF were doing, that post-post-rave stuff. For me, it was psychedelia, but I was also on a more glammy rock trip as well. So at the time, Andy and I were trying to balance two very different inputs and make an album as cohesive as possible. Frankly, we weren’t particularly cohesive as a band at that point though. We had spent a year recording songs for that album that were rejected by the label, all of which appeared in our box set as the “Courtyard Recordings.”

During that time, Andy was bringing in more four on the floor-type stuff, which I think now he kind of regrets. We’re both regretful over most of the production on that album. We were teamed up with producers that weren’t really fit for us. There are great songs on it, but it was strangely executed.

I get it. But at the same time, you guys went even deeper into electronic music and had Global Communication “retranslate” the album as Pentamerous Metamorphosis. How involved were you in that project?

Andy was living near Exeter, which was near where Global Communication - Mark [Pritchard] and Tom [Middleton] - were located. They also had a band called the Jedi Knights, which was more of a techno, almost jungle project, and they were even working with Aphex Twin at the time. They had a band called Reload as well. So Andy got to know them down there and he suggested that they remix one of the tracks off Blood Music. Then the label manager Karen said, “Why don’t they mix the whole album?” We thought that was a great idea, and gave them stems of every track on the album, and just said, “Do whatever you want with it.” I think even now they’d say that it was an amazing opportunity and allowed them to really put a lot of stuff they had brewing in them into a record. And they just did an amazing job, making this beautiful piece of music that is like listening to Blood Music through a dream or something. We loved it because it became a thing in its own right. It’s a record that wouldn’t have happened without us making it happen. And we’re really glad we did.

We’ve actually been in touch with Mark and Tom recently because we had an issue with our box set. Dedicated reissued that album a few years later as a Global Communication record, and somehow in the midst of Sony taking over BMG, they had it recorded as a Global Communication release. So they said, “You don’t own it.” To which we said, Umm, yeah, we do! We paid for it. It was a remix.” We actually gave Tom and Mark writing credits on that album, which is pretty unheard of for a remix. But we just felt they’d contributed so much that we spread the royalties five ways between me, Andy, Simon and Mark and Tom. To resolve this issue, Warp decided to reissue Pentamerous Metamorphosis, as well as their other album, at the same time we were putting the box set together. So, we just said, “Look, how about we just give you half of that record’s ownership, so we both equally own it, and then we can both put out reissues, and then it solves all the problems?” So we effectively gave them half of the ownership just to sort it all out. Otherwise it would have just been a massive legal nightmare. Mark also had remastered it and gave us that remastered version for our compilation too.

Blood Music was the second and final Chapterhouse album. What caused you to split?

Basically it was a cruel twist of fate. When we were recording Blood Music we did an instrumental track called “Deli,” which Simon and Ashley had written. We went into Youth from Killing Joke’s studio, who was working with The Orb at the time, so we were working with one of his protégés. He said that that one of youth’s friends from New York was over and recorded some of his poetry, so he pulled out the DAT, and started throwing it into the mix. He put loads of delay and reverb on it, and we asked, “Are you sure this guy’s gonna be cool with this?” And they were like, “Yeah, he’s a mate of Youth’s!” Anyway, after the album was finished, we were halfway through an American tour, and Arista and Clive Davis were putting a lot of energy behind promoting it in America and Canada. Of course, midway through the tour we got a legal cease and desist, saying that this guy was suing us for using his work. I guess he had fallen out with Youth in the meantime. So he was using it as a way of getting back at Youth, but in the end it was really just getting us.

So what happened was the label had put hundreds of thousands of pounds behind Blood Music, and invested in the album and the tour and all that kind of stuff, and they were asked to withdraw the album from the shelves. But they said, “Rather than that, we’ll just stop promoting it.” So after that tour it was over. They weren’t going to cut those samples out and repress it. So we were left in this position where we basically had a massive debt going into writing the third album. We did that for about a year or so, writing songs and songs and songs. This was all at the time of Britpop and grunge rising up, where those bands were charting. And the label just said, “Unless you give us a hit record, we’re not gonna put out anything else.” So we just kept on writing until the fun was just gone from it. We all said, “Look, they’re not gonna drop us, but we’re not gonna get paid the next advance. So let’s just quit.” So we just broke up because we didn’t see any future, really.

And the stuff that you were working on is what made it onto Chronology?

Yeah, the last CD of Chronology is 25-30 of those songs, which came from lots of different sources. Some were 4-track demos, some were done in 24-track studios, some were done on an 8-track reel to reel. We did quite a lot of stuff. I mastered it all to give it some kind of cohesive, quality of sound. So that represents what we were doing; it’s this weird mix of us trying to write something the label would actually release, but still holding on to what we were feeling at the time. It got to the beginning of 1995 and we just split up. We were asked to do an Icelandic festival [Uxi] in the summer, which also featured Björk and The Prodigy. So we reformed just to do that. It sounded like such a gas. But that was it.

Blood Music wasn’t particularly well received in the UK, but in North America it was really taking off. So it might have gone in another direction and we might have continued, but we’d already been getting so much pressure to be more commercial than we really wanted to be. When they first heard “Pearl” it was like there were dollar signs in their eyes. And after that they were asking for another “Pearl” all the time. Andy just felt that song was an anomaly. He didn’t write it to be a hit. During that period of Blood Music they sort of turned to me, because Andy was sort of out to lunch, raving in the west country. After turning down all of those tracks, it took me writing “We Are The Beautiful” and “She’s A Vision” for them to actually agree to let us record the album. So they were the catalysts to allow us to record quite a lot of the songs that were refused. But it took them hearing what they thought might be a hit for it to happen. I think there was a growing sense, even through Blood Music, where we were going down a route we didn’t really feel comfortable with.

When was the first time you heard Chapterhouse described as shoegaze?

Well, it was quite early on. It started out with a journalist called Steve Sutherland calling it “the scene that celebrates itself” in Melody Maker. And it was basically because we shared the same manager as Moose and Lush [Howard Gough], so we would hang out a lot with them and go to each other’s shows. We also knew Ride and Swervedriver from Oxford, because it was pretty close to Reading. Prior to that, they called it the “Thames Valley scene,” which was us, Ride, Swervedriver and Slowdive. So it was called that, then “the scene that celebrates itself,” and then Andy Ross, who was the head of Food Records, was watching Moose play, and the four of them were just standing there looking down. So he was the one that came up with the term “shoegaze.” Polly [Birkbeck], Food’s press officer, probably mentioned it to someone or other, and it got to the music press, and then they started using the term. And when there was a sort of shift in the music press after the initial sort of 1991 euphoria around everything, they suddenly turned on us, and there was a whole year of press mocking us. And because we were out socializing as well, journalists would see us all hanging out, they’d do some gossip columns taking the piss in some way.

So that was when I first heard the term shoegaze, and it was a detrimental comment, it was a dig. But it’s kind of been reclaimed over the years to become this genre, which I find quite amusing. We never took on that role as being a shoegaze band. To be perfectly honest, we aren’t particularly fans of shoegaze music. We don’t listen to it. But mainly because most of it was by contemporaries, who you don’t really become fans of because you’re mates. So yeah, it was a derogatory term that made it through to the people in the press and they just started using it. And now it’s kind of been broadened, where so many bands that weren’t even remotely considered that, are now considered that, like The Verve, Kitchens of Distinction, and Catherine Wheel. They even call The Jesus & Mary Chain and Cocteau Twins shoegaze.

Yeah, it’s weird to try and rewrite history by including those bands that predated it by many years. I think one could argue that they were prototypes and influences, but they were definitely not shoegaze. But anything with some distortion and reverb, whether it’s new or old, is called “shoegaze” today.

Or dream pop, which is even more repugnant.

A lot of bands I’ve interviewed from the 1990s have said that while the UK press often mistreated them in North America they were received with much more positivity and appreciation. Why do you think that is?

Well, the difference is that America has quite a broad network of college radio and commercial alternative stations. Whereas in the UK, the only radio station that would play anything like that was John Peel at like 10 o’clock at night. That was it. So that was only where you heard those bands. Otherwise, it was from reading the music press, which was very big then. Like, the NME and Melody Maker back then were the gospel. That’s where you found out about music. So ultimately, your view of music came through the eyes of journalists. Whereas in the States, people heard you first and they decided for themselves whether they liked you. And they were loyal. They weren’t influenced by some cynical hack that is trying to make a name for themselves. Basically, everyone in America and Canada was a fan because they liked what they heard. And so all of that bullshit didn’t matter to them.

Chapterhouse first reunited in 2008 with a tour in 2010, and then came back last year. What would you say have been the biggest differences between the two reunions?

Well, the biggest difference then was that we were doing it for the last blow of having a craic as friends, just having a good time. We were asked to do it a lot by that time, and we weren’t that interested in it, other than if it would be fun for us. Me, Andy and Ashley were all working as composers, and we were doing really well. We didn’t need the money, because the three of us were in-house composers [at Adelphoi Music], and committing to touring was gonna be a real problem. The company would effectively have to shut down, whilst we were away. So when we were asked to do it, we were like, “We’ll do the fun bits. If we can do a tour of America and a tour of Japan, where our families can come along, it covers all the costs, and we can have a good time, let’s do it. We’re not promoting a record, so let’s just do it for fun.” So that’s what that really was. And it was kind of an inconvenience to fit it in because we had to do the U.S. tour within two weekends. The same with Japan.

This time around, Andy, Ash and I have all gone freelance, so we’ve got a lot more time on our hands. Plus we’ve been talking about writing again. The box set amalgamated that in for us. I spent a few months mastering all those tracks and going through everything. We requested that Sony send us all of the archive and it kind of felt like this was a bit of an untold story here. We felt that the box set readdressed what might be a misrepresentation of the band, from those two albums. By putting it in chronological order, it would fill in the gaps of what was really going on and what we were about, rather than just this hit single. So it felt like maybe we could do that live as well.

When we reformed and toured in 2010, we felt we were playing better than we ever had before. So this time around, we’re doing it because we’ve been asked. We were still humming and hahing about this last year, and it took being asked to do these Slide Away festival dates in the States, where we knew we had six really big guaranteed shows, guaranteed fees that would cover our visa costs, which are incredibly extortionate. I think that cost us about $15,000, just to get our U.S. visas. I had spoken to Adam [Franklin] from Swervedriver, because they did [Slide Away] last year. We turned it down last year because we weren’t going to be ready to do it so they offered it to Swervedriver. I asked Adam about it and how it went, before we agreed, and he said it was perfect because it paid for their visas and they could play some headline shows around them. And so we said, “Let’s do that.” And then Nat from Sonic Cathedral said he’d love to put on a show in London. And that’s when we realized that Whirlpool would be 35 in April. So we were like, “How about we do it on the album’s birthday?” And then we thought if we’re doing one UK show, we might as well do some more. So that kind of grew, and now it’s turned into a Whirlpool 35 tour, where we’re playing South America, doing the festivals, Japan and Australia next year. We will probably be back in North America in May next year too because we have got yearlong visas. So we can come back again next year and take it through till the end of next year, hopefully. For us, because we’re freelance, it doesn’t really matter where our income comes from. So if we can do it through this, then great!

Does it feel like there is more interest and fanfare with this reunion compared to the previous one?

I think so, just because social media helps a lot more now. We get an impression of what people are interested in, and we’ve been working on our social media to promote all these shows, and then the algorithm grows, so you kind of start seeing the actual figures of how many people are interested, even the demographic they are in to analyze for ages and stuff. My daughter’s going to be 15 next week and all her friends are into this stuff.

How has it felt to play Whirlpool in its entirety?

It’s been interesting. Before we would do the track listing of a set to have its ups and downs and lifts, its’ heavy ones and quiet ones. But in doing the album, we start with “Breather,” and then “Pearl,” “Autosleeper,” and then “Treasure” - which are maybe the four strongest tracks we play. And then the rest of the album’s been working really well, but it feels so weird. We are doing a second set afterwards though. That will allow us to readdress the balance. Because when we toured last time, it wasn’t about the greatest hits, it was about all the songs we wanted to play, all our favourites. There are probably songs that people will want to hear that maybe we just aren’t interested in playing, you know? But a lot of our favourite tracks from B-sides and EPs, those are the things we want to be playing. The album takes about 45 minutes, and then we’re gonna do another set around the same length, which will encompass all the tracks that we really like to play. Also, we haven’t played “Mesmerise” since the early ‘90s. We didn’t play it last time around. But it’s going to be tricky for us to do the Slide Away shows because we’re going to have to compress everything into a shorter set. We can’t play Whirlpool in full at those shows. We’ll only be dropping maybe two tracks from it, and the rest will be intermingled into other stuff.

What do you think of this new generation of artists that are paying tribute to the bands of your generation?

I have done a bit of research for support bands on the North American tour. I was only searching for local bands in those specific towns, but we’ve also been sent requests from support bands, and Spotify will suggest stuff after I play something. My first impressions are that a lot of it sounds quite generic, like they’re trying to basically sound like Slowdive. Another side of it is that it doesn’t have a great deal of anything to grasp. Like, it doesn’t have an intent, other than to sound like shoegaze. I think we were a little outside that because we did challenge the boundaries of what might be considered shoegaze. I suppose Slowdive are so popular at the moment because they’re the essential oil of shoegaze. If you listen to any of their records, you know what you will get. I can see why it’s easier. You’re not challenged as much to bring in other elements. And I think a lot of the modern stuff I’m hearing isn’t anything that’s really triggering my intellect. I think music has to have something that’s challenging about it that somehow triggers your brain to think a little and not just be wallpaper. A lot of the modern shoegaze I’m hearing is just some sort of a wash, it doesn’t seem to have a mission.

Until I recently finished reading Andrew Perer’s Turn My Head Into Sound, I wasn’t fully cognizant of the agonizing struggle Kevin Shields faced in trying to write the follow-up to My Bloody Valentine’s seminal album, Loveless. As a fan, I had read press clippings over the years detailing how a new record would or would never come, but even when the band dropped m b v in 2013, I still didn’t give the 20-plus years it took him the kind of attention I should have. For any MBV fans in the same boat, I highly recommend giving Perer’s book a read. You might learn something like I did.

The reason I bring this up in a profile on a band that is not My Bloody Valentine, is because San Diego’s Sparkler are likely the closest current band I can think of that makes shoegaze as narcotic and otherworldly as MBV. I don’t think Sparkler would disagree when I say their music sounds heavily influenced by what Shields released throughout his years on Creation Records and beyond. There are lots of guitars in their music, but instead of overdriven riffs, they glide and whirl their notes into tornados of colours and textures.

Formed in 2020 by Chris Sennes and Tron Castillo in the aftermath of their previous Whirr-influenced nu-gaze band Hug, Sparkler sought to recapture the sounds that birthed shoegaze back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In a way to help disassociate themselves from the glut of grunge bands calling their music shoegaze, Sparkler even coined a new term for their music: truegaze. While it might make some want to accuse them of purifying or gatekeeping shoegaze, the term makes a lot of sense when you hear either of their albums: 2023’s debut Big Sonic Chill or their new album, Glidewinder. Sparkler hit differently than other new-gen shoegaze.

As their publicist has pointed out, Sparkler lean more into the feminine side of shoegaze. That might sound weird to some, but when you take into consideration just how much masculine energy has fed into the genre of late, what Sparkler have to offer feels much more aligned with the ambiguous and fey characteristics that the original scene celebrated itself for.

In a time where shoegaze is starting to lose its lustre from a glut of monotony, Glidewinder offers up a divergent path inspired by the originators of the genre.

Can I just get a quick summary of how Sparkler formed?

Chris Sennes: Tron and I were previously in a band about nine years that was more um, nu-gaze or heavy shoegaze. “Whirrship,” as I call it. We did that for a little while and it didn’t really pan out. I pretty much caused the fall out of that band because of my drinking and drug use, and nobody wanted to be around me. So I got sober in 2019, and after that there was just no band. So we just kind of restarted.

I wanted to play something that was less gloomy and doomy, and more of a happy, fun shoegaze kind of project. It’s something that started in our old apartment, just between us two. We recorded demos and stuff and then started adding members so it could turn into a live thing. It was a change in lifestyle, but also about wanting to play music that was more characteristic of a happier and better lifestyle than I was living in at that time.

So the two of you formed Sparkler and the band is now a four-piece?

Chris: Yeah, I would say so. We’ve had like eight different drummers or something like that. There’s a joke that there are five drummers in San Diego and we’ve been through eight of them. So... we’ve had that, and then we had a long-time bassist who was a coworker of mine at Trader Joe’s. He played with us up through two years ago, and then Amelia [Sarkisian], our current bassist, took over. She played on the new record. Our old bassist Jesse introduced us to her and that’s how we ended up recording with her. So we added her and it was a really simple transition because she knew all the songs from mixing and recording the album. And then we had our old label head from Flesh & Bone filling in on drums, but that got difficult because he’s obviously not local. He’s from Chicago. So he was flying in for little tours and random shows so it was just not ideal, obviously. We’ve since found our friend Ian [Marshall], who knows Amelia as well, and played in a band with a really good friend of mine. So I would say that it’s a pretty solid four-piece we have at this time.

Tron: I think for the first time we feel that everyone here is where they’re supposed to be and really committed to the band.

The name Sparkler makes me think of those handheld fireworks that you put in birthday cakes. What other names did you guys consider for the band?

Tron: Ooh, dude! I remember you would send words or phrases that we liked via text, back and forth for a while. I don’t remember what they were.

Chris: I always liked the word Velour. But there was a band called Velour 100.
There are words that just tickle my brain. I wish I could remember more of them.
Velvet was another one too.

Tron: That’s a band now, from Brooklyn. They’re cool.

Chris: I think Sparkler just stuck for me. I love sparkles and like sparkling guitars and glittery stuff. So we were like, “Let’s just do it. It’s a great name.” People would ask us if it because of the Ringo Deathstarr record of the same name but it has nothing to do with that or the fireworks. It’s because I like glitter.

You mentioned Flesh & Bone. Glidewinder is coming out on à La Carte Records, which has a lot of great bands. Was moving labels just a logical transition?

Chris: I think so. They had more resources for what we needed, like a bigger distribution so folks could get our record in the UK or wherever else. They have a larger crew behind them that could help us take the load off because we were incredibly DIY. We still are. We were going to self-release the record just because it felt easier, but then we met with à La Carte, and they were like, “Oh, we can take care of this and that.” So we just felt it was a better step to take for what we wanted. They have a much more structured business model. We don’t have to bug them about tracking sales and all of that stuff. They are good about that and really well organized, so there are multiple people that we can reach out to for assistance. And they’re really good about integrating bands with all the other bands on the label too. It’s a community and a team, more than it is a label just putting out these bands. Everybody on the label seems to communicate really well and help each other out. They all want each other to succeed and grow and all that stuff.

With Flesh & Bone, we were pushing for a lot of things and there wasn’t really any movement. Some of the stuff that I wanted to do got shot down. I don’t mean to out them, but I felt that I wanted to do things and I wanted to grow, but that was not the priority for them. Their priority was selling the records that we could sell rather than trying to expand things with distribution or working with a label in the UK or Japan to release it there. I don’t see how that’s going to help us sell records. I care more about getting the music out there than selling records. I just want to play music and have people listen to it.

I like a lot of what Flesh & Bone puts out, but it feels more like a starter label, as demonstrated by bands like Greet Death and Doused, who both have moved on. I’m curious, how did the two of you discover shoegaze?

Chris: I probably got into it around 2012. There were a lot of adjacent bands that my friends and I were listening to. My best friend since kindergarten, who’s a fantastic musician, introduced me to My Bloody Valentine one night. We were not behaving ourselves the best that night. I think we were probably already listening to Nothing and Whirr, but that’s what introduced me to that and the classic stuff. I had really good friends around me. And I grew up listening to a lot of good music from the ‘80s and ‘90s too. So it was kind of natural.

Tron: I was living in San Francisco, going to San Francisco State at the time that Whirr and Nothing were getting big, around 2014, 2015. And we had a radio show that I had for one of my classes, and our first episode was like, “We’re gonna talk about shoegaze!” And I was like, “Man, that genre sucks,” because I didn’t like Whirr or Nothing. I wasn’t depressed, so I didn’t like that music. It didn’t speak to me. But then, I was forced to listen to the older stuff, and that’s when I discovered The Jesus & Mary Chain, Slowdive and MBV, and I thought it was pretty cool. So that was my introduction to that.

Do you guys have a favourite shoegaze band?

Chris: I think we agree that Fleeting Joys is our favourite, right?

Tron: Yeah.

Chris: The other two, I don’t know. Ian doesn’t really listen to much shoegaze as far as I’m aware. And Amelia listens to it a little bit more now that she’s been immersed in the genre with us.

You both mentioned getting into My Bloody Valentine. I just finished a new book called Turn My Head in the Sound, which does a pretty good job of explaining the band’s history and how they worked in the studio. Everything I’ve read about Kevin Shields in the studio is pretty fascinating. Since he seemed to lay down the blueprint, I’m curious to know how much of his process did you research or study for Sparkler? Basically, how did you achieve a lot of the sounds on your records, because it was a very painstaking, gruelling process for him?

Chris: Zero. I have read some articles explaining all the different things and experiments that he tried in the studio, but I don’t think we ever said, “We should do this.” We went into the studio with a blank slate, and Ameilia was really easy to work with. She was like, “We’re gonna just do this, and we’re gonna try a bunch of things. We’re gonna throw the kitchen sink at it. We’re gonna have fun. We’re gonna experiment.”

Tron: Yeah, you did a whole day of just sitting with every pedal and looping, making textures and messing with a couple boards and running it through whatever you could. For hours. And that was the experimental stuff that we did. Like, “What if we just did this? We’ll pick out what sounds really cool, and then use it as a transition for each song.” So it was like stuff like that. Playing with textures and sounds was a big one.

How arduous was the process?

Chris: It really just depends for sure. We only recorded it in a total of five days, but there were definitely hours that were pretty painstaking. But for the most part, it was fun trying to figure out what we were gonna do and how we would achieve it. It was fun. I like problem solving too. If there’s a certain sound or something that I want to achieve, I’m gonna find a way to do that. With percussion, because some of the instruments weren’t sounding the way I wanted them to sound, we ended up putting a urethane skateboard wheel on a drumstick, and used that as the mallet instead. That really got the pound I wanted. Just random stuff like that.

How much do you rely on using digital processors or computer programming compared to pedals and amps when you’re creating your music?

Chris: It’s all pedals and amps. I don’t really think we used much digital programming or plug-ins. We didn’t do a lot of that. There are your standard plug-ins, but I think most of it was just working with guitars and amps, live drums, and some synth stuff. It was mostly raw.

Tron: Yeah, we tried really hard to capture what was coming out of the amps onto the recording. That was a big deal for us, to try to make it sound like that. So that way when we do play live, you’re getting that same thing just louder. It’s not gonna be too far off. As close as possible.

I was gonna ask how challenging it is to take these songs from the studio and perform them live.

Chris: Ha ha, I personally think it’s the opposite for me! I think it’s what we sound like live, and then trying to apply that to how we can sound in a studio. Microphones just capture sound differently. Different rooms catch your sound differently and stuff like that. So there’s stuff where it’s like, “Oh, I hear this coming out of my amp. But then when I hear it coming through the monitors, I’m like, that is not what my guitar sounds like. Why does it sound like that?” So there have definitely been some aspects of live recordings that’s been difficult to apply live, but we found a way to do that. We do play with backing tracks, like MIDI drums and synths, and interludes, and random programmed percussion, like weird little shakers that don’t sound like shakers. Stuff like that.

We have one fluid set. We press play: the right one goes to the house and the left goes to our drummer’s ears, and then we just play for 30-35 minutes. With interludes it’s seamless. There’s no stopping, there’s no quiet, there’s no silence, there’s no talking in between songs. Everything transitions, one into another. So that part is definitely difficult for sure, but a lot of fun as well. The more frustrating part is getting what you do live and applying that to the studio.

It’s funny because that sounds more like how a rock band thinks: trying to capture the live sound in the studio. Whereas I thought Sparkler would be a studio band, not a live band. I was not expecting you to say that at all.

Chris: That’s really cool! Thank you so much for saying that. It’s really nice that you think we sound that good in the studio. Because it was a lot of work and there were aspects that were painstaking, for sure, in trying to achieve the sounds that we wanted to in the studio.

There was a lot about Kevin Shields using the glide guitar technique in that book about My Bloody Valentine. I was wondering if the album’s title, Glidewinder, is a direct reference to glide guitar?

Chris: Yeah, 100 percent. There is also this blues record called Slidewinder by J.B. Hutto. He used a lot of slide guitar, and I think that’s really cool, so it was just a word that I came up with that was kind of reflective of the sounds and the style of guitar. So I thought it was just a fun use of words. I have words that tickle my brain and I like combining things to make weird, silly stuff. I think about words way too often. So it was something I came up with off of the J.B. Hutto album and off the glide guitar.

Tell me about “truegaze.” Is that your reaction to what shoegaze has become?

Chris: Yeah, 100 percent. As I just mentioned, I like coming up with weird words and phrases and combining words. So that was definitely one of those things because there are so many subgenres of shoegaze.

Which is so funny because shoegaze itself is a subgenre… I mean, it was originally just a scene, but there are now subgenres within shoegaze. It’s become so silly.

Chris: The evolution of it has gone so far beyond and into a complete recategorization of it. But “truegaze” was just essentially a play on words, where we wanted it to be more about the classic and original sound, than nu-gaze, grungegaze or doomgaze, or whatever the fuck else gazes there are. It was just a fun word, and I think it might bother some people, but...

Tron: It bothered [our publicist], but that was hilarious.

Chris: He was like, “I don’t know if I should use that in your EPK, guys. It might put people off.” He thought it sounded pretentious.

Tron: It can give off that vibe. But also Stereogum premiered the first single, and in the first line they wrote, “Oh look, another shoegaze band!” But that’s not what we’re trying to do. We want to be a throwback to the old stuff.

Do you worry about being accused of gatekeeping? Some fans don’t tolerate that.

Tron: I hope we’re not. I like to use it in a way where this is how you can identify what we’re gonna sound like without having to hear us. We’re not gatekeeping anything because we do like a lot of the modern new bands. We are friends with many of them. So we have nothing against the new stuff, but as a band you want to be able to say something that’s going to make people think maybe this is going to be a little bit different. The same way everyone else creates their own little fugaze, sludgegaze, happygaze, whatever. We’re just playing on that whole thing too.

Chris: People can interpret it how they want to, but it’s mostly just something fun for us. It’s kind of an identifier for us.

Chris, at the beginning, you used a word that I’ve never heard before,“Whirrship,” which is a word that is more relevant than ever because Whirr are kinda the biggest shoegaze on the planet. I can remember when they first came out, and to see them become so huge is a total surprise for me. Do you think that band is responsible for a lot of these newer bands that have just materialized out of nowhere?

Tron: 100 percent. And there’s nothing bad about that. I think it’s amazing that you could take a genre of music that had its own vibe, and then you created a sound that was something completely new and different. Chris, you were talking to [Whirr’s] Nick Bassett about it, because he mixed our last record and he said, “I don’t know, man. I was just trying to sound like my favourite bands and Whirr is what we came up with.”

Chris: Like what he said about Whirr, Sparkler was a byproduct of what we tried to achieve in a way. We were doing this all in a time before there was so much access to the world of internet pedals and gear demos and videos called “Here’s how to sound like My Bloody Valentine” or “Here’s how to sound like Slowdive.” They really did that before shoegaze was more popular with the content creators and the YouTubers and all that. They did what they did with the resources that they had and Whirr became a byproduct of wanting to play that similar style of music. And then it kind of jumped a few phases, I suppose. They tried it in like two days and it just became the standard for what shoegaze is now, in a way.

Tron: I think that’s so cool. Like, your homies just like changed the trajectory of music forever. You gotta give them kudos.

What do you feel are the biggest differences between Glidewinder and Big Sonic Chill?

Chris: I’m still pretty new to music, like playing music and writing my own songs. I only started playing guitar when I was 22 and I’m 32 now. So it’s been a long time now. But I think Big Sonic Chill was definitely more like asking, “What do we want to sound like? What sounds do we want to achieve?” Throughout that entire record, we tried different things and I think that Glidewinder is more focused. I think it’s more intentional. I think it’s more direct with the sounds that we want to make, the music that we want to make, without skewing too far and having weird outlier songs.

[On Glidewinder] I wrote songs with more structure, whereas Big Sonic Chill was a lot more free form, which made it really hard for people to learn them. There were quite a few songs that didn’t really make any sense. If you break it all down into math, into numbers and parts and all that, they don’t make sense.

“Pet Hotel” reminds me a lot of Slowdive’s “Souvlaki Space Station.” It has the reverb and delay, and a pretty strong dub influence to it. What is the genesis of that song?

Chris: That song is ten years old and goes back to our old band.

Tron: That was the first song I ever helped you write. I did the vocals on that one and the bassline.

Chris: That’s still a song that we really liked from back then, and we decided to rework it and it ended up being really cool. We liked it a lot. It does sound like “Souvlaki Space Station,” for sure. Hopefully it doesn’t get called out too much. I don’t think we ripped it off too hard. We took some of the things they did and applied them to the song.

Tron: Honestly, it’s just a “bing, bing, bing…”

Chris: And honestly, I love dub. So the reverb-y drum machine snares with the delay and all that was really cool to do. I also love playing bass. It’s one of my favourite instruments to write with. I love putting down some guitar and then getting to have some fun finding a bassline to play underneath my guitar parts. But we think it turned out really cool.

Did you release an original version of that song with your old band Hug?

Chris: Yes, we did. We did, yeah. It’s somewhere deep, deep, deep in the archive. The good thing is that we wrote the whole song, so nobody’s not getting credit.
We didn’t steal anything from anybody else. We decided that this song is still good and still very much like Sparkler. So we just reworked it to be even more Sparkler. Originally I wasn’t totally all for it, but Tron loved that song and really wanted to do it. So I said, “Okay, let’s do it. Let’s completely tear it apart and add new bass and add new leads and new vocals and new drums.” It’s mostly just the guitar that stayed the same.

What happened with the naming of “Untitled 2”? Was it too tricky to come up with a name for that song?

Tron: 90 percent of the song titles leave without titles because Chris will do a demo on GarageBand and he’ll just name it whatever fun word is stuck in his head. I don’t think he ever named that one, so it was just “Untitled 2” because there was already an “Untitled 1” somewhere else. And then we just kept it “Untitled 2” and I never went in to update or change it at all.

Chris: I came up with names for it and then I got out voted. Everyone was like, “Let’s just keep it as ‘Untitled 2.’ I think it’s cool.” So I said that’s fine. I have plenty of other words that I would like to use for titles one day.

I know of a few shoegaze bands in San Diego, like yourselves, Blossom and Distressor. What is the music scene like there?

Tron: Blossom, we love. We’re really good friends with Mateo [Ruiz]. He is like 18.
He’s a baby, so I call him my little cousin. We met him when he was like 16 years old, when he was a baby baby. And so, yeah, we love Blossom. Distressor, we’ve known Cory [Kurkierewicz] for a long time. I think we actually played their first show with them ever, as our old band. I think because the scene itself in San Diego, as far as shoegaze goes, is pretty small, you just end up becoming friends with everybody. It’’s all very interconnected and intertwined. I don’t think Distressor are even local anymore.

Chris: They’re split between Atlanta and San Diego. And Distressor’s drummer was our first drummer too in Sparkler.

Tron: So everything is connected, and that’s what the scene feels like. You play with your friends a lot, or you try to get on bills of the genres that you would normally play with.

Chris: I think San Diego’s community is pretty tight-knit, because for a big city, we’re not really a big city. We don’t have a hundred venues to play in San Diego.
We have two main ones that people actually want to play at and go to. There are a couple of DIY ones these days, but it used to be a lot different for sure. For such a big city it has such a small city venue kind of a deal, where a lot of us have played the same venues with the same bands and been a part of each other’s musical careers. Whereas in San Francisco, your friends play in a band but they have no idea who these other people in this other band are even if they’ve played with them before.

Tron: It’s funny, because every time we do interviews people will ask about some San Diego bands, and I’m like, “Yep, those are the homies. We know them.”

What is another band from San Diego that fans of Sparkler should know about?

Chris: The obvious ones are Blossom and Distressor, but we don’t really need to shout them out. I’d say Big Blue World. They’re really cool. Good friends that we have known forever.

Tron: I love Big Blue World! Yeah, listen to Big Blue World.

Chris: Also Pleasure Pill. They rock. I think people that listen to us should definitely listen to Pleasure Pill.

Tron: They’re true Oasis fans.

As San Diegans, have you guys ever gone to Dia De Los Deftones?

Chris: No, but I like Deftones. I’m not a huge fan though.

Tron: As a Latina, I have to like Deftones. I think they’re cool. Never in my life, would I ever call them any kind of ‘gaze band.

Agreed. I’m not sure when Deftones became shoegaze pioneers but a lot of people in the world feel they’re part of it. To me they escaped nu-metal and just became the best mainstream heavy rock band in the world.

Chris: Not to back track, but some guy we know tried telling me that Superheaven or Daylight was shoegaze, and I was like, “What are you talking about?” I was trying not to gate-keep, but he was convinced. “They’re totally shoegaze. They have the shoegaze guitar sound.” And I said, “I don’t really think so. Just because there’s distortion and chorus on some stuff doesn’t make it shoegaze. There’s not even really any reverb.” It’s more like post-grunge. And I think we’re in the post-gaze era now.

Tron: Superheaven are a great band though.

Chris: Yeah, I love Superheaven. I didn’t really like their most recent record too much, but their first two records are really cool. I think Ours Is Chrome was so ahead of its time. Because after that record they tanked as a band, but now every band sounds like that record. They were five, ten years too early and they’re doing really well for themselves.

I noticed you guys are big soccer fans. Whose idea was it to sell the soccer gear as merch?

Chris: Yeah, that’s me. I’m wearing a soccer shirt right now. I grew up playing soccer through college. But I drank too much and did too many drugs and I ended up getting kicked off my team and dropping out of school and getting sober. So I’ve been sober twice. First time didn’t last very long, but in the last six or seven years I got back into it. I really like the English football culture. I think football culture everywhere is really cool. It can be toxic too, but there’s really cool fashion.

Tron: And so many older bands like Oasis, Stone Roses are getting involved with it.

Chris: Swervedriver has a song that mentions their club too.

It seems to be a thing now. Deftones have those soccer jerseys, same with Hotline TNT. Was this a dream of yours to put your band’s name on some kit?

Chris: Yeah, I’ve been waiting a really long time to do this. I’m so excited to finally do it. What Deftones did was cool though. They sponsored a local youth team in Sacramento. I would love to do that. Put Sparkler’s name on this club youth team and just try to help run the organization. That would be really fun and cool. But yeah, the soccer thing is definitely more popular and I don’t know where that’s coming from. I’ve been dreaming of doing this for years. And it’s not like I’m ahead of the curve or anything like that, but it’s cool.

What team do you support?

Chris: I’m a Chelsea fan.

And you play in a league?

Chris: Yeah, I play in an adult league. Sunday League Superstar. That’s the name of the next Sparkler record!

Wait, does Sparkler have any songs about soccer?

Chris: No.

Tron: Maybe I’ll do you a solid and write a song about soccer.

Chris: “Blue Is The Colour” is actually our Chelsea song, but it’s just like the name of the Chelsea anthem. I hope that one day “Blue Is The Colour” becomes a Chelsea song.

There will never be another Cocteau Twins. No other voice will ever sound “like God” the way Elizabeth Fraser’s did. No guitar will ever reverberate as divinely as Robin Guthrie’s did. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t worthy successors out there who can carry the torch the Cocteaus lit decades ago.

London’s deary are a perfect example of a band taking cues from Fraser and Guthrie, while also charting a course of their own. Like Cocteau Twins, there are three of them, they make truly celestial dream pop, and their music feels very much its own thing at the moment. It just so happens that their new label boss is Simon Raymonde, former bassist of the aforementioned legends.

Formed by guitarist/producer Ben Easton and vocalist Dottie Cockram in 2021 amidst the COVID lockdown, the then-duo signed with the esteemed Sonic Cathedral label and released a handful of EPs and singles that quickly made them one of the most exciting UK bands in the recent shoegaze/dream pop explosion. Originally relying on a drum machine, they added Harry Catchpole as their permanent drummer, giving the band a more human element leading up to the release of their debut album.

Jumping ship to Bella Union (where Cockram also works as an admin assistant), deary sure feel like they’re in a prime position to make the most of the opportunity. The album, Birding, fulfills all of the promise their previous releases hinted at, while serving as a more complete statement of the artistic leaps they’ve taken. A sprawling tapestry of halcyon-inducing dream pop, it excels thanks to Cockram’s voice, which has its own beatific lure to it, Catchpole’s more organic rhythms, and Easton’s shimmering guitar reverberations - all of which join forces to conjure music that transcends beyond the heavens.

While dream pop is a term thrown around and mis-labelled quite a bit these days, Birding is quite possibly the finest, purest example of the genre we’ve been offered in recent memory.

The album is called Birding. I have some family members who go bird watching. Are any members of the band bird enthusiasts? Where did the title come from?

Dottie Cockram: I think it was mostly because I was spending a lot of time thinking about birds. I wouldn’t necessarily say I was watching them as bird watchers do. I’m not that tuned into what every species is. I can just about name some local birds. But I recently moved to the seaside, so I’ve been sitting on the beach a lot whilst we were writing this album, trying to find some inspiration or just trying to take a bit of time out of my life, just to stare at the sea. There were a lot of seabirds around and I think I just got a bit taken away by them, their majesty and their brilliance. But also the kinds of things that make them animals as well, you know, the negative things as well as the positive things. I was talking to Ben about it and he said we should really use this as an influence for the album. So I brought loads of poetry books and loads of books about birds and I just kind of got invested. And it really inspired us for the album.

You guys decided to become your own producers for this album. How did you find that process? And how much harder was it to make all those decisions when everything’s down to you instead of getting outside help when you need it?

Harry Catchpole: A lot of the production was done in a big chunk of days near the end with Iggy B, our friend who he helped us with the production for a lot of it. But we had a lot in mind that just came along during the process. Obviously we laid all the drums down first, so I kind of had skeletons of tracks to work with, but a lot of it just developed all the way throughout, which was really fun. And it just came sporadically while we were in the studio, even just looking at instruments across the room. There were engineering choices made then and there, like a snare lying on the other side of the room that we just picked up and said, “Yeah, let’s just use that.” We were really happy with how it turned out. It was super collaborative. We were all in one room in The Crypt and just got a lot of it done there.

Dottie: Ben is an absolutely amazing producer himself and he does a lot of our demos. A lot of people always say, “These demos just sound complete already.” He’s got such an amazing ear for this kind of music and building up so many beautiful layers of guitars, and me sending vocals and him really making the piece become something amazing and something that is our sound. He and Iggy have such a great friendship. We wouldn’t be sounding like we do without Ben and Iggy working together, definitely.

Previously, you released EPs and singles. What made it the right time to put out a full length at this point?

Dottie: I think we’ve been thinking about it for a while. We intended to do an album a bit earlier, but I think it just didn’t feel right. I think we came into it because of the way the band started during lockdown, where me and Ben couldn’t actually meet up and play together. So we were sending ideas back and forth, but we needed to play these songs live, to play together and learn about our relationship with each other. Then we met Harry and it’s been a slow development. I think we needed that time to make music, share it and write songs we didn’t like, write songs that we love, and just get to a point where we know that we were going to write an album. We just needed to get to the right place, I think.

In the streaming age, there seems to be two camps right now: one that still believes an album is an artistic statement, and one that feels releasing singles and EPs are more effective because they take less time to get out to the world. Where do you stand on this?

Harry: I think an album’s a big statement. It’s a big world builder. I think it allows more time for a world or a concept to be built, even if it’s not conceptual, you know? I think it’s a much bigger statement. There’s a lot more time to work on things. I don’t think an EP is as simple as getting a couple tracks together and just shoving them out on as a release. But I think an album is more artistic and you have more time to make a statement, like I said.

Dottie: Streaming has had such an impact on the industry and how we listen and how digestible things are. I just love listening to an album, beginning to end, and being encapsulated in something that these people have built a world around, like Harry was saying. Having a good hour of being in this place where you’ve got a soundtrack that’s all the same. I think that’s really special.

Musically, was there anything you were consciously trying to do differently from what you’d done with the EPs?

Dottie: Harry’s drums are quite a big change because before we didn’t really have an in-house drummer. We worked with samples and we had friends come in, like the amazing Simon Scott [of Slowdive] play on our last EP. So to actually have a drummer that we could take these ideas to, and Harry spent so long building up these drums and being really specific about the sound. I think it’s made a massive impact on us as a band, and as the album in general just has a bit energy, and a bit more depth to it when you have all these really beautiful sounds and intentional moments.

There are new sounds on this record. “Gypsophila” for instance, is a straight-up ambient track, while “Garden of Eden” is more acoustic-based. Did making those artistic leaps feel like the band was consciously trying something new or was the process more organic?

Harry: I think “Garden of Eden” fell into place really well, to be honest. It made perfect sense and I know Dottie put a lot of work into it, but it came about really quickly. We were set on something like that from when we had a discussion while we were staying with Simon and Abbey [Raymonde] in Brighton. It made perfect sense to us. I know it might seem a bit different, but there are tracks from before that feel like cousins to it. I know it’s an acoustic, Dots-only track, but I think it works really well. So it doesn’t feel like that much of a jump. Something like “Gypsophila,” I think it’s really cool, but again, as Dottie said earlier, Ben just got it done and we were so on board with it. So it wasn’t a conscious jump for us, and I think if it sounds like a natural development, not a forced one to a listener, then that’s a really good thing.

I first learned of deary when you signed with Sonic Cathedral, one of my favourite labels. I interviewed Nat in 2024 for the label’s 20th anniversary. What did being a part of his label and that community do for the band?

Dottie: I think it was so influential to us to be a part of that. It’s such a strong community that really cares about the artists and comes to every show, buys all the merch, buys all the records and helps these small bands and these small labels be able to do what they can do. I could tell that everyone of them trusted Nat to pick the next great band. That sounds really smug, but they really do trust him to find amazing musicians to join in. I think we were so lucky to find Nat and be able to be a part of that because being in a band is really tough, especially when you’re starting out. To be able to fund, even put our first EP onto vinyl is such a privilege to be able to do. We couldn’t have done that without Nat and his amazing community.

Moving from Sonic Cathedral to Bella Union feels a bit like a graduation of sorts. From a smaller indie label to a much bigger one. What brought on that decision?

Dottie: It felt very natural. We started working with them. How did it happen? This is Ben’s territory. I think Simon reached out to us online or something and we just started talking to him. I think he liked one of our Instagram posts and I remember me and Ben messaging each other like, “Oh my God! Simon from Cocteau Twins!” Because we’re obviously massive Cocteau Twins fans. We couldn’t believe it. But we met up with him and had a drink, and he was just like, “Is there anything we can do to help? It would be great to work with you.” And it just kind of happened.

So it was a big deal for you to meet him and to join the label?

Dottie: Yeah, absolutely. It was amazing. I remember walking to go meet him in King’s Cross and it was so rainy. And I really don’t like King’s Cross because it’s so busy. And I was just really nervous because we were meeting someone from one of our favourite bands. But it was just so easy. I think he brought me a piece of cheesecake and we had a beer; it was just really nice. You just have to remember that these people from these amazing bands are just people who were in the same place as you at one point. He’s just really supportive and kind. He and his wife Abbey have been amazing.

Have you read Simon’s memoir?

Dottie: I have, yes. Have you?

Yes. I interviewed Simon a few years back for a piece on Milk & Kisses turning 25 years old, which felt like a good lesson on what not to do when you’re a band. Maybe it’s too early in the relationship, but has Simon imparted any of his wisdom to the band yet?

Dottie: Yeah, he’s been really helpful with me with my vocals, because I’ve got quite a delicate voice amongst very loud guitars and loud drums. I’m also quite a nervous performer. And he spent a lot of time with Liz, and she obviously has a gorgeous, gorgeous voice. He told me about her nerves and how she dealt with it, and how to become a better performer. One time we had a pretty bad show in Brighton and we stayed with Simon afterwards, and we were all feeling a bit rubbish. But he told us that no show is ever going to be perfect. Like your guitar amps are going to go a bit crazy or the mic will cut out, but that is just the beauty of live music. And it just made me feel good, hearing that from someone who was in such an amazing band. People don’t think about their bad shows or when they hit a bum note, they think about this iconic shoegaze band that absolutely changed music in the ’80s and ’90s.

Speaking of Simon’s old band, you and Ben made the decision to attempt something Cocteau Twins never did: add a full-time drummer to the line-up. What made it the right time to bring Harry into the fold?

Dottie: What made the time right? Ben and I always had the idea that we would be a songwriting duo, we would be deary, and then we would have live musicians to help us play our music. We were looking for a drummer to play live because our other one left, and we found Harry. He just had this amazing style. I think you were covering a Beach House song, Harry. Is that right?

Harry: I was, yeah. I was doing a Beach House cover and then some jazz bits as well. But Ben reached out to me. I was moving down to London at the time because I was in Manchester before. And everything just lined up really well and catapulted a bit after that. Things just worked out for us quite naturally. We weren’t too sure of how the dynamic would be at the start and we were all fine with whatever. I think the two of them felt the time was right, and they said, “Let’s just do it as a three. I think this makes sense.” And it worked.

Dottie: I think you started playing the Aurelia EP songs with us. And then we thought you brought so much to those songs that we couldn’t bring, because we’re not drummers. Ben’s obviously an amazing musician, but we can’t hear drums like Harry does. So, we thought it would be an amazing step up for us to be able to have a drummer come into our little family and help us hear these things.

Harry, how familiar were you with the music Dottie and Ben were making?

Harry: I think maybe “Fairground” had popped up on the radio, but I knew this is super my stuff. I wanted to do a project like this for so long. When they reached out, I thought it was a spam email. So I think I ignored it for a month or two. It seemed so dodgy. But no, I wasn’t that familiar really. They sent me “The Moth” and I think “The Drift” to see what I would do with them. They weren’t even out yet, so there wasn’t a huge amount of stuff out on Spotify. I wasn’t that familiar, but God, I’m in deep now, aren’t I?

You mentioned “The Moth” and “The Drift,” both of which have pre-programmed drums on them. Harry, what was your approach to playing those songs live?

Harry: I find real joy in trying to perfectly emulate a live version of them. I can add my own bits, like getting a little snare to make it sound like “Fairground,” or I play it note for note where I can. We have pads and electronic stuff involved, but a real beefy kit hits better live. A lot of it is as best a recreation as I can, really. But I want to start exploring and incorporating more of that into the set, like a blending of real and machine drums. Because I think that’s so much fun to toy with.

In the bio, it mentions that after bringing in Harry, you needed to stop following roadmaps and decide on how you wanted deary to sound. What was that discussion like?

Dottie: We have quite an array of influences between us. Like Harry and I really love Big Thief and Adrianne Lenker, that kind of minimal, folky, spooky kind of music. But we also love Massive Attack and Portishead and these really dynamic, eerie, beautiful pieces of music. I think it’s just a way of us trying to have all that, but then still be something that we’ve worked on for a really long time. I remember being in the studio and we were going through the songs and a lot of them seemed to end on this big crescendo, like this big shoegazy, loud ending. And I turned to Ben and Harry and said, “We have to really think about where we want to take these and if it’s right for the song or if we’re just trying to follow things we’ve heard that inspired us.

Harry: Like “Terra Fable.” Near the end, we were toying with this idea of following where our minds wanted to go, which is up in this big crescendo. But then we said, “Let’s not go with that. Let’s just try and not really reach a conclusion.” It’s just kind of floating as an idea, which we thought was something really fun to do. It’s not this big obvious crescendo and we took a bit of time to think about it. Dots had a go in her own way at the idea in the nicest, friendliest way possible. It was when we were at Simon’s studio, wasn’t it, Dots?

Dottie: Yeah. I think we’d all been working so hard on the album and when you do something big like that, you can get a bit lost in it. Like, “What was that first song I did? What was that thing we did yesterday?” It becomes this big blur. We were sitting and listening to all that we had and trying to think of how we could make this something that we really love and how to make this ours.

That song “Terra Fable” basically ends with a fade out, which was such a popular choice for musicians and producers in the ’80s and ’90s. Is that a thing anymore, just fading out a song to end it?

Harry: I love it. I’m going to do that all the time. For the next project for sure we need more fade outs.

I mostly write about shoegaze and dream pop. Do you feel like deary is a part of those communities?

Dottie: Yeah. I think it’s amazing. I think there’s been such a great resurgence over the past couple years of this sound, maybe started loosely by Beach House and this kind of dream pop world, which slowly got a bit more distorted and louder. There are these amazing bands at the moment, like Just Mustard and Whitelands, who are both incredible and we love them.

That whole shoegaze and dream pop scene began in the UK, but now it feels very international. Does it feel like there is a scene or community for that music where you’re located?

Harry: Yeah. It’s everywhere. Obviously there’s Whitelands, who we are on Sonic Cathedral. They’re killing it. They’re smashing it. They’re doing great. I don’t know about straight shoegaze, but it’s bled its way into a lot of UK artists, even if it’s not as noticeable. Like TTSSFFU, who I know from Manchester. You can feel it going through everything at the moment. I feel like it’s got its pulse on everything. I don’t think it’s just a trend. I don’t know. I think there are people who could probably explain it a bit better than me, but it’s everywhere here as well.

Timing is apparently everything, but that’s never been the case for Should. Originally formed in the early 1990s by Marc Ostermeier, then a student at the University of Texas in Austin, Should, or shiFt as he originally called it, was an ambitious project designed to test his abilities at making the music he was listening to at the time: shoegaze (then in its first wave).

Using an 8-track recorder, Ostermeier, with help from his brother Eric and friend Tanya Maus, used unconventional techniques to create his own walls of sound in his bedroom. As he described on his label’s website, “Songs were built around guitar phrases recorded onto cassette that were then sampled and looped using an Ensoniq EPS sampler. An overloaded 4-channel mixer was the primary source of disortion.”

From these intimate sessions came 1992’s The Saints Have All Indifference and 1993’s Resonate cassette (Whirlingpool), followed by the mini-album A Folding Sieve (ND) in 1994. While the approach was minimalistic and rather bare, Should, as they would later be called, pulled off these miracle little budget symphonies that rivalled the professionally-recorded works he took inspiration from.

In 1998, Should released what many would consider their magnum opus, their debut full-length Feed Like Fishes. Not as indebted to shoegaze as A Folding Sieve, Feed Like Fishes saw Ostermeier attempt more measured and controlled techniques, eschewing his unique style of sampling for an actual guitar. While it does feature a sparkling cover of The Wedding Present’s “Spangle,” the album used a framework closer to the minimal attitude of slowcore and the boundless experiments of post-rock. Mostly ditching his earlier fascination with shoegaze, as the label puts it, he instead decided on “4 sides of minimal pop songs that favor restraint over release, atmosphere over gesture.”

While Ostermeier would continue to modify the sound of Should’s music over the years, Feed Like Fishes, began to earn itself a cult status, developing an audience through a variety of channels. A vinyl reissue of A Folding Sieve (as well as a cassette re-release of Resonate) by Captured Tracks in 2011 as part of the label’s Shoegaze Archives series helped introduce Should to a whole new generation of fans.

After months of teasing it, now comes a long-awaited vinyl reissue of Feed Like Fishes from the wonderful folks at The Numero Group, who continue to unearth and dust off out-of-print treasures. The expanded edition includes a bonus disc of material from the same period that reveal Ostermeier’s shoegaze era was still alive and kicking. Rather than a Feed Like Fishes companion, the ten tracks serve as complete and brand new Should album that will no doubt delight shoegazers yearning for their next great fixation.

What is the story behind the name change from shiFt to Should?

Marc Ostermeier: In 1997, a major label sent us a “cease and desist” letter demanding that we stop using the name shiFt. The label was about to release an album by another band named Shift. However, we had been using the name for several more years so we replied with our own “cease and desist” letter documenting how we held the right to the trademark. The label then offered us a hefty sum to give up the rights. We counter-offered, and they capitulated. As for why I chose “Should”, I wanted an atypical name that meant almost nothing.

You had already released some recordings, including A Folding Sieve, under the name shiFt. From what I can tell it was still early days for you, but how much of a hindrance was that for you?

I figured we had so little name recognition that the name change wouldn’t matter that much in the long run. The fact that we didn’t play live anymore was likely more of a hindrance to getting noticed, in retrospect.

From what I read, you didn’t actually buy a guitar until after you’d recorded A Folding Sieve. Beforehand you were just sampling guitars. Was that always the plan? What made you sample guitars instead of playing one?

Yes, that’s correct. I’d been making music under the name shiFt for about five years before I started recording what would be A Folding Sieve. It was all performed on keyboards. When I started graduate school in 1990 (at University of Texas - Austin), I bought an Ensoniq EPS sampling keyboard. It was an early workstation in that it had a 8-track sequencer and you could have eight instruments online at once, which could be routed to eight separate outputs (i.e. you could put different effects on different sounds). I also bought a Fostex 8-track reel-to-reel tape recorder.

The music I was making pre-A Folding Sieve had no guitars. I’d started to get into shoegaze music with bands like My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Pale Saints, Medicine, and The Boo Radleys. But when I heard the Lilys’ In the Presence of Nothing something just clicked, and I thought I could do something like that, but with layered sampled guitar phrases. As I couldn’t play guitar in the traditional sense, it was a quicker route to explore making music in this style. As I was generally pleased with the initial results, I kept doing it for a while. But I eventually found the process too limiting.

How you were writing and recording wasn’t exactly conventional. Were you just figuring it out by yourself and that’s how it unfolded or were you interested in challenging yourself to do things differently?

I was just figuring out a way to make the music I wanted to play without waiting for me to gain the technical ability to play the guitar. To start with, I sampled a few guitar snippets from some parts my brother Eric had recorded for music he was working on. I also borrowed his guitar and recorded to cassette some very simple guitar phrases. I picked the best parts, sampled them, and started playing around with what I could do with those. I found I could get very interesting distortion running those guitar samples too hot through an old mixing board and some rackmount effects units.

Should first began as a solo project. How did Eric get involved? Was that collaboration more out of convenience because he was your brother or did the two of you just have similar interests/tastes?

We have very similar interests in music (he was the one who first turned me on to shoegaze). So we would talk about music all the time. But we didn’t live in the same state. By Fall 1992 he was in law school at Michigan, and I was in Austin. His contribution to A Folding Sieve was a couple of the guitar samples I took from music he recorded. But he did come to Austin for a couple of summers, and we did create music together. Some of it appears on Feed Like Fishes. He wrote and performed the guitar and bass parts of “Faded”. “Inst2” is built around his delayed guitar. He wrote his bass part to “In Nine” after I told him I was not happy with my own. Later, after I’d moved to State College, PA he visited and we built “Lullen” around his guitar part and “Memdrive” around his bass.

What made you begin collaborating with Tanya? What did she bring to Should’s music?

I’ve always liked the pairing of male and female vocals. Tanya was my wife’s friend from high school. She was the maid of honour at our wedding in 1992 and soon afterwards moved to Austin. She is a very gifted singer. I asked if she was interested in adding vocals. We tried it out and it worked well.

In the reissue’s liner notes it’s interesting to hear you be so open about your influences like Lilys, 18th Dye, Codeine and Low. But originally you aspired to make music that was bigger, more expansive like My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive. How much did your limited abilities influence what you wanted Should’s music to sound like?

I like simplicity and minimalism. I like dissonance paired with melody. How things sound, how they are structured, how they make you feel are what is most important. Virtuosity on an instrument is not required for that if you can make it interesting sonically and in other ways. So, yes, I could only play simple things on guitar, but that was all that was needed to get where I wanted to go. By the time I was working on Feed Like Fishes, I had become very interested in bands like Bedhead, Codeine, and Low, and that slowcore influence is apparent. Yo La Tengo and 18^th Dye were also big influences.

What do you remember most about making Feed Like Fishes?

I was no longer using samples and was playing guitar. I especially remember on some songs doing take after take after take until I could get one without messing up. Everything was recorded on the 8-track. There was no fixing mistakes by cutting and pasting after the fact like there is today on the computer. Often that meant accepting small mistakes. I don’t know how apparent they are, but I still hear them.

What kind of expectations did you have for its original release?

It’s hard to remember. A Folding Sieve had received some strong reviews including a glowing review in Alternative Press (which was a big deal back then, at least to me). So I had some optimism from that. By 1998, the album was ready. Dan Plunkett (owner of ND, which released A Folding Sieve) had released our “Own Two Feet”/”Soothed” 7” in 1997 but was unsure when he might be able to release an album. We weren’t going to play live any more. It never was a great experience having to use a backup tape. We all lived in different states. I was working 50+ hour weeks as a postdoc trying to amass a research portfolio necessary to give me a chance at an academic position. So I doubted any record label would be interested in releasing a virtually unknown artist that wasn’t going to tour and had no concrete plans to record subsequent albums. I had recently encouraged Eric to self-release his music (under the Motion Picture moniker). He chose Words On Music as the label name and his album Every Last Romance was the label’s first release in March 1998. We decided to add to the Words On Music roster releasing Feed Like Fishes in October 1998. We’ve been running the label for 28 years now with releases by more than a dozen artists.

When did you learn that the album had been praised as a shoegaze classic and there was this newfound interest in Should’s music?

Captured Tracks’ interest in reissuing A Folding Sieve (2011) came as a pleasant surprise. Around 2020 I started to get invitations for Should to play in festivals and from small labels to release Feed Like Fishes on vinyl. Streaming of Feed like Fishes began to increase then too. Numero’s interest cemented that something was going on.

When did The Numero Group approach you about the reissue? How did you decide on the final tracklist? Was there a lot of material to sort through that you wanted to add for that second disc?

Rob Sevier at Numero called me in November 2024 to express interest in issuing an expanded Feed like Fishes. Coincidently, Words On Music had been planning to reissue Feed Like Fishes in 2025 as an expanded edition with period tracks and outtakes from the album, so I had already recovered most of the tracks. Numero let me propose the extra songs and the track order (which they accepted). The order on the second disc is chronological. This seemed apt for a self-described archive label. We included most of the extra material recorded during this period. Left off are a few instrumentals (mostly guitar drones in the vein of Main) and a few alternate versions of songs that are very similar to the album version or lack Tanya’s vocals. The CD version does not include “This House I’m Living In” due to space limitations.

Does having the album on vinyl mean anything to you as the artist behind the music?

The formative years for my musical taste were largely pre-CD. So I have lot of vinyl from before 1990. Nostalgia plays a big role in being happy to see the album on vinyl. But my own personal preference is to listen music on CDs for sound quality and convenience. I am disappointed when new music I want to buy is released on vinyl only.

Captured Tracks reissued A Folding Sieve back in 2011 as part of its Shoegaze Archives series. Did you ever feel like Should was a part of a shoegaze movement?

I think shoegaze (such an unfortunate term) is an accurate term for A Folding Sieve and for several of the songs on Feed like Fishes. I don’t think of it in terms of being part of a movement. I record music in styles that interest me.

Shoegaze has become bigger than ever, thanks to younger generations discovering it through TikTok, Instagram and Spotify. How aware are you of the genre’s popularity?

I’ve never used TikTok and only recently started paying more attention to Instagram. I don’t really have a grasp on the genre’s popularity, but I keep reading it is more popular than ever. That’s great! It seems like there have been multiple resurgences of interest in shoegaze over the years, but this recent interest in our music has been something different.

Should hasn’t released anything new since 2014’s The Great Pretend. What is the current status of the band? Has the reissue reinvigorated your interest in recording new music as Should?

After The Great Pretend, I’ve been working off and on recording songs in a post-punk meets shoegaze vein. I sing in a very different style so it’s not really Should. I adopted the moniker Small Black Reptile. Words On Music released a Small Black Reptile digital single of a couple of pseudo-demos a while ago (“Find My Arm”/”Head On Table”). But we never stated my connection to the release. I’d like to finish up an album of that material. I also have a recorded a few songs that would fit on a new Should release, but I don’t have any recorded vocals yet. Unlike the songs on The Great Pretend (which were mostly written on electric piano) these were written on guitar and are shoegaze oriented. No keyboards at all, actually. Tanya and I are interested in working together again. We’ll see where it leads…

How much did Should play live over the years? Years ago I read that you only performed live a few times in the mid-90s. What would it take for Should to play live again?

We only “played” live four times. The first was sometime in 1993 in KVRX’s battle of the bands. I’d submitted a tape of shiFt mostly out of curiosity as to whether we sounded like a band and would be selected – definitely not because I wanted to play live. When we got picked, reality set in. I prepared backing tapes with all the guitars and drums (easy to do because everything was programmed on the Ensoniq EPS). I played bass, Tanya played some keyboards, and we sang to the backing tape. We did not win the battle. The remaining three shows were organized by Dan Plunkett, the first two supporting experimental artists he had brought in. Of one of these I have no memory; the other, Eric joined us and played guitar (unlike me, he is talented at the guitar). Finally, there was the joint ND/Sedimental release show in March 1995. Sedimental was releasing Stars of the Lid’s first album. ND had 7”s by The Marble Index and The Factory Press plus our A Folding Sieve coming out.

I don’t want to categorically say never, but I don’t foresee us ever playing live. I’ve always been so much more interested in recorded music than live music.

Your label Words On Music has put out a lot of music in its time, notably Find Yourself Along the Way by The Meeting Places, which is considered a classic of shoegaze’s second wave. Are there any releases on the horizon for the label? How difficult is it simultaneously operating a record label and a career?

Find Yourself Along the Way has been one of our most popular releases. Our most recent release is A Gentle Collapsing by Remnant Three, a post-punk album recorded more than thirty years ago that was never released. It’s received some very strong reviews but deserves more attention. For Against recorded an album’s worth of song to 4-track cassette in 1985 (before they recorded their debut album Echelons), which has some great and unheard songs from early in their career. We’re very excited to release that later this year. There are new Lorna and Almost Charlie albums that are close to being finished. And then potentially a full Small Black Reptile album.

As far as handling both a record label and a career, we limit the amount we release to what we can handle. Eric and I split the work. His house in Minneapolis is the headquarters with all the stock. He handles the business aspects and I guess what you would call “artist relations.” When music production, cover design, or video work is needed, I take care of that. I created and maintain the website, though Eric usually writes the content.

Most of the music you’ve made since Should has been more focused on electroacoustic/classical/ambient music. How much are you making music under your own name these days?

I haven’t been recording in that vein for quite a while but hope to get back to it.

Finally, I know you’re a Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Johns Hopkins University. How often has work life and your musical life crossed paths?

I can’t think of anything. Every few years some student will discover I do music and ask me about it.

What do your work colleagues think of your music?

Increasingly over the years it has become somewhat known. I don’t advertise it, and I don’t ask what they think of it. Music taste is so personal.

Did I read correctly that you are soon retiring as a professor? Any big plans for your retirement?

Correct. I’m looking forward to having more time for making music and for Words On Music.

If you’re curious about what I’ve been listening to of late, check out the First Revival playlist below.

I don’t know what band would win the award for “heaviest shoegaze band on Earth,” but I would likely give my vote to trauma ray. I’m sure I could think of another band in the genre that is tecnhically heavier, but no one seems to do it better right now than these Forth Worth, TX natives.

Formed by vocalist/guitarist Uriel Avila and guitarist Jonathan Perez in 2018, trauma ray (the name is taken from the German word träumerei, which translates as “a dream state”) have quickly ascended to the top of shoegaze’s current gen with their “loud-quiet-loud” dynamic. Taking cues from the heavier end of Hum and Deftones, and the dreamlike aesthetic of Slowdive and Siamese Dream-era Smashing Pumpkins (think “Soma” or “Mayonaise”), trauma ray have achieved the perfect balance between the two ends of the spectrum.

From the outset they were steadily releasing EPs on small indies like Dreamy Life and Flesh and Bone, which culminated in their debut full-length, 2024’s Chameleon, for Dais Records. That release saw them confront their feelings of dread and malaise through soft, benevolent vocals and devastatingly mighty riffs, earning them tours supporting heavyweights like Touché Amoré, Panchiko, Loathe and Deafheaven.

Now, just ahead of a co-headlining North American tour with fellow shoegazers Glixen, trauma ray have dropped a new EP called Carnival, a more collective effort involving the full band (guitarist Coleman Pruitt, bassist Darren Baun, and drummer Nicholas Bobotas) that is even darker, heavier and more formidable than everything that came before it.

Can I get a quick summary of how trauma ray formed?

Uriel Avila: I was in another band where Darren filled in and always would tell him, “When I start my band, I need you to play bass.” When Jonathan and I started having some solid ideas for the first EP I told Darren his time had come. We tried out another drummer before Nick responded to a Facebook musician’s group. After that it was smooth sailing. Coleman was actually at the first show, just as a supporter since he was Nick’s roommate in college.

What other names did you consider for your band?

I honestly could not tell you what other names we had lined up. All of them must have been much worse than trauma ray.

trauma ray’s music is on the heavier end of shoegaze. What influenced the band to channel that heaviness in the music, as opposed to the more delicate, dreamy side of shoegaze?

I honestly find it kinda boring. Not that it isn’t lush and beautiful, but I personally get bored up there playing the droney, soft stuff. I like to move and feel my amp and I think that goes for everyone else in the band. We do have some soft stuff, but I think we like to tastefully sprinkle it in here and there so we aren’t just abrasive and in your face 24/7. We all like heavy music and have been touring with more energetic and heavy bands recently, so it kinda makes sense to keep dipping our toes into that.

What would you say are the band’s influences?

I like to take a lot from video games if I can. Metal Gear, Final Fantasy, Legend of Zelda, a plethora of Capcom games. Music and imagery that are all so sick. The Matrix is a huge reason we went green. Also ‘90s music, classic shoegaze, some modern shoegaze. The list is honestly endless and whatever we pull out of the memory banks.

How did you discover shoegaze?

I had a friend at work that showed me Nothing and Whirr in 2016, I think. After I binged their discography at the time, I started doing my own research. I fell in love with Slowdive. They were coming to Fort Worth for Fortress Fest and after seeing them there it changed my life. I wanted to sonically capture something close to the feeling I felt when I saw that performance. Still do.

What is your favourite shoegaze band?

Slowdive, without hesitation.

I read that the members of trauma ray are big into karaoke and even met at a karaoke bar over mutual love for Slowdive? What are your karaoke songs of choice? Have you ever heard of any trauma ray songs being available to sing?

Karaoke is a way of life. I met Darren first when he’d regularly come in to sing at Cave’s in Arlington where I was helping host. I met Jonathan at the Boiled Owl when I was playing Slowdive as I set up. Pretty funny shit. I used to sing a lot of Elton John. One of my fav Darren performances is “Stacy’s Mom.” Nick crushes Creed. Recently I have enjoyed singing “Don’t Dream It’s Over” by Crowded House. Incredible track. I have a pretty massive list thinking about it. Never seen a TR song, but the day it happens I’ll give it a go.

Having spoken to a bunch of bands that get classified as shoegaze, it feels like there is a community amongst them, even when they’re in different countries. Why do you think shoegaze has grown to become a community as much as it is a type of music?

I think mainly because it’s become kind of a blanket statement to describe a lot of music now. With that, it helps more people feel unified under the term. I think that’s good and bad for many reasons, but overall good for the genre as a whole. It helps people find and resonate with more music and that’s the overall goal.

I know Texas has quite a big shoegaze scene, with bands like your own, Glare, Glia, Kraus, Narrow Head, Fawn, and Ringo Deathstarr, to name a few. What is the music scene like in Fort Worth? Is there a big distinction between the Fort Worth and Dallas scene?

It’s growing. DFW as a whole is in a positive state of unity and support recently. It’s really good to see. The only distiction is that Dallas has so many venues and Fort Worth has so little. Which is why we all go to Rubber Gloves in Denton.

What is another band from Fort Worth that fans of trauma ray should know about?

Ozone, Empty Shell Casing, and Spurred.

How did having Coleman, Nicholas and Darren contribute more to the songwriting this time add to the experience?

The guys have always contributed a good bit to the songs, but this time was different because we didn’t have Jonathan in the room for the majority of writing. He’s got a bit more of a pop focused ear and I think without him being there it led us to writing the darker stuff very naturally. It was a fun challenge that I think ended up working in our favour.

What are most of your lyrics about?

Things I struggle with or have struggled with in the past.

That riff in “Hannibal” immediately reminded me of Helmet, which is rad. But I’m curious if that song had any connection to the Thomas Harris novels?

Definitely Helmet fans. Shoutout Guitar Hero for introducing me.

I’m not that methodical when it comes to naming our songs. I’m not a literature buff. I wanted to tie the songs together for the Carnival theme and found out about this 1800s circus elephant called Old Hannibal. Figured it would be a fun double meaning thing by lyrically talking about dissection and then visually using the elephant for the music video.

“Funhouse” feels like trauma ray at both your heaviest and slowest. I used to listen to a lot of doom metal, and that song really pushes the low-end-hugging, down-tuned guitars of that scene. What was the inspiration behind that track?

Coleman had this riff that ended up being the intro and bassline that he’d play a lot faster and while we were writing over the summer I thought it would be cool to really slow it down. I wanted like a Bell Witch/Sleep section for the intro and then calm it down to this creepy kinda True Widow driving vibe, obviously with our own twists. That’s honestly my favourite track on the EP.

I wrote an article years ago, where I explored how shoegaze was a big influence on stuff like doom and black metal. Do you see an intersection between those genres much now?

I think that’s a cool perspective. I definitely feel like that’s more prominent in the genre now than ever before. Watching Deafheaven all last year really unlocked some things for us I think with how they could go from crazy blast beat droning into really musical calm sections that felt cohesive. When we first started, it was for sure more ‘90s and OG gaze influence. I think now we’re having more fun adding things from metal genres into what we already enjoy doing.

What would you say is the biggest difference between Chameleon and Carnival?

Carnival is 100% more moody and has a darker overall vibe. We did a little bit of that in Chameleon, but fully commited to having a much sadder writing process for this EP. We internalize a lot of what goes on in the world and try to express it the only way we know how. We’ve just gotten better at the cohesiveness of writing together in general. Our influences have aligned way more at this point.

What is the story behind that creepy looking amusement park on the cover of Carnival?

We were finishing up our tour last year with Touché Amoré in Brighton, England and Nick went for a stroll along the pier that was maybe a 10-15 minute walk away. I don’t know if it was abandoned or if it’s just not open during the winter months, but I’m glad he went at night. It’s an eerie little picture. He had been taking a lot of photos out there and that was one of the favourites we chose from when we were looking for the album artwork.

Taking in mind the album covers, the video for “Hannibal,” the darker lyric themes, the band’s logo/typeface and overall aesthetic, are horror flicks an influence at all?

Yeah, we are fans of the horror aspect. It’s just fun and over the top. Musically, I think The Thing is a masterpiece. Twin Peaks is also another one that’s big for us. I could listen those scores forever.

The band has toured with an array of bands, from Loathe to Panchiko, Touché Amoré and Deafheaven. What do you look for in a touring partner?

Good attitude and good music. It’s all any of us can ask for. All of the bands mentioned have been the best to share the road with and we’d join them in the future anytime/anywhere.

Up next you have this co-headlining tour with Glixen, which includes Her New Knife and Knifeplay (first half), and Money and Keep (second half) on select dates. It’s a pretty wild quadruple bill. How did that all come together?

I’ve known Esteban [Santana] since the very first TR tour and we’ve maintained that friendship since then. When he and Aislinn [Ritchie] started Glixen, I knew they’d go far. We’ve always talked about going on tour together and it just makes sense right now to do it before things get busier. Love everyone in that camp. We made a list of bands we thought would be sick to tour with and it ended up working out. I’m very excited to see everyone on this tour.

What album is played most when the band is hanging out together or on tour?

Tough one. Probably have to go withYou’d Prefer An Astronaut by Hum.

What is your food of choice while recording?

Chips and sodas. Anything greasy and bad for the vocals.

What TV show or film does the band watch together?

I don’t really watch a lot of TV. I think the guys like True Detective, Twin Peaks, and 90 Day Fiancé, or something.

What is an activity the band does together outside of music?

Eating good food.

What is the hardest part of being a band?

The time away from home.

What is the best part of being a band?

Travelling the world.

If you had to pick only one subgenre listed on your Bandcamp page to describe your music which would it be?

Alternative rock.

What is your favourite venue to play and why?

Saturn in Birmingham, AL. Video game-focused, good coffee, and a loft upstairs for the bands to stay in after they play. Insane.

What is your favourite record shop in the world?

Not a record buff, but Docs Records in Fort Worth.

What is your favourite band of the 1990s?

Weezer, but mainly Blue and Pinkerton era.

Another year has come, and much like last year, I entered 2026 unsure of whether I would keep First Revival going. In January 2025, Montreal’s Prism Shores put out Out From Underneath, an album so great I felt I had to do something on it. So I did.

In January 2026, I found myself in a similar position. And then I discovered Richmond, VA’s canaries, a band with such a small online footprint that I accidentally emailed a different band with the same name first. To date, they only have an EP of demos and a couple other songs kicking around, but holy shit, did those songs ever grab my ear. Every now and then a record has this ability to be exactly what you want to hear at a given time, and for me in that moment, it was canaries’ self-titled, six-track EP. So here we are.

Being a demo and all, the recording is wonderfully blown out as shit, but that impenetrable layer of noise was part of the allure for me. Like Ecstasy and Wine-era My Bloody Valentine, Joanna Gruesome (RIP) and early Hotline TNT, canaries had my tinnitus going bananas, but I couldn’t help but melt over those buried melodies on tracks like “Left Hook” and “Headlight.” Is it shoegaze? Is it noise pop? I don’t know. All I did know was that I needed to do my best to alert more people to their existence.

Perhaps even one of you reading this was lucky enough to see them on THE TRIP, a recent tour organized by Hotline TNT that featured themselves, The Tubs, Wishy, Horse Jumper of Love and canaries. Arguably the greatest quintuple bill I’ve ever laid eyes on.

Enjoy.

I literally know nothing about canaries. Can I get a quick summary of how the band formed?

Augie: Monica and I had talked about doing something in the realm of what we are for a while, maybe a year or two before it ended up happening. That was when Zack moved to town and we had no choice but to lock it in. We’d been jamming a bit and writing and I knew we needed something more and that was where Erin came in. They had joined in February of 2024. Our first show was in April with Chronophage from New York, who did an incredible Neil Young cover, at a DIY venue that isn’t active anymore.

What made you choose the name canaries? Does any member have experience with the bird?

Augie: No actual meaning or connection. I thought it sounded cool. Sucks there’s another popular plural bird-named band that you can’t escape on social media these days, but we’re not in the same market, so it’s chill.

What other names did you consider for your band? Also was there a reason why you chose lowercase spelling?

Augie: ACDC 2 was not landing with anyone in the band. There isn’t any particular reason for the capitalization or lack thereof. It’s uppercase on streaming, lowercase outside of that. Kind of choose your own grammatical adventure.

What has the band been up to since releasing the self-titled EP? Is there new music on the horizon?

Augie: That was more of a demo release. We’re gonna record what I feel is an actual EP in February this year. We’ve been writing that, playing shows pretty frequently either in town or a few out of town one-offs. We have two songs we’ve recorded and put out into the internet sphere you can find on either streaming or YouTube.

Your Bandcamp lists that tapes of your EP will be “available soon via Idle Music.” Is there still a physical release planned for it?

Augie: We had band copies for a time, but aren’t planning for any official release at this point. We’re on to the next thing.

Last month you were part of THE TRIP, playing on a five-band bill with Wishy, Horse Jumper of Love, The Tubs and Hotline TNT. How did that tour come together?

Augie: Will [Anderson] from Hotline put the thing together. He asked a few months back about doing another “THE TRIP” that, as we all love TNT and the bands that were on the first go, we couldn’t pass it up.

Was there one band you were most excited to see?

Monica: I’m excited to see everyone, but mostly The Tubs because they’re coming over from the UK.

Augie: I’m pretty siked about it all too. The Tubs stick out for me here. I feel like they do something genuine and different to a lot of current conversations being had in music and they do it good.

Zack: I’m most excited to see Wishy. I’ve been a fan of theirs for a couple years now. I’m excited to get to tour with them.

Erin: Uhhhh stoked to see Wishy.

Have you done a lot of touring before?

Augie: Collectively we have a number of years touring with past projects and bands. This band specifically together has only done one weekender so far. Hoping we see more of the road this year.

What are you looking forward to being on the road?

Monica: Coffee Zyn’s and playing music.

Augie: Unfamiliar faces in unfamiliar places is cool to me.

Zack: Uhhh my answer’s gonna suck: Having fun, literally.

Erin: I’m really excited to make new friends and hear new music and see new places I haven’t been to.

I was watching this video on YouTube of a basement show you played last July at The Hole in Richmond. It seemed pretty loud yet I couldn’t spot any earplugs being used. How loud do you get and do you use protection?

Augie: The Hole was a cool warehouse spot that didn’t last too long. That show was with Hotline TNT, funny enough. We play pretty loud, and we’ve had people walk out for that reason. Myself and Monica don’t wear ear protection - I’m irresponsible - but Zack and Erin both use earplugs. I know we won’t have much say in the volume at these shows but in a house or a warehouse they can’t tell you to turn down.

I feel like I can hear a lot of original shoegaze and the noisier end of indie pop in canaries’ music. What are your influences?

Monica: The bass tone in “Slow” by My Bloody Valentine. I also love Lush and Lilys.

Augie: I love later-era Sonic Youth. My Bloody Valentine is obvious but specifically the singles and the first few EPs really are drilled into my head for how a band should sound.

Zack: I take a lot of influence from hardcore and punk drumming, but mostly J Mascis on Dinosaur Jr. records, or Steven Shelley.

Erin: Pity Sex - the dual vocals have a huge influence on how I do the vocals in the band. Sonic Youth pushes thinking in songs in a way I aspire to. And I’m always gonna say The Replacements.

What is your food of choice while recording?

Monica: La Milpa
Augie: I had a Zyn for the first time while recording, don’t do that.
Zack: Taco Bell
Erin: Yea, La Milpa.

What TV show or film does the band watch together?

Augie: Zack and Monica won’t stop talking about Sex and the City (now they’re talking about it again). I think the last movie we all watched together was Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle.

What album is played most when the band is hanging out together or on tour?

Augie: We usually do a joint queue and play whatever, but if it was one album it’s Last Splash by The Breeders.

What is an activity the band does together outside of music?

Augie: I guess it’s still music but we will run up some karaoke. Might try and twist some arms on THE TRIP and get some people singing.

What is the hardest part of being a band?

Augie: Great, now we’re fighting… JK. Realistically it’s deciding on a cover. We’ve done one and that’s probably the last we’ll do.

What is the best part of being a band?

Monica: I like getting to express ourselves creatively with people I love.
Augie: I love the people in this band, and it’s fun solving creative problems with them and seeing things snap into place.
Zack: I like when we go on tour together, We have a lot of hearts to hearts.
Erin: Getting to celebrate each other’s victories. Being able to get closer together in the struggle to make music we’re proud of - that’s my favourite part.

What is the music scene like in Richmond? The only other contemporary of yours I can think of from there is Keep. But obviously there is a great history with acts like Labradford/Pan•American, Sparklehorse (RIP), Eggs, Aimee Mann, Municipal Waste, Gwar, Cracker and D’Angelo (RIP).

Augie: We mostly exist in the punk, hardcore and noise scenes here. That being said, every scene here is energetic. Everybody here is talented and loves what goes on.

What is another band from Richmond that fans of canaries should know about?

Augie: Cicada

Normally I ask, “If you had to pick only one subgenre listed on your Bandcamp page to describe your music which would it be?” But you only have “alternative” listed. Is alternative how you normally describe canaries’ music?

Augie: Genre labeling isn’t all that important. I think it makes most sense to let yourself decide where the record goes in your collection, not the confines of what the drop down menu offers. Describing canaries to non-listeners is difficult. The average person won’t know MBV as a reference point, but even then I don’t feel like we’re even that musically similar for that to make immediate sense to any first-time listener. It’s hard to describe us. Alternative is just general enough but also is something we just breezed by setting up the Bandcamp.

What are most of your lyrics are about?

Augie: Hard to say. A few songs are for interpretation, a few are deeply personal. There isn’t any specific theme we stick to.

What is your favourite band of the 1990s?

Monica: Tie between The Breeders and Stereolab.
Augie: I’m stuck thinking about this one.
Zack: Teenage Fanclub
Erin: Tie between Silver Jews and Mariah Carey.

What is your favourite venue to play and why?

Augie: We had a DIY venue in Richmond we all loved that recently closed down. That’s the nature of the beast but it was institutional in the past however many years of DIY music. Sorely missed. Our friend JK did the sound there and always made it easy to sound how we want to sound.

What is your favourite record shop in the world?

Augie: Joint Custody in Washington DC.

If you’re curious about what I’ve been listening to of late, check out the First Revival playlist below.

I believe 2025 was the best year for music that I can remember in a very long time. In fact, 2025 was so good that I’d say my top six albums all had a fighting chance to be #1. To give you a comparison, when I made my picks for 2024, there was only one album that felt worthy of the honour. But before I get to the lists, I thought I’d share a few brief observations about my music consumption this year.

• I actually predicted what my favourite album of 2025 would be back in January when I first received an advance of it. Somehow it never changed, 11 months later.

• The same can kinda be said for my favourite track of 2025. Once it dropped in April, I had it on repeat for the rest of the year.

• I still can’t believe Whirr came back and released Raw Blue on Christmas Day 2024. Because it came so late in the year I decided to include it on my list… especially since they “re-released” with two bonus tracks in March. Watching them come back, or even better, watching their ever-growing fan base watch them come back was a lot of fun.

• After scoring tickets for my daughter and I to see Deftones in September, I became obsessed with them in 2025. (Even at a pop-up stadium on a decomissioned airport runway that held 50,000 people it was still an awesome experience.) I couldn’t get enough of private music, which contributed to them being my most listened to band of the year - much to my wife’s disdain.

• I decided to skip a top concerts list this year, but here are a few notable ones I saw: Deftones/Wisp at Rogers Stadium, Oasis at Rogers Stadium, TAGABOW at The Garrison, Wednesday/9Million at The Concert Hall, and Whirr/Nothing at The Danforth Music Hall.

• My taste in music has essentially become 50% - shoegaze/dream pop, 20% - K-pop, 20% - music from the ‘90s, 5% - indie rock, and 5% - miscellaneous. I have left room for almost nothing else.

Albums

30. Wisp If Not Winter

I know the shoegaze community either loves Wisp or laughs at Wisp because she relies on others to co-write and produce the music, but I’ve never had a problem with that when it comes to commercial pop music. And that’s how I see Wisp, as a pop artist. Her debut album, If Not Winter, doesn’t quite top last year’s EP, Pandora, but Natalie R. Lu still makes beguilingly gauzy shoegaze-pop that can really fill a pair of headphones - especially a song like “Black swan,” which was co-written/co-produced by Kraus, one of the great, underrated shoegazers.

29. Sorry Girls Dreamwalker

I’m not sure if Sorry Girls would want to hear this, but I am such a huge fan of how they haven’t really changed much since 2016’s debut, Awesome Secrets Sure, Heather Foster Kirkpatrick and Dylan Konrad Obront made Dreamwalker sound like it cost a million bucks to produce, but they haven’t messed too much with their formula of making songs that resemble the greatest ‘80s pop ballads. While 2019’s Deborah might be an impossible album to top, Dreamwalker is another extraordinary set of yearning, retro pop songs. I’d be happy if they just keep making album after album of this stuff forever.

28. Horsegirl Phonetics On and On

Versions of Modern Performance by Chicago’s Horsegirl was one of 2022’s best albums, so I was definitely anticipating what they’d do next. Choosing Cate LeBon, one of the more exciting musicians and producers in the world, seemed like both a perfect and a curious fit for the trio. While I wasn’t fully expecting them to (mostly) abandon their throwback to noisy, ‘90s indie rock, I was pleasantly surprised to hear them pivot on Phonetics On and On to a more minimal set-up, recalling the likes of art-rock gods like Young Marble Giants and The Raincoats. It’s cool.

27. Glare Sunset Funeral

Just months before the release of Sunset Funeral, Glare vocalist/guitarist Christian “Rez” Resendez was abruptly dismissed from the band following allegations of abuse. Rez’s voice is all over the album, which picks up where their cult-following-building EPs left off. I don’t think anyone would ever argue that Glare make original music of any kind, but they excel at paying homage to obvious heroes like Whirr and Nothing with their combination of melody and punishingly loud riffs. Like its name implies, Sunset Funeral is a stunningly somber display of today’s shoegaze.

26. Bleary Eyed Easy

I wasn’t exactly anticipating the new Bleary Eyed album because their previous music leaned too much into - as they call it - “sample-heavy hazey computer pop.” But with their third album, Easy, the Philly-based four-piece committed to tightening up their sound to fit more into what I consider pure shoegaze. I hear a lot of MBV-isms, even as soon as the opener “Susan,” which features a drum loop and a wall of symphonic noise à la “Soon.” But then they shoehorn the alluring ballad “Everything Everything” into the closing portion, blending finger-picked acoustic guitars with ambient noise. And they don’t shy away from blowing the doors wide open with scorching guitar rock on “Smile.” There’s a little bit of everything on Easy, but never do they lose their sights on keeping it coherent.

25. nabeel (نبيل) ghayoom - غيوم

One of the most exciting finds of 2025 was the work of Iraqi-born, Virginia-based Yasir Nabeel Razak. I can honestly count the amount of Arabic language musicians I listen to on one hand, but under the moniker of nabeel (نبيل), this high school teacher creates the most ecstatically fuzzed out indie rock I’ve heard in ages. He’s quite poetic about his love for distortion too, which is pretty charming. Touching on everything from slowcore and grunge to power pop and, yes, even shoegaze, ghayoom (غيوم) masks its emotion and vulnerability behind laidback vibes. Essentially, it’s just hits from top to bottom. Iraqi indie 4 all.

24. Ex-Vöid In Love Again

The first of two releases for Welsh singer-songwriter Owen Williams this year, Ex-Vöid’s second album proved to be their swan song as the band called it a day in October. It’s a damn shame too because Ex-Vöid kept alive the spirit of Joanna Gruesome, the beloved, scrappy noise-pop outfit Williams founded with bandmate Lan McArdle. On In Love Again, the two share stories of heartbreak through their duets, which complement the buoyantly buzzsawn and jangly indie-pop. They will be missed.

23. thistle. it’s nice to see you, stranger

The first of two compilations I have included as albums, thistle.’s it’s nice to see you, stranger was packaged with five earlier tracks for its physical release, so I’m gonna count it. These young noisemongers from Northampton, England do the ‘90s alt-rock x shoegaze thing better than just about any band that wasn’t alive for either of those movements. In our interview from back in July, they sure seemed to express love for Nirvana, and sure, I guess I can hear it in their tight, punchy rhythms, winding bass riffs and squealing distorted guitars. Whereas so many other bands are combining grunge and shoegaze influences, thistle. just seem to do it better by making everything sound big, fresh, and unbridled as hell.

22. Just Mustard We Were Just Here

I enjoyed Just Mustard’s second album, Heart Under, but I felt their dream pop was a bit too frigid with its near-industrial and post-punk leanings. So I can’t say I was anticipating We Were Just Here, but I really should have been. On their third album, the Irish band have dialled back the angular, spiky post-punk and gone almost fully shoegaze. At times, the ear-bleeding guitar experiments recall the abusive noise that Medicine’s Brad Laner assaulted ears with in the ‘90s (see “ENDLESS DEATHLESS”). The undulating title track, which sounds a bit like Chvrches to me, proves they can even tap into that harshness to make a convincing radio-friendly single. It’s no wonder this euphorically dour band have recently become tour-mates of The Cure.

21. Sharp Pins Radio DDR

I suppose it’s no secret that Sharp Pins (aka Kai Slater) is a lover of ‘60s psych and baroque pop music. And while that’s pretty obvious, it’s not how I choose to listen to his second album, Radio DDR. Personally, I prefer to think of Slater as a kid who grew up listening to lo-fi weirdos like Bob Pollard, Dan Treacy and Martin Newell, and trying to follow their DIY blueprints. It’s been a busy year for the 21-year-old, who also released a new album on Matador with his post-punk outfit Lifeguard, just months after he dropped Radio DDR. (He also publishes a “Chicago youth zine” called Hallogallo.) In November, he turned around and put out another Sharp Pins album called Balloon Balloon Balloon. But the best thing he did in 2025 was Radio DDR (an expanded edition issued by K Recs), a non-stop 4-track parade of delicious retro nuggets. I’m excited and curious to see just how long he can keep this King Gizzard-esque pace going.

20. Saint Etienne International

I never gave any thought to Saint Etienne ever calling it a day. You listen to a band for 30 years and you just assume if they’re all still alive they would just keep going until they croak. But I understand the decision. International thrilled me as soon as I heard the plucky, dance-floor filler “Glad.” The fact that it was co-written and produced with old friend Tom Rowlands of The Chemical Brothers made it even more of a thrill. But they didn’t stop there, also inviting Tim Powell (Xenomania), Erol Alkan, Paul Hartnoll (Orbital) and Vince Clarke (Erasure) for one emphatic farewell party. I always seem to enjoy Saint Etienne releases for the changes they make from one to the next, but I can honestly say that International is the most satisfying and emblematic record they’ve put out in years. And that’s saying something for an artist that never put out a legit dud in 35 years.

19. Winter Adult Romantix

Like I said in my feature on Samira Winter back in August, her fifth album, Adult Romantix, does shoegaze-pop better than just about any other out there. I’ve had dreams about an album this good at marrying such a strong ear for pretty melodies with heavy, swirling guitars. I might never hear an album that does it better, and that’s fine, because Winter came pretty damn close to perfecting it.

18. Pulp More

Pulp owed another album to their fans after bowing out in the early ‘00s and leaving us with the underwhelming We Love Life. While More doesn’t have the razzmatazz of His N Hers, Different Class or even This Is Hardcore, Pulp have given us more than what we could have asked for from these elderly pop misfits. Good old Jarvis sounds right at home documenting what life is like in his 60s. The wit, charm and provocative whispers are still as sharp as ever, while his bandmates still know how to light up a discotheque floor. If this ends up being their finale, well thank god they gave us More than We Love Life.

17. PinkPantheress Fancy That

I find the way PinkPantheress respects and repurposes retro UK club music to be fresh and inventive, while her ability to craft a hooky, commercial pop song is some real admirable shit. There weren’t many better songs in 2025 than “Girl Like Me” and “Illegal,” which straight up jacks Basement Jaxx’s “Romeo” and Underworld’s “Dark & Long (Dark Train),” respectively. And there are even more bangers to this 20-minute-long mixtape. Oh and then she didn’t stop there, putting together a double remix album filled with guest spots by Kylie, Oklou, SEVENTEEN, Groove Armada, Kaytranada, Sugababes, and even Basement Jaxx themselves.

16. High. Come Back Down

The worst interview I conducted this year was with the band that made my favourite EP of the year. Thankfully, the band’s label Kanine saw the sense in combining it with their 2023 self-titled EP to make Come Back Down album’s length. High. don’t exactly reinvent the wheel with their so-called noisegaze. But there’s something to this group of bored, pissed off Jersey kids that I find so damn endearing. I could describe them best as Glare disciples, but High. write better hooks, drown them in a layer of static hiss, and really allow singer Christian Castan’s impish whine to give the songs a menacing air to them. If shoegaze needs its bad apple, High. are ripe for the picking.

15. Prism Shores Out From Underneath

There were a lot of great discoveries in 2025, but none better than Montreal’s Prism Shores. I knew the name from their first album, but I nearly fell over after hearing their sophomore album, Out From Underneath. This fantastic band just hit all of the right spots for me with their delightful indie pop, bringing to mind so many old favourites of mine, namely Teenage Fanclub, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, early Ride and a few different Captured Tracks bands of the 2010s vintage.

14. The Tubs Cotton Crown

I found myself going back and forth between Owen Williams’ two releases quite a bit this year with Ex-Vöid (see above) and his other band The Tubs. And while I’ll admit I struggled at first to fully embrace the folky, pub rock of Cotton Crown, once I “got it” I couldn’t stop listening to it. The discussion I had with Williams was one of my favourites this year; it gave more context to his black comedic lyrics, and answered any hang-ups I had about a possible Celtic influence. Seeing them open for The Wedding Present and play the majority of these songs was also a real gas.

13. 9Million 9Million

I caught Toronto’s 9Million opening up for Hotline TNT at the end of 2023 and was impressed, but it wasn’t until their self-titled album came out that I truly appreciated them as the city’s premier shoegazers. Part of what I like about 9Million is how it doesn’t just rest its laurels on ‘gazing. “Shine On,” for example, throws back to the parallel era of the baggy sound, with its springy rhythm, I couldn’t help wonder if live they invite their own Bez on stage to dance for it. And “When The Kissing Had To Stop” is just a whimsical tune, one that shows off just how formidable they are as a rock band. Seeing them open for Wednesday last month demonstrated just how much they’ve grown as a live band since the first time I caught them.

12. Sword II Electric Hour

Atlanta’s Sword II are a good example of a younger, newer band that’s been slapped with the “shoegaze” tag, despite not even using it themselves (or at least not on their Bandcamp page). But like their excellent debut album, 2023’s Spirit World Tour, Electric Hour is just the sort of creative pursuit I’d rather see associated than just loud rock bands. I respect the political angle they’ve taken with this album, because obviously fuck the Republicans and fuck ICE. But I can’t help but feel there is a rapturous glow to songs like “Sugarcane,” “Halogen” and one of the best songs I heard all year, “Even if it’s Just a Dream,” which just makes me melt whenever I hear it.

11. Mozart Estate Tower Block in a Jam Jar

I’m a total sucker for everything Lawrence puts out. The weirder, the better imo. He’s one of music’s greatest outsiders, and for decades now has believed that his music is for the charts, despite abject failure time and time again. I must have listened to Tower Block in a Jam Jar a dozen times before I learned it was a re-recording of Tearing Up the Album Chart, an album of demos he released on CD in 2005 under his previous moniker Go-Kart Mozart. Tower Block in a Jam Jar, which had the working title of Renovating The Album Charts, was designed as an entry point for newbies to Lawrence, to capitalize on last year’s best-selling biography, Street-Level Superstar. While one could argue that his songs - a mix of glam, synth-pop, punk and muzak - sound as if they were constructed with the cheapest of charity shop gear, the man has a singular vision that he consistently sticks with: catchy hooks with the funniest-saddest lyrics. Look no further than the obscenely repetitive “On a Building Site,” a wonderfully inane theme song that should have been pitched to Bob the Builder producers back in ‘05. But that’s Lawrence for you: he’s always missed his shot, but refuses to change. God bless him.

10. Cate Le Bon Michelangelo Dying

When Cate Le Bon releases an album it’s an automatic lock to crack my top ten of the year. She is just that reliable. That she’s also become one of the most exciting producers in music over the past few years (Deerhunter! Horsegirl! Dry Cleaning!) speaks to her Midas touch. One thing I did not have on my bingo card this year, however, is the Welsh wonder channelling one of my all-time favourite bands for her seventh solo LP. But yup, I hear Cocteau Twins throughout Michelangelo Dying. It’s not parody or even homage, but everything: the twinkling, crystalline guitars, the fluttering arrangements and even at times, her falsetto bordering on Liz Fraser-like airy textures. I am in awe.

9. total wife come back down

One of the most common criticisms I have about current shoegaze is just how easy it is for a band to join the club. What was once just loud alt-rock is now somehow part of the canon. Well, Nashville’s total wife are at the other end of the spectrum, where one might argue they’re more “adjacent” because they’re trying so many different things, all at once. Their Bandcamp page lists eight genres descriptors to help explain their sound, and yet, it feels like there’s even more to it than that. But I’d say they’re not only shoegaze, but one of the best to currently do it. The duo’s latest album, come back down, starts off sounding like a Mogwai song, only to move on to Loveless worship, noise, techno and jungle experiments, something off Medicine’s Her Highness, and just some good straightforward ‘gazing.

8. Greet Death Die In Love

I don’t think it’s out of place to say that Greet Death have always been fairly extreme purveyors of doom and gloom. Die In Love, their third album and first full-length in six years, finds the Davisburg, MI band documenting significant losses and changes in their lives, like deaths in the family and just about all of the horrible shit happening in the world right now. But this time around, they’ve mastered the art of balancing deeply dark and personal lyrics with music that is both heavy and sublime. This album feels like a major step forward for Greet Death; never would I have expected a song influenced by The Sundays to actually resemble The Sundays (“Emptiness is Everywhere”) or a song so bluntly titled “Motherfucker” being so exquisitely sad and delicate.

7. Stereolab Instant Holograms on Metal Film

Even though Stereolab - one of my all-time favourite bands - continued to tour after reuniting in 2019, I wasn’t ever betting on them to put out another new record. But I couldn’t have been happier with Instant Holograms on Metal Film. It’s funny, for a band that hadn’t released new music in 15 years, and always seemed to evolve their music from release to release, Stereolab’s 11th studio album sounded pretty close to what I had imagined in my head. Even 35 years after forming, they’re still creating music that is fresh, innovative, and full of curious collaboration.

6. Wednesday Bleeds

Bleeds may or may not be a break-up album but who really cares? Karly Hartzman is a brilliant songwriter with the ability to move from lap and pedal steel guitars to roaring blasts of distortion whenever she wants and just own it. In doing so, she unknowingly helped usher in something called “countrygaze,” although I don’t exactly file Wednesday’s music under shoegaze. While I haven’t been listening to too much country these days, what I love so much about Bleeds though is the more country-leaning side of Hartzman’s songs. Sure, “Pick Up That Knife” offers the best of both worlds, but man, oh man, I’ll never get tired of those twangier tunes like “Elderberry Wine” and “Phish Pepsi,” which are what makes Bleeds and Wednesday really, unique and special.

5. They Are Gutting A Body of Water LOTTO

TAGABOW brought the heavy with them on LOTTO. And yet, with their first album in three years, the Philly band has gone and made a statement album, one without all of “the plugins, the pedals, the vocal effects,” according to TAGABOW’s founder Doug Dulgarian. Instead, he “just wanted to make a fucking record where the riffs really get stuck in your head.” I cannot tell a lie: that was music to my ears. While they may have ditched a lot of that “N64 stuff,” LOTTO is a massive record that demonstrates what this band can do when they just fucking play loud.

4. Hotline TNT Raspberry Moon

Hotline TNT’s second album, Cartwheel, was my favourite album of 2023. I’ve been a fan of Will Anderson since his days in Weed, but that album was transformative and hit me at the perfect time. Now he’s assembled a full-time, permanent band and I didn’t think they’d better Cartwheel. But to my surprise, Raspberry Moon succeeds in doing such a thing. I’m not sure if it has to do with Anderson having a supporting cast or what, but I find everything, from the less dingy production to the songwriting - shoutout to him for writing “Lawnmower,” the softest, quietest, prettiest TNT song to date - just makes this band sound fuller, bigger and better.

3. Whirr Raw Blue (Deluxe Edition)

Considering Whirr have become one of the biggest acts in shoegaze, returning from exile made a lot of sense. The countless new fans were constantly asking for it, but Raw Blue wasn’t just a return, it ended up being their best album imo. As much as I enjoy their back catalogue, those earlier albums didn’t quite have such devastating bangers like “Collect Sadness,” “Crush Tones” and “Days I Wanna Fade Away,” all of which acted as ear worms in my head on many occasions throughout this year. I only hope the insane demand to see them live and buy their merch convinced them to keep going.

2. Deftones private music

I’ve always had trouble trying to name what I think is Deftones’ best album (Diamond Eyes? White Pony? Koi No Yokan?), but once I heard private music, it didn’t take long for me to decide that it is now my favourite Deftones album. As someone who doesn’t prefer the band’s nü-metal-era, private music just feels like an album made for someone like me, who views them as a heavy, melodic rock band. I don’t know how much attention the band has paid to their involvement in the history of shoegaze, but this album sure feels like they were listening. I wouldn’t straight up classify it as shoegaze, but private music leans more into that “side” of their sound. Maybe it’s just a band full of dudes in their 50s taking it a bit easy, but there are so many huge anthems on this album, it’s pretty easy to argue that it could be their best.

1. Cloakroom Last Leg of the Human Table

Simply put, Cloakroom made the exact album I wanted from them: still heavy af in places, but a huge leap forward sonically, texturally and melodically. Last Leg of the Human Table expands on the template they built with 2022’s Dissolution Wave with songs that exhibit vulnerability and confusion, wrapped in the unlikeliest of pop hooks and scorching drones of fuzz-blasted noise. “Unbelonging,” “Bad Larry,” “Story of the Egg,” “Ester Wind” - there is no shortage of grade A shoe-doom-grunge-gaze belters. Whatever Cloakroom does next is automatically the album I wanna hear more than any other.

Reissues

5. Suede Sci-Fi Lullabies Vol. 2

I would argue that Suede are the best band of their generation when it comes to B-sides. At the very least, they are the best at making their B-sides available. Sci-Fi Lullabies Vol. 2 was very casually dropped as an exclusive vinyl release for Record Store Day 2025, followed by a streaming release. A sequel to the now classic 1997 comp Sci-Fi Lullabies, this 19-track companion collects the majority of their B-sides from 1999’s Head Music to 2022’s excellent Autofiction. Suede had a generous year, also putting out a new album, Antidepressants, but truth be told, this comp earned more of my attention.

4. Seefeel Quique / Pure, Impure (2025 Remaster)

I’m not sure I needed all of the extra remixes and dub versions that came with these Seefeel reissues, but is it ever nice having remasters of them, and a proper, expanded release of Pure, Impure - something I’ve wanted to own for a very long time. Quique, one of the greatest albums of the 1990s and a trailblazing moment from the original shoegaze scene, sounds as amazing as ever. But more importantly, this all felt like an opportunity to flash some bright lights on one of the most innovative and perhaps underrated electronic acts of their time.

3. The Hardship Post 1992 - 1994

Once again, Jay Ferguson and Chris Murphy of Sloan pulled out all the stops and opened the murderecords vault to give us a comprehensive collection of highly desired music from St. John’s, Newfoundland’s greatest band ever, (The) Hardship Post. The double vinyl set included the Mood Ring cassette, the Hack EP, all of the early 7” singles and some unreleased tracks on vinyl for the first time - basically everything but their one and only LP, Somebody Spoke. Unfortunately, none of this has yet to get a digital release, but all in good time I hope.

2. Unrest Perfect Teeth (30th Anniversary Edition)

One of the greatest indie pop albums of all time got a long overdue edition and remaster with a bonus LP called Extra Teeth featuring EP tracks, singles and rarities, including one of my favs “Isabel.” It’s always nice to have everything in one place, and this 30th Anniversary edition feels like Unrest definitely had their fans in mind.

1. lovesliescrushing bloweyelashwish. redux

Numero Group has been doing the lord’s work over the past few years, first bringing back Duster and Codeine from the dead, boxing up The American Analog Set catalogue, and giving us much-needed reissues for both Ozean and Majesty Crush. In giving us a reissue of lovesliescrushing’s ethereal noise masterpiece, bloweyelashwish, well, they’ve just outdone themselves. The expanded, redux version includes five bonus tracks, along with a bonus 7” to those who bought it early. I never expected to ever physically own this album in my lifetime, but their vinyl edition is simply godlike. We are not worthy.

Tracks

30. RESCENE “GLOW UP”

I know absolutely zilch about RESCENE other than that they made their debut just last year. But in 2025 they dropped a couple of EPs this year that really filled the void I’ve felt since NewJeans were banned from doing anything by their label. “Glow Up” - a favourite term of the genre - is an effervescent bop that has a lot of fun with its chorus. It’s just the kind of bubblegum K-pop I can’t get enough of.

29. Maria Somerville “Garden”

I quite liked Maria Somerville’s Luster and it’s drone-y, expansive blend of ambient and dream pop. It’s what I would call good focus or background music. In fact, I put it on a few times to tranquilize myself while dozing on the subway. “Garden” is the pulsing heart of the album, a divinely gothic take on dream pop that summons the spirits of Grouper’s Liz Harris and Faith-era The Cure.

28. no na “the one”

I’m as new to I-pop as no na is to the world, but this one song has convinced me that I’m gonna have to dive deep into Indonesia’s music scene to learn more about it. This all-Indonesian girl group only have a few songs to their name, but with some help from 88rising, they’re really sparking an unabashedly, pure throwback pop sound. Their most recent single “the one” is so deliciously and meticulously ‘80s: breathy, yearning vocals, skittering drum pad rhythms, sensual saxophone, and lush synths. It’s glittery, sparkling and seductive.

27. Dry Cleaning “Hit My Head All Day”

Dry Cleaning’s debut album New Long Leg was my favourite album of 2021, and its follow-up Stumpwork was excellent too. With “Hit My Head All Day” these Brits continue to impress me by teaming up with the awesome Cate Le Bon as producer. The slow, steady rhythm, the galvanizing electric guitar, Florence Shaw’s anesthetized vocals - it sounds so 1980s, so experimental, yet not too far out to imagine on the radio.

26. 9Million “When The Kissing Had To Stop”

9Million’s self-titled album had plenty of highlights but for me it was this dizzying storm of shoegaze that gets a real boost from the female/male duetting. Where the guitars experience riff rage at the two-minute mark just goes to show that there is room for soloing in this genre. It’s a great example of the beautiful chaos this band can conjure: a breakneck blizzard of whirling guitar noise, tempo shifts and celestial duetting.

25. Luster “Sunday”

L.A.’s Luster are one of the best shoegaze bands around at the moment - that few people talk about, mind you - trying to preserve the original sound. One of two singles out this year, the awe-inspiring “Sunday” pays equal homage to both Kevin Shields and Justin K. Broadrick with its punishingly heavy, pounding noise riding the glider hard.

24. IVE “DARE ME”

IVE were definitely a new find for me in 2025, but I quickly got hooked on their bubblegummy K-pop. “DARE ME” didn’t appear to be a single, but I have no idea what their label was thinking. “DARE ME” is a sugary-sweet, cutesy earworm that really channels the ‘90s with its verse structure and all the pop-rock guitar riffs that really give it some punch.

23. Nothing “cannibal world”

It was beginning to feel like Nothing might never follow-up 2020’s The Great Dismal. “cannibal world,'‘ the first single from next year’s a short history of decay, finds Nicky and the gang joining in on the fun by blending their trusted heavy shoegaze sound with the drum & bass rhythms that have become more frequently used. I dig it and hope there’s more to come on the LP.

22. Asian Glow “Camel8strike”

I haven’t yet found the perfect union of K-pop and shoegaze yet, but South Korea has a pretty healthy shoegaze scene, so maybe at some point I will. One shoe gazer making a name for themselves is Shin Gyeongwon, aka Asian Glow, who has collaborated with the scene’s biggest star, Parannoul, and makes what The Fader calls “post-shoegaze.” Asian Glow kicked off January with the album 11100011, a well-rounded album that featured a secret weapon called “Camel8strike,” a frolicsome blast of shoegaze harmonics and big beat electronica.

21. The Lemonheads “Deep End”

I was kinda shocked at how much I enjoyed the new Lemonheads album, Love Chant. Evan Dando has been a bit of a hero to me since my high school years, but I had given up hope of him ever putting out another record I’d care about. And while the album can’t quite recapture the glory of his ‘90s heyday, “Deep End” sure came close. Featuring the likes of Dando’s pals and past collaborators J Mascis, Juliana Hatfield, and Tom Morgan, “Deep End” is a whimsical rock song with a peppy, hard-hitting drumbeat, a classic Mascis solo and one of the better melodies the one true Lemonhead has come up with in donkey’s years.

20. Young Fathers “Lowly”

28 Years Later proved to be a much more divisive film than I expected, but I totally loved it. (With the exception of Bring Her Back, it was the most intense horror flick I saw in 2025.) The cherry on top for me was Danny Boyle asking Young Fathers to write the music for the film. It seems like an odd fit, but the Scottish trio managed to add so much dread and terror with their score. “Lowly” is panic-stricken sure, but it also has a jubilant, sort of Motown bustle to it that’s as much cause for celebration as it is concern.

19 j-hope feat. Miguel “Sweet Dreams”

Last year out of nowhere, my family became obsessed with BTS after consuming a number of their TV shows (shout out to Jimin and Jung Kook for pulling us in with Are You Sure?!). To my surprise, the obsession is still going strong 18 months later. So I was pretty psyched to see j-hope make his comeback with this chill bop that gets a huge assist from a dope falsetto hook by Miguel. I was never really feeling most of Hobi’s rap-oriented solo stuff, but I love how he’s pivoted to this Pharrell-influenced mix of hip-hop, neo-soul and pop. And it wasn’t even his best song of the year.

18. Ash “Which One Do You Want?”

In the 30+ years that I have been an Ash fan I never once asked myself, “What would it sound like if Ash impersonated The Smiths?” Turns out, the answer is “very awesome.” The standout track from their ninth album, Ad Astra, “Which One Do You Want?” finds Tim Wheeler not only perfectly copying Marr’s iconic jangle, but yes, also nailing a Morrissey-esque falsetto when he sings, “I want both.” I love that they’re still writing songs like this in their fourth decade.

17. ILLIT “Topping”

“Topping” was only a single in Japan and I’d argue ILLIT’s “NOT CUTE ANYMORE” is a better single. But after the drama with New Jeans, this reasonably-sized Seoul fivesome have become my go-to K-pop girl group. I love the carbonated bounce to “Topping” and its delicious “sugar coating” hooks. Update: I’ve learned that the song was used for the group’s collab with Lacoste, which came with a charmingly sweet promotional spot.

16. Prism Shores “Tourniquet”

Teenage Fanclub were one of the greatest bands of the ‘90s, but I haven’t felt that strongly about their music in the following decades. Prism Shores, however, scratched that itch for me with their track “Tourniquet,” which radiates the kind of fuzzy power pop vibes I felt from an album like Grand Prix. It’s pensive, dreamy and overflowing with gorgeous harmonies.

15. HUNTR/X “Golden”

I didn’t care for KPop Demon Hunters, the movie. But the music was something else. And I fucking love this song.

14. Whirr “Collect Sadness”

I honestly could have picked half of Whirr’s Raw Blue to put in this spot. “Collect Sadness” is a perfect, heavy shoegaze cut, bolstered by the reverb-heavy drums, howling guitars, dead stops, and hoodwinking fade out. Even its title encapsulates the mood, the tone, the magnitude of it.

13. Deftones “milk of the madonna”

No need to write anything when this tweet sums up the song perfectly.

12. Cloakroom “Story of the Egg”

Cloakroom’s Last Leg of the Human Table had no shortage of killer tunes that showed off their range. They’re no longer those dudes who lock in and simply take you away on an epic space jam. They can also write snappy four-minute rock songs that ride the distortion pedal and feed you subtle pop melodies. “Story of the Egg” is a perfect example of this. With its hasty motorik beat, a swamp-soaked sludge low end and celestial reverbed guitars, Doyle Murray’s melodic whisper addresses anxieties while name-dropping unlike-minded contemporaries like The Lemonheads and Godspeed You! Black Emperor.

11. Hotline TNT “Break Right”

In promoting the release of “Break Right,” Will Anderson said, “You’ve never heard a Hotline song quite like this before.” I agree with him. But for different reasons. While he is referring to how it was more of a collective effort than anything before it, ever since I first heard it I thought it just hit differently than all their other songs. It’s that subtle touch of the piano, his vocals coming through clearly for the first time ever (I’m half kidding), and the band never breaking stride - I get kind of wistful listening to it.

10. Greet Death “Country Girl”

Harper Boyhtari’s “Country Girl” feels like an intensely private song, and for me it was the without-a-doubt highlight of Greet Death’s Die in Love. She’s described it as dealing with “identity, alienation, and detachment. It’s like trying to solve a murder mystery and finding out you were the killer the whole time.” Lyrically, it’s the coolest fucking song of the year, name-dropping a few John Carpenter-isms and for no reason at all, A Nightmare On Elm Street. More brooding songs about horror movies, please!

9. Saint Etienne “Glad”

I wasn’t prepared for Saint Etienne to drop a banger as powerful as “Glad.” I think it’s my favourite song of theirs since 2012’s “Tonight.” Teaming up with Tom Rowlands of The Chemical Brothers was such a boss move. The beats are big, the melody is timeless and I even get a bit of Tiger Bay nostalgia whenever I hear it. There’s a lot of history in that partnership, and they totally nailed it. I’d go so far as to say that “Glad” is an all-time top ten track for Bob, Pete and Sarah. Sure, it’s sad to see them leave us, but if this is the result, they went out on top.

8. Sword II “Even if it’s Just a Dream”

The closest thing to perfect dream pop I found all year was this beautiful gem buried at the tail end of Sword II’s album, Electric Hour. It’s all a sweet reverie with the arpeggiating synths until you either A) read the lyrics or B) watch the video. Then it becomes a nightmare. Stereogum hit the nail on the head: it does sound like “if Beach House collaborated with David Cronenberg.” It feels disorienting, intoxicating, menacing and strangely poignant all at once.

7. Alex G “Afterlife”

I would consider myself a part-time Alex G fan. There is a lot of his music I really like, and a lot of it that just isn’t for me. Headlights was the first album in a while that I enjoyed front to back, largely because he toned down the heavily treated vocals and just fucked around less. “Afterlife,” to me, goes to show just how amazing he can be as a singer-songwriter. Everything from the walloping beat to the scene-stealing mandolin, makes it seem as though Alex G is just ready to open himself to a whole new audience. It’s a little bit “The Galway Girl,” a little “Maggie May” and a lot more Celtic-influenced that I ever thought I wanted from something by Alex G. But now I demand even more of it from him.

6. j-hope “MONA LISA”

I really don’t know what BTS will sound like when they re-emerge in 2026 as a whole group following their release from the South Korean military. And while both j-hope and Jin have been doing their own very different things, I sincerely hope it’s the former who influences the group’s new music. “MONA LISA” packs such a fun vibe that really resonated with me for the better part of 2025. With it, Hobi established himself as a true solo artist - imo - and seems to be prospering with this “smooth, laid-back charm” he’s been illustrating all year long.

5. Ariana Grande “twilight zone”

I have almost completely sheltered my Ariana Grande fandom from all that is Wicked, and still found it easy to obsess over the music she continues to release outside of the films. And while it was completely forgivable for her to tack on some outtakes or B-grade stuff to the brighter days ahead deluxe edition of eternal sunshine, the Max Martin-ized “twilight zone” proved to be one of the overall best songs of the whole project. Like a heartsick companion to “we can’t be friends (wait for your love),” the quixotic production dresses up a nightmare as a dream, as she tries to forget about an ex that likely wasn’t a good guy. This could have easily been the first single from the original album release.

4. PinkPantheress “Illegal”

When my kid first played me this track I had to do a triple take: Is PinkPantheress sampling Underworld? One sample check, and yep, she nicked their epic tune “Dark & Long (Dark Train)” alright. It brought such a huge smile to my face. Her mixtape proved she knew how to raid a sample box, but this 24-year-old prodigy continues to blow my mind in how she recontextualizes her source material. I’d love to hear what she could do with “Dirty Epic” and “Pearl’s Girl.”

3. Wednesday “Elderberry Wine”

Wednesday is such a good, loud rock band, but as I wrote above, Karly Hartzman’s best moments on Bleeds were the quieter ones. “Elderberry Wine” is her finest song to date, and apparently it was written as her relationship was falling apart. But like her ex, Hartzman just has a knack for writing oddly personal lyrics that feel relatable no matter where you come from. This peculiar little country song packs a mighty punch, with the lap steel spinning a starry-eyed effect as she drops lyrical bombs like, “Said I wanna have your baby / because I freckle and you tan.” Bottle that up and give it a score of 100!

2. Deftones “infinite source”

I actually didn’t think there would be a song on private music I’d like more than “milk of the madonna.” I’d say “infinite source” is arguably the most accessible song Deftones have ever released. I’m sure that thought might make some fans cringe (though maybe not), but I love when this band writes songs that end up sounding commercial. I can’t help but hear a Hum influence on the guitars, and there’s almost nothing I like more than when Deftones are influenced by Hum.

1. Turnstile “Never Enough”

I listened to Turnstile’s “Never Enough” more than any other track this year and it never lost its cachet. I doubt it ever will. There literally was never enough of “Never Enough” for me. As someone who didn’t really take notice until 2021’s GLOW ON, I feel they are at their best when they write huge, anthemic rock songs. And there was no bigger anthemic rock song this year than “Never Enough” (though Deftones had a few contenders). My only disappointment is that they never came to Toronto in 2025, so I wasn’t able to experience it live. Now, if only they could make an entire album of songs like this. I’m sure some people would rage hard over the suggestion, but damn, are they ever good at it.

FYI - I’ve added a few more that missed the cut to this playlist. See you in 2026???

I first took an interest in the Los Angeles-based band Rocket not for their music but for their taste in music. Early last year I saw a feature on them in the NME and while yes, reading that their EP sounded like “Siamese Dream-era” Smashing Pumpkins intrigued me, it was the Spotify playlist they compiled to accompany the story that impressed me more. Here was a group of young 20somethings suggesting bands I was listening to at their age (ten years earlier even) like Helium, Blonde Redhead, The Replacements, Mercury Rev and Teenage Fanclub. To my pleasant surprise, their own music fit in with a lot of the bands I am listening to right now.

Rocket were formed in 2021 by secret, mostly so they could fine-tune their skills before anyone knew they existed. Already a tight group of friends - Alithea Tuttle (vocals and bass), Desi Scaglione (guitar), Cooper Ladomade (drums) and later Baron Rinzler (guitar) - the free time they found themselves with during the pandemic really helped them get the band off the ground. Their first gig was opening up for friends Milly, another excellent band rising up from L.A.’s alt-rock scene. Not long after they were recording their debut EP, Versions of You, in Ladomade’s family garden house with a mixing board that was once owned by soft rock gods Captain & Tennille.

That EP garnered a lot of attention, which led to deal with and reissue by Transgressive Records (Alvvays, Black Country, New Road), as well as tours opening up for heroes like Ride, Sunny Day Real Estate, Silversun Pickups and Smashing Pumpkins. For their first full-length album, R is for Rocket, the band upgraded from the garden house to big time L.A. studios 64 Sound and Foo Fighters’ Studio 606 with Scaglione serving as producer. Naturally, working in such profesh studios has given Rocket’s soaring, guitar-driven rock added juice. Songs like first single “One Million,” “Crossing Fingers” and “Wide Awake” all sound as if the best traits of your favourite ‘90s shoegaze, grunge and power pop bands were combined to form this perfect specimen of a band.

You just finished a tour with Smashing Pumpkins. How was that experience?

Baron Rinzler: Unreal. It was a dream come true in a lot of ways. And also seeing them every night was epic because they’re one of our favourite bands.

Desi Scaglione: They played a lot from Mellon Collie, which was super cool. Like, they just put out a record, but they only played about four songs from it. And they played close to two hours every night. So they did all the hits off of Siamese Dream and then the ones off of Mellon Collie, but also some deep cuts, which was really cool. And yeah, I don’t think it comes as a surprise, but they’re a huge band for us. So having the honour of playing with them and getting to see them every night was very amazing.

How approachable were Billy, Jimmy, and James?

Desi: They’re all actually very nice people. James, I think we probably talked to him most. He also lives in L.A., so we were able to bond over that. We talked to Billy a few times and he was super, super friendly and genuine. And we met Jimmy briefly and he was really nice.

Alithea Tuttle: They’re all very… around, which I think was really cool, just because when you look up to somebody, obviously, you hope that they would be like all the things that you wish and they absolutely were. They kind of went out of their way to welcome us and they each gave us a good amount of advice, which is really nice because obviously what they’ve done and the music that they’ve made in their career has been incredible. So to be able to talk to them and ask, “How’d you do this? How’d you do that?” I think it was just so special to us.

When I first heard your band, I initially wondered, “Did they get their name from the Siamese Dream song?” Because I hear a lot of Pumpkins in some of your guitar tones. Is there any truth to that?

Desi: Not necessarily. I mean, first of all, it’s a very valid assumption, and you are not the first person to assume that. [Alithea] came up with the name, I can’t even remember how. But it was the only name we could say out loud that we liked and we’ve had a bunch of names. Like if you have to tell your parents your band’s name, like, what sound can you get out of your body?

Alithea: We knew immediately, though, that it would be the assumption, and I think we were so okay with that because they’re such an amazing band and because they’ve been such an influential band for us specifically. So we thought they were awesome company to be with. Sometimes people will assume that and we don’t even necessarily correct them because it makes sense.

Were there any other names you’d considered?

Desi: Yes, and they will not be repeated.

Alithea: There were none that we really considered heavily. Like, this is the only one where we thought, “This is us.”

Since we’re talking about Smashing Pumpkins, what are some of the other ‘90s bands that kind of helped shape your sound?

Desi: Probably all the ones you would assume. There’s a band called Chavez that’s really big for us. I feel like there are some songs on the new album that are more leaning towards that than some of the softer stuff we’ve listened to, but that’s a huge band for us. Pumpkins are a huge band for us.

Alithea: Fugazi is one of our favourite bands, even though obviously we don’t sound much like them. Their music is a massive influence on us and. What else?

Is that more about their DIY ethos or a lyrical thing for the Fugazi influence?

Alithea: No, I don’t know how to really put it into words, but guitar-wise they’re just so unreal and awesome. And just their energy behind things, I feel like they always came across so passionately, even on recording, which I feel is so hard to pull off. For me personally, I can see a band live and feel moved by it more often than not, just because it’s in your face and it’s real and it’s tangible. But I think sometimes it’s hard to come across as that energetic on a recording because you’re in the studio and you’re just by yourself and you’re just singing. It’s hard to channel that same energy. And I feel like they always did that perfectly, which was something that, again, I don’t think necessarily comes across maybe on our new record. I don’t think that we sound like them, but there were little things like that that I feel made us all think differently about recording, but also playing live. They were amazing.

I see Desi is also wearing a Helmet shirt.

Desi: Helmet, yeah. Fugazi, also Television was a big band for Baron and I specifically with guitar playing, which is funny because I feel like Television and Fugazi, as different as they are, are very similar in terms of how important the guitar playing is. They’re also very similar in the sense that there are two guitar players and they’re both individually, really good from one another and they work together really well.

I saw a video the band shared where you talk about some influences for the album. I thought it was really cool that Alithea mentioned Juliana Hatfield’s Only Everything.

Alithea: Yeah, the first time I heard that record it just evoked such a feeling and it was so exciting to me. It was so new, even though we’ve been listening to this genre of music for years and years and years. But I only found out about Juliana Hatfield a couple of years ago. It was Baron who played me a song, and I remember just feeling so excited because she was a girl and, not to deduce down to that, but just at a very simple level, I was like, “This is so cool. I want to do this so badly.” And I think it made me even more excited than I already was to try to be like that. I would look up photos of her and think, “Oh my God, she’s so cool.” All of those aspects of it.

But I love that she is so talented. Her melodies are incredible, her lyrics are so honest, but then at the same time, her guitar playing is incredible. Like, she doesn’t leave anything out. And I feel like sometimes people just will sing and they’ll just play rhythm guitar, and that’s just kind of their thing, which is also really cool. But she was like, “I’m gonna do both and be really, really incredible at both.” So I feel like that’s kind of what also influenced me personally about it, just being like, “I’m going to sing and I’m going to play bass. I’m not going to just play it simple. I want to try to do this the best that I can at both.” I think just her sound on that record, it feels very honest. She’s like, “This is what I am. Here you go. Take it or leave it.” And I appreciate that about it.

I feel Only Everything is one of the more under-appreciated albums of the ’90s. People usually mention her previous album, Become What You Are instead.

Alithea: Yeah, no one talks about it, and that’s exactly how I felt when I heard about it. I was like, “Why have I not heard this sooner? All of my favourite bands are in this same vein and this is the first time I’m hearing of this?” She’s incredible and just as good as the most famous bands of the ‘90s, but it feels like no one ever talks about her. And then, of course, I got into Blake Babies. And I love The Lemonheads. And once I kind of found out all that out, I was like, “Okay, I guess she was around more than I initially knew.” But I had never heard her name. I had never heard anything about her. So anytime anybody asks, I’m like, “Yeah, she’s just incredible.” And she’s still making incredible music, which is crazy.

Rocket formed during the pandemic. At what point did you realize that Rocket was no longer just a pandemic project?

Desi: From the moment we started, it really wasn’t a pandemic project in a sense of, “Oh, there’s nothing to do, we might as well be in a band.” Whether the pandemic was happening or not, I think this was going to happen.

Alithea: But I think it gave us the freedom to do it because we all were at home, able to start writing and brainstorming, just having a lot more free time than prior to being home. Obviously, everybody picked up new hobbies and such, but from the get go, we’re like, “This is not going to be a hobby. We’re gonna try to give this our best effort.”

A lot of bands I listen to have these massive pedal boards and rely on effects for their music. But I read that you didn’t use pedals much on this record, despite the guitars sounding like they’re very pedal-driven. What brought on that decision?

Baron: I feel like it was a conscious decision.

Desi: Not at first, though. We do use effects boards live, but the first time we went into the studio, Baron and I were like, “Let’s just do this shit the way we do it live.” Like click on your fuzz pedal at this part, because that’s what we always do. And it turned out cool, but we recorded eight songs at 64 Sound and we were like, “You know what? Aside from the songs changing, I feel like we need to do this differently, tonally. Like, let’s try to not do this.” And just reading about other bands where there’s some myth of them using some shit in the studio and then it turns out it’s not true or whatever.

Alithea: Yeah, it turns out that they just actually turned their amp up and got the perfect tone and it sounds incredible, it sounds huge, but it’s not a Big Muff or whatever. I feel like we figured that out and then we were like, “Okay!.”

Desi: Baron, I don’t know if we used any petals at 606, right?

Baron: No distortion or fuzz petals, but it was all amp tones. We also had access to the craziest vault of amps. So it was like being a kid in a candy store, where we would say, “Oh, for this song, I’m going to turn up this Marshall or this vintage Fender amp all the way up.”

Alithea: Also, if we recorded at 606 in August, we had just done that Sunny Day Real Estate tour in May. And I remember talking to the guitar player Dan [Hoerner] in Sunny Day, who told me that he doesn’t use any sort of distortion. even when he plays live. And I think talking to him about that, and them tonally being one of our favourite bands, you would think that on the record they’re using all these pedals to get that sound but that just wasn’t the case at all. And I feel like that’s inspired us to go into the studio in August and do the heavier songs because 606 is a much larger room. And so we went in there and then it was just amp tone city, which honestly got us exactly where we wanted to be, tone wise.

So are you able to carry on doing that through your live performances, or are you back to using pedals?

Baron: No, we need the pedals. There’s no way. We would need ridiculous amps in order to do that.

Desi: But, you know, the truth of the matter is, no one knows if we used a pedal or an amp in the studio. Because at the end of the day, it all sounds the same. There are a lot of people that show off their rig rundown on YouTube, and if you just told me that it was an amp I’d believe you. It’s so arbitrary.

Baron: It’s more about, not convenience, but like focussing on playing rather than stepping on things.

Alithea: We’re used to it now. I feel like if we were able to get a broader range of tones from the same amp, it’d be different. But a lot of people use those Kemper amps now where you can have a million amps in one. There’s no amp actually on stage. Some bands do that and then they can probably get a bunch of different amp tones. Whereas we have one amp, so I feel like having a pedal board where you can click off all your distortion and just put that reverb on, rather than having another amp that would maybe bring that sound way better. It’s a little more versatile and easier to make things sound different.

Do you feel like you’re part of any kind of music scene based on either genre or geography?

Desi: Yeah. Absolutely. Like, we’re not a shoegaze band, nor are we trying to be, but we love that music and I think there are aspects of that word that applies to our band. But I think we are much different than that. There are a lot of guitar bands in L.A. that I feel we are similar to. And you know, shoegaze is a very big thing in L.A. too, but there’s also a broad range of guitar bands. There’s a band here called Milly, and they’re some of our best friends. They’re the same kinda thing: not a shoegaze band, but just like an alternative guitar band. There’s a band out here called Jawdropped who do the same thing. Momma is from L.A. Same thing. They’re not a shoegaze band either. So I feel like if there’s any sort of world we probably fit into the most, it’s that sort of thing. But also, it’s a hard question to ask. It’s almost a question for the listener, really. Also because of the access to music people have these days, you can almost be a part of anything if someone likes one band and another. You know what I mean? Like, I feel like we could be played with Drake.

Alithea: I wish!

What is an activity you guys do together outside of music?

Baron: Ha, ha, that’s an awesome question.

Everyone: Drink.

Alithea: We like to bowl.

Baron: We like recreational activities.

Desi: Yeah, we played tennis for a while.

What about pickleball?

Desi: No. That’s a rich band’s game. We like to hang out with our friends. Sometimes there’s a bar we’ll go to that we drink at where we can do trivia. We like to eat good food together. I think there’s something else I’m missing.

Alithea: Baseball!

Desi: Yeah, baseball. We like to play baseball or softball together.

Oh yeah? Are you Angels or Dodgers fans?

Everyone: Dodgers.

Alithea: We just like hanging out with each other, honestly, and spending time with all of our friends. That’s truly the thing we do.

Desi: Playing music together. It’s probably the biggest one. No surprise.

What is the hardest part of being a band?

Desi: The whole damn thing.

Alithea: I think it’s hard to spend time away from your life being sort of normal and like your family and you become very busy just travelling so much, which is such an incredible blessing, honestly, because so many people don’t get to see that much of the world. And it’s not like we’re paying to do it. You know what I mean? We’re we’re getting paid to do it and that is honestly so incredible. But at the same time, yeah, I think just being gone from our families and partners.

Baron: Animals.

Alithea: Animals, yeah. Oh my god, my cat is sitting right here looking at us like, “You can’t ever leave.”

What’s the best part of being in a band?

Baron: Everything else.

Alithea: I think there are way more pros than cons, honestly. Definitely way more pros than cons. Sorry, I’ll let you guys talk, but I think everything about it. Getting to travel the world with your friends, getting to play music in front of people, having people actually want to come and see you play. Like, it shocks us every time that we can play a city and people will come. That just doesn’t compute in any way. And getting to meet our idols and people whose music we are so moved by, getting to sit and talk with them about why they wrote it or how they wrote it or them saying that they like our band… I feel like we’re frequently shocked by all of those moments. I think we also all realize that this is like a career and a path that so many people wish they could do. And somehow we are lucky enough to be able to do it. And so when there are those hard parts where you’re tired or you miss your family or you’ve been out for months or any of those difficult aspects, I think we’re also really reminded by the fact that this is such a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And even if we tomorrow weren’t able to do this ever again, we’d still think that was the most insane thing that ever happened to us. I feel like we could be those parents who one day say to their kids, “Yeah, I went to Europe. I played with the Pumpkins.”

Baron: That’s really funny. We’ve crossed the threshold into bragging to our kids. Like, “Okay, grandpa.”

Having been covered by many different outlets like Rolling Stone and NME and everything, what is one thing that you think the music press gets wrong about Rocket?

Alithea: Sometimes people will refer to us as pop-punk, and I think that is just completely wrong.

Baron: That’s weird. I even think shoegaze misses the mark.

Alithea: It misses the mark, but I do understand how you could think we sound something like that, but pop-punk is crazy. Every time they call us that I’m just shocked.

Desi: I feel like there’s other shit that we’re just not even thinking about. No one’s ever really offended us, I guess. So that’s been good.

Finally, I watched a video where Desi was talking about pranking people and I’m wondering, what is the best prank that he’s pulled? And what is the worst prank?

Desi: Let me just say, I met my sister’s new boyfriend last night and got out the hand buzzer to meet him and it was –

Cooper: That’s fucking weird, bro.

Baron: Did he think it was funny?

Desi: I knew it was broken. I didn’t even get to do it.

Baron: Damn. That’s a good test, though.

Alithea: Desi’s best and worst prank happened in the same night, and I’ll keep it brief. So we were playing the final night of the tour with Sunny Day Real Estate in New York. We had done two nights at Irving Plaza. They were the best shows ever. And we had become close with them because they’re just the nicest people. In a mentor sort of way, they were really great to us and really cared. So we had the only green room that had a shower in it and we knew that William [Goldsmith], the drummer, was going to have to take a shower after his set. We would leave the green room so he would be able to shower.

Desi: It wasn’t even the shower. It was the only bathroom backstage. So people were constantly using it the whole night.

Alithea: Which was fine. So Desi had the bright idea to stage a horrible poop accident next to the toilet. He literally got fake poop from this prank store, covered it in toilet paper, and put salsa on it, because we always get chips and salsa on our rider. And William was so tired after his set, because he just played for a fucking hour and a half and he’s such an incredible drummer. He was very sweaty and he ran in there and wanted to take a shower because there was an afterparty. We were all up there having fun and he like runs up and was like, “What the fuck? Are you guys okay?” He was so worried because he thought that one of us needed to go to the hospital. He got the security involved and the security was worried. It didn’t totally backfire because he did laugh about it. But we cleaned it up because no one else should have to clean that up. I mean, it wasn’t actual poop. He was like, “I didn’t get to shower because I was so worried that one of you was bleeding and in need of help.” So that was his best and worst one because we felt so guilty about it afterwards that he wasn’t able to just relax and shower.

Does anyone ever get revenge on Desi?

Alithea: Not yet, but you know what? I have a sneaking suspicion that in our future there will be a prank rivalry. I’m praying for it. We’re going to go on our headline tour and that’s maybe where we can start pranking people. We’re gonna be together every night, and they’re going to be our age.

Baron: We need to gear up now. We need to be ready.

When I began university at Carleton in Ottawa in the late 1990s, I had hopes that the capital city would be able to satiate my appetite for concerts. While I knew Ottawa was never going to match the abundance of shows I saw in Toronto up to that point, I figured it would offer enough to keep me happy, seeing as it was a metropolis. Because Ottawa had a decent track record coming into 1997, when I began my freshman year.

Over the years venues like Zaphod Beeblebrox, Barrymore’s Music Hall and the Dominion Tavern had hosted some of the greatest bands of all time, like Black Flag, Jane’s Addiction, Royal Trux, The Flaming Lips, R.E.M., Yo La Tengo, The Replacements, Radiohead, The Wedding Present, and The Afghan Whigs. Not to mention my favourite Canadian bands of the decade: Sloan, Thrush Hermit, Eric’s Trip, The Hardship Post, Jale, Pluto and Pure. Heck, even my own school’s concert venue, Porter Hall, brought in bands as great as Fugazi, Ramones, Helmet, Redd Kross, Body Count, Alice In Chains, Ministry, The Charlatans, Failure and Tool.

Of course, that wasn’t my experience. In my years at Carleton, I can literally count on my one hand the number of notable concerts I attended: Portishead, Thrush Hermit, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Hefner and local favourites, Southpacific. (I narrowly missed out on seeing Swervedriver, Fugazi, Guided By Voices and Suede, all of whom performed either just before school started or after it ended.)

That Southpacific gig was such an important one for me because they were one of the only bands from Ottawa that had anything to offer me (Kepler, being the other). I knew there were local scenes for people who liked punk and clubbing, but I never found one for my indie tastes. But I did my part, pitching a feature on them to my school paper The Charlatan, just as they were about to release their first album, Constance, a follow-up to their excellent EP 33. (The article remains to be the only one I’ve ever written where the publication commissioned an illustrated caricature of the artist because there were no press photos. Still funny after all these years! See it below.)

The thing about Southpacific though is that they weren’t just some well-kept secret in Ottawa. The band - Graeme Fleming (drums), Phil Stewart-Bowes (bass) and Joachim Toelke (guitar) - had moved to Toronto by the time they released Constance, which was released by Turnbuckle Records, a New York City-based label that had put itself on the map putting out music by Bailter Space and Oneida. Southpacific had also gained a following through their “unmapped” instrumental music that traversed the sounds of shoegaze, space-rock, drone, ambient, slowcore, and post-rock. They didn't leave themselves open to any genre, and were all the more fascinating for it.

Unfortunately, the band didn’t survive the year 2000. Toelke and Fleming each pursued solo projects, like Frihavn and The Sawfly Skies, respectively, while all three members found careers outside of music. But they stayed in touch, and even continued to jam every now and then. Southpacific meanwhile, found new fans through online forums like Reddit and getting added to playlists on streaming services. To everyone’s surprise, they appeared out of nowhere in 2020 with “Depths,” their first new track in 20 years, which was followed three years later by the EP Radar Road. (Toelke also splits his time with another instrumental post-rock outfit Kosmavermo.)

Now 25 years after the release of Constance, Southpacific are treating their one and only LP to a much-needed vinyl reissue, along with a number of gigs to commemorate the occasion, starting in Trois Rivieres, QC at the Café-Bar Zénob on September 12.

What was the impetus for playing live shows after 25 years? Unfinished business?...

Graeme Fleming: I would say so. We had been considering this for some time. The anniversary of the release of Constance added a deadline to the idea, but we are able to make it work with our respective family lives and commitments, which isn't easy at our ages. We thought it was worth a shot to see how it goes. Perhaps a younger audience keen on the so-called Shoegaze revival impacted things. We're not sure if we'll see our original fans or a new generation this time.

Phil Stewart-Bowes: Personally I’ve been aware of the approaching anniversary, and felt that we shouldn’t let it pass us by without recognizing it in some significant way. Over the years, we’ve receive very gracious messages from fans of our music, and we wanted to do something to recognize that, and bring life to our music again.

How have you found dusting off the old material during rehearsal?

Graeme: Depends on who you ask. I had been away from drums for 25 years. It's not exactly like riding a bike, but we found ways to add to our show this time.

Joachim Toelke: It's been interesting trying to dig through old notebooks and figure out pedal settings, pedal/effect/amplifier routing (which was always changing) and how to actually play the songs.

I listened to Constance a lot to relearn/confirm some parts. I hadn't listened to it in years, and for the first time started to really hear and appreciate the extra tracks, textures and production tricks Graeme put into it. Back during the recording sessions, I mostly focused on my guitar parts and sounds. But meanwhile he was putting everything together and layering and weaving all kinds of other parts and effects into the final album. He was able to be creative and experiment with the collaboration of sound engineer Nick Holmes. I think Holmes was excited to be able to be creative too and try different recording techniques.

Graeme had lost his notes and the tuning for "A Better Life Since"- which was one of the songs he brought in to the recording rather last minute as we had extra studio time booked and wanted more material for the album. I don't think he had played it since, yet he managed to reverse engineer it recently with some effort by rediscovering the tuning he used- pretty impressive!

I used to use one of those green Line 6 delay pedals (the DL4). For the song “Parallel Lines”, there's a reverse delay effect on the main guitar- it's kind of a unique sound that just really worked when we came up with that. I dusted off the pedal which had been in storage for 25 years and the sound was still saved in the presets! That was an amusing "genie in a bottle" or rather "magic effect in an old pedal" sort of moment.

Phil: It’s been a really great experience playing with the guys again, re-learning the older songs and prepping newer songs to play as well. We’ve made minor tweaks to some of our songs here and there as well, just to add a little twist. Overall I think we are sounding as good as we ever have live.

You've announced a handful of shows within driving distance. Is there a plan to play more shows in the future?

Graeme: At this point no but we'll see. We're open to the possibility.

Joachim: It would be nice to play some dates in the US and in Europe next year, where there seems to be some interest. We're curious what the response to these first shows is, and how we feel about them afterwards.

The band actually got back together in 2020 and put out an EP in 2023. What kind of expectations have you set for the band? Any more recording planned?

Graeme: Radar Road was a very different recording experience for us. Covid played with that, along with collaborating remotely. We stepped away after the recording but after some time - I think it was when Phil was visiting me - we listened to it again and agreed it had to be heard. We didn't promote it at all however. So expectations would be to enjoy the live experience. That was a big part of our song making process. We never set goals and probably should, but we know that if we're doing something special it's worth it.

What caused Southpacific to break up in the first place?

Graeme: I guess it would be when I decided to leave. I have some regrets and perhaps it would have been better to take a break. We were getting a lot of publicity that you don't want to waste but I felt something was missing. The guys know how I felt. Some of the material I had been working on was assimilated into Constance. That said, I felt I needed to step away for a bit. We then split into our separate ways after that.

Joachim: When we split up, maybe Graeme was most decisive about it, but we were all a bit stressed and fed up with some aspects of being in a band; with hindsight, we were probably guilty of taking things for granted. We were in a fortunate situation being able to play our music for people who appreciated it. I should have tried harder to connect with where Graeme's mindset was at.

I think usually when you start out with a band, it's creative, and fun and rewarding, and with the right people, collaboration can come easily; everything is exciting. But later on, there are more commitments and obligations, and the less fun parts of being in a band can start taking over.

What was it like for the three of you to get back together in 2020, after 20 years?

Graeme: There's a special feeling to hear us come back together after all that time and sound great as if it were just yesterday. Lots of emotions: we're older but we never lost the drive.

Joachim: With our personalities, we have a certain chemistry together that when we're all aligned, it's really special. We've remained friends in the years after the split, so it was nice to meet up, play music again and hear what we could do.

Phil: It was also a great experience to work on new songs in 2019 that became the Radar Road EP. I think we were able to evolve the sound of the band with those songs.

The song “Radar Road” is actually from a demo that Graeme had recorded maybe ten or so years prior, originally called “3 piece” appropriately enough. He had done a specific mix of it that he gave to me and I absolutely loved it. I’d always wanted to record a version of it, which I think was also Graeme’s intention when he recorded the demo.

How would you say things have changed for the band in 2025 compared to during your original run? Have your tastes or influences changed much when it comes to writing new music?

Graeme: I think our tastes have distanced a bit. Southpacific is a common ground. I found myself listening more to 50+ year-old album oriented music - contemporary classical and jazz - and that naturally shifted how I thought about music. Instead of writing on guitar the way I used to, I spent more time exploring sound, mixing and production. It wasn't so much stepping away from songwriting as it was about approaching music from a different angle.

Joachim: Phil lives in [Toronto], and Graeme and I are really far apart on opposite outskirts of [Ottawa], so meeting up is a challenge. Being a remote band now means working on ideas on our own and sending ideas back and forth rather than being spontaneous together. It means intense weekend music sessions where we power through things for hours on end to make use of our time together. Very different than meeting up once or twice a week and evolving things gradually like in the earlier days.

Phil: In terms of influences, what we each listen to evolves over time. I’m always seeking out and listening to new bands and artists. I listen to a lot of electronic and also ambient music, not necessarily sounds you would associate with our band. I think it all filters down in some way or another, though we’ve never tried to emulate the sound of another artist. The sound of Southpacific is the three of us with quite different influences, playing together.

I've read that the band also went by "SoPac" - was that actually a name you acknowledged?

Graeme: Amongst our friends yes, but no.

Phil: “SoPac” is just more efficient!

What made you decide to release Constance on vinyl? Do you think 33 and Radar Road could also get vinyl releases?

Graeme: We had been considering it for the 20th anniversary but couldn't pull the trigger. It's a special record for us so it deserved a special pressing. My cousin Jacob Bryce handled the art work and did a remarkable job seeing that we didn't have the original files from the CD sleeve. The double vinyl package is really beautiful. Of course it would be great if we can do something similar for 33 and Radar Road. I can see that happening.

Phil: I’ve always been a music collector, and I’ve become an avid vinyl collector the last few years. To date we’d only ever released 33 and Constance on CD. We’ve heard the requests over the years for a vinyl release, and I wanted us to make that happen as well. As Graeme said, Jake did a fantastic job on the vinyl sleeve, it’s faithful to the original CD design but also updated for 2025. It was the major hurdle to figure out in prepping a vinyl release, and he made it so easy for us in the end.

We would love to give similar treatment to 3 and Radar Road. Hopefully we will take that opportunity.

I don't think Southpacific originally identified as shoegaze but it appears you've been claimed as such by shoegaze fans. What are your thoughts on Southpacific being shoegazers?

Graeme: It's fine. It helps when people ask what you sound like. I used to say things just to confuse people when I was asked that hated question, "What kind of music do you play?" “Shoegaze.” That usually gets a "huh?" but it took a fraction of the effort.

Joachim: We were influenced by a lot of retro shoegaze, and especially the spirit of it. I think there was a sense of doing your own thing, not worrying about following any rules about it, and that whole psychological/emotional escapism aspect.

We've also been called space-rock and post-rock, and described at times as ambient, psychedelic and Pink Floyd-y, depending on the song and who you ask.

Phil: It doesn’t bother me either. In the end a genre label is just a shorthand for describing the sound of a band. It just makes communicating about music easier.

It’s interesting being considered as a “shoegaze” band in 2025. When we were first active in 1998, it was a few years after the original early ‘90s heyday, so we stood out for having a sound different than most other bands of that time. Now, there are seemingly thousands of new shoegaze bands, so I think it can be difficult to stand out from the pack if you aren’t doing something a little different to distinguish yourselves.

Did you feel like you were part of any scene back in the late '90s, be it post-rock, space-rock or even the local scene in Ottawa?

Graeme: I don't think we lasted long enough honestly. Yeah, there were a handful of bands we befriended who were listening to music we liked as well. They were gigging and kindly accepted us into their shows or rehearsal spaces. That would be the extent of the scene though from a standpoint of bands we associated with. We weren't a very polished band. Between Ottawa, Toronto and the Canadian tour we played it was under 25 shows. Being instrumental, we could have been lumped in with some other bands at the time but I think we were our own thing.

I grew up in Hamilton and got to know the guys in Tristan Psionic. What do you remember touring across Canada with them in 2000?

Graeme: Fantastic guys. Very down to earth and talented musicians - they played double duty backing up Eric Bachmann's set. They accepted us on the tour as a late addition I recall and made us feel very welcome. Eric was a lot of fun to be around as well. I still have fond memories.

Joachim: Getting to spend time with them was great - they were also supportive and full of advice. One of the best parts of being involved in music is the various interesting, kind, and creative people you get to meet.

Phil: I have very fond memories of that tour as well, and specifically of all the guys in Tristan Psionic and Eric Bachmann as well. They also brought with them their friend Bobby, who was the bassist in Scottish band Deckard, later re-named as Baby Chaos - we had a great time hanging out with him. The whole group of us got along really well that whole tour. I’ll never forget that time.

I might be starting to come around to this idea that shoegaze is a genre or subgenre, whatever. What initially began as a disparaging comment to hurt the feelings of bands that were too shy or inexperienced to look up at the audience during gigs, has metamorphosed into this phenomenon no one ever saw coming (c’mon now, you know you didn’t). I just keep seeing more and more evidence to suggest shoegaze and its litter of offshoots is being taken more seriously as something of its own.

A perfect example of how this subgenre has mutated is Kansas City’s forever ☆, a duo who blend the dreamy textures and noise of shoegaze with the rush and breakneck rhythms of jungle. Jungle-gaze? To some that might seem like a radical marriage of those two styles, but there is some history to support the idea that they complement each other. In fact, My Bloody Valentine were rumoured to have recorded and scrapped an entire album of jungle-influenced music, post-Loveless in the mid-1990s. Eventually we got a taste of what that album might have sounded like when they finally released their long-awaited comeback, 2013’s m b v. Though it was only one track, “wonder 2” proved to be an expansive assault on the ears, uniting pure chaos with sublimity.

While it seemed like a radical concept when it was originally leaked by Shields, in a piece written for Alternative Press in 1995, music journalist Simon Reynolds argued there were parallels between these styles of music, acknowledging it was an “oxymoronic mix of shattering bliss and panicky dread, the speedy on-rush of sensations.”

“The point is not to have jungle beats with guitars over the top, it's got to be more oblique, just letting that influence seep in like hip-hop did with tracks like 'Slow,’” he added.

forever ☆’s music is not just “jungle beats with guitars over the top.” Not all of their new EP, Second Gen Dream (out on Cherub Dream/à la Carte), features blazing breakbeats, but it is as driven by pounding beats as it is crashing guitars. Members David Chavez and Rachel Stang split vocals, harmonizing the way the best shoegaze acts do (see MBV, Slowdive, LSD and the Search for God). But in truth, the EP recalls the more dance-leaning, noise-pushing acts of the past, like Curve or Medicine. It’s just the kind of thing to ensure this next-gen of shoegaze keeps moving forward.

What would you like people to know about Second Gen Dream?

Rachel Stang: I can’t stress enough how hard and long David has worked on this. Most of what you are hearing are ideas or beats or riffs that he’s had worked out for years just waiting for the right moment. Everyone who has heard it has been shocked that there is only one producer - his vision is so vast.

David Chavez: While 3 Series was more straightforward with the jungle breaks and hypnotic guitar noise, I wanted 2GD to offer a little more. I wanted to cement the fact that even though we are very much a production based/electronic act, we can hold our own when it comes to guitar music. Forever has always been influenced by the intensity and noise of more extreme genres of music and I think that can truly be heard on this record. Like Rachel said, some of these tracks started out years ago left over from other bands of mine. I would probably still be working on them if I didn’t have her there to help keep things organized.

I've seen the album title also spelled 2nd Generation Dream and on the album cover its just 2GD. Is there a proper way to refer to it?

David: Either is fine. I’m a fan of the way acronyms can be used in design and art so I like 2GD.

I only know of some older emo bands from Kansas City. What is the music scene like nowadays?

Rachel: We are around a lot of hardcore bands. It feels like that part of the scene is really popping off these days. I think we also have a really lush dance music scene. As Kansas City is growing though, it really feels like a lot of the independent and underground spots are a bit in jeopardy right now, which is a little scary.

David: The DIY/alternative scene right now is massive compared to what it was several years ago even though we only have a few venues that let those kinds of bands play the way they want. The midwest emo scene is undeniable although it does seem like hardcore and adjacent genres are dominating right now. KC is a town that feels both big and small and that really reflects in the attendance at certain gigs sometimes. Shoutout all our friends keeping the underground dance scene alive.

This might be silly to ask, but what is the biggest difference between to two Kansas Cities? Up until a few years ago, I always assumed the Chiefs and Royals played in Kansas, but no, they're in Missouri. It's very confusing!

Rachel: That’s so fair, it’s very confusing. Pretty much anything that would come to mind when you think of “Kansas City” is going to be the Missouri side - downtown, Chiefs, Royals, jazz, etc. The Kansas side is generally a little more suburban, but I’d argue there’s a lot going on over here too! My favourite BBQ in the city is on the Kansas side (the original gas station Oklahoma Joe's), and that has to count for something.

Can I get a quick summary of how forever ☆ formed?

David: I had a band that was more psych-rock based before this and had always wanted to introduce more UK dance elements but the other guys just couldn’t get on board. I decided to start an offshoot band where I could make things as extreme as I wanted and as that previous band slowly died, Forever really grew into its own thing. I had invited a friend from the previous band to play bass for us at the beginning but it didn’t work out. He didn’t listen to any of the same music as us, plus I wrote all his parts anyways same as our last band.

Rachel: David and I had been friends for a while, but I had been pretty out of doing music since we had met, so when I found out he wanted me to sing, I was a little surprised. The first day we recorded, he was like, “oh thank god you can actually sing.” He had no idea, he just knew we vibed well and had a lot of similar interests. At one point, we were a three-piece, but I think we work best as a two-piece. We share the same levels of enthusiasm and passion for it.

What other names did you consider for your band?

David: I’m a huge car enthusiast so I had a couple different names that referenced certain makes/models and trim levels, but ultimately decided against those. I’m sure no one would’ve gotten the references anyways.

How important is it for people to spell the name "forever ☆" using the character instead of the word "star"?

David: I kind of kept that ambiguous on purpose for fun. There’s a million bands named Forever and I wanted us to stand out. The star also looks cool on streaming services.

What are your influences?

David: I love mid-’90s jungle and techstep, lots of darkcore and rave. Bands/DJs from the Second Summer of Love have had some of the biggest impact on my writing. I grew up listening to lots of metal and hardcore. We specifically love acts like The Prodigy, Konflict, Ed Rush & Optical, Curve, MBV, and Love Spirals Downwards.

I feel like Kevin Shields really started something in those years between Loveless and m b v when he was talking about making a jungle-influenced album. What made you decide to mix shoegaze/dream pop-type sounds with heavy, fast breakbeats?

David: That was definitely the plan all along. I was shocked when people liked it because I had very few friends that shared the same love I had for jungle and DnB. Coming from the guitar music scene where people treated dance music like a guilty pleasure, I always wanted to combine the two to create some sort of neo-Madchester vibe. I always liked dancing and I always liked dance music which is also the reason why Rachel and I get along so well.

Were you already familiar with My Bloody Valentine's "wonder 2" or albums like Third Eye Foundation's Semtex or Bowery Electric's Lushlife, which flirt with the idea?

David: I’m actually pretty unfamiliar with Third Eye Foundation but I like what I hear. Will definitely be exploring that further. I dabble with some Bowery Electric every now and then, but I got to see MBV perform “wonder 2” live in 2018 and it blew my brain apart. The MBV self-titled record still gets lost on me even after many listens. Not sure if that’s a good or bad thing but I do like that record.

How did you discover shoegaze?

Rachel: I actually think it was M83's Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts. I didn't even know what shoegaze was at the time. A little further down the line when I got more into the actual genre though it was definitely MBV.

David: I’m sure it was MBV. Although hearing that first Whirr record when it came out really changed the game for me. I got into all the other classics after that.

What is your favourite shoegaze band?

Rachel: Probably Slowdive. I wanted to come up with a more interesting answer, lol, but I always come back to it.

David: I think Doppelgänger-era Curve and especially the early EPs really hit all my sweet spots.

What is your favourite jungle/drum & bass producer/act?

David: If I’m wanting to listen to more jungle-based stuff it’s always Dillinja and Harmony. Lots of Deep Jungle and Moving Shadow releases. I do love the darker ‘00s sound when it comes to DnB. Lots of Metalheadz stuff. Love Goldie but love Ed Rush & Optical even more.

What is your food of choice while recording?

Rachel: It depends on the time of day, but if we are recording after work, we’ll grab street tacos from Don Rudy’s, a taco truck in the parking lot of Dave’s work, and at night probably a tequila mule.

David: When I’m working on recording I always forget to make time to eat so that usually means a last minute trip to get Chinese food or pizza at the very end of the night.

What TV show does the band watch together?

Rachel: Right now it’s a lot of Love Island and Bravo. We definitely bonded over loving reality TV. We also recently finished The White Lotus, and Dave still needs to finish Game of Thrones.

David: Once upon a time I would throw FLCL or Gundam on as background inspo but I always got distracted and would eventually just stop recording. Lots of Vanderpump Rules and Traitors. We love our trash TV, that’s for sure.

What album is played most when the band is hanging out together or on tour?

Rachel: Thievery Corporation’s Outernational Sound

What is an activity the band does together outside of music?

Rachel: I don’t know if this counts as “outside” of music, but we are total club rats. We go out dancing all the time. We both do a lot of art and design outside of music too, but our most frequent activity is probably just playing with our cat.

David: I love to work on my cars when I can. I also love painting Battletech and Gunpla as well. We’re always hanging out at our local DJ parties.

What is the hardest part of being a band?

Rachel: We come from pretty different influences and perspectives, and we’re both very stubborn, so sometimes it’s a bit of a puzzle figuring out how our ideas fit together. But we also understand each other very well, so we manage to get to that common ground 10 out of 10 times. We have a bit of a yin and yang thing going, and that takes effort, but the results are worth it.

What is the best part of being a band?

Rachel: This is my first band I’ve ever been in, so for me, all of it. I’ve been so spoiled getting to do this with David who is just so creative and talented beyond anything you could imagine. He’s so generous with his time and knowledge, and getting to watch him bring this vision to life has just been such a treasure.

David: Getting to work with someone who is such a talented singer has been awesome. I can sing but I don’t think I’m very good at it. Rachel has taught me lots about how to use my voice properly and it’s great.

What is another band from Kansas City that fans of forever ☆ should know about?

David: Our friends Dewey and Violent Constellations are some of our favourite DJs. The Kansas City Rollers Club are the only ones putting DnB on KC’s map right now. Big up to the underground dance scene.

If you had to pick only one subgenre listed on your Bandcamp page to describe your music which would it be?

David: CVLT Nation called us “junglegaze,” which is hilarious but also quite accurate.

What are most of your lyrics about?

Rachel: I shit you not, it’s almost all car metaphors. There are some little nods to our dynamic with each other sprinkled in there, but seriously like 90% car metaphors.

What is your favourite band of the 1990s?

Rachel: New Order, Stone Roses, Slowdive, Oasis, Hole

David: Oasis, Happy Mondays, The Primitives, Orbital, Curve

What is your favourite venue to play and why?

David: We haven’t played live yet.

What is your favourite record shop in the world?

Rachel: I’m partial to Love Garden in Lawrence, Kansas. I was living there when I started collecting records. It feels exactly like you want a record shop to feel like, and they also always have a shop cat.

David: Stick It In Your Ear in Springfield, MO is my favourite.

Few artists have held my attention as fixedly over the past few years as Winter (aka Samira Winter). I don’t think there is a shoegaze act right now that is better at writing melodies than her. I suppose Wisp has grabbed the spotlight of late, seeing as she is essentially a pop artist disguised as a shoegazer. But in all honesty, while I’ve really enjoyed Wisp’s new album, I feel like she gets a little too lost in prioritizing gauzy textures over pop hooks. And so here I am sharing my excitement for Winter’s new album, Adult Romantix, a euphoric shoegaze odyssey that’s just dripping in wistful intimacy.

Originally from Brazil, Samira Winter moved to the U.S. after high school, cutting her teeth on Boston’s indie rock scene while attending college. It was in Beantown that she formed her band Winter (taken from her last name, of course) in 2012, moving to Los Angeles for the next decade, before changing coasts and making the move to New York City in 2024.

Crafting an enchanting sound that blends shoegaze, dream pop, electronica and even power pop, Winter has become one of the more established singer-songwriters in her circle. Her two albums for the pioneering indie label Bar/None - 2020’s Endless Space (Between You & I) and 2022’s What Kind Of Blue Are You? - were underrated gems, while last year’s more experimental EPs - ...and she's still listening and Water Season (with Hooky) - demonstrated her ambition to work outside of the shoegaze/dream pop box are endless.

For her fifth proper album, Adult Romantix, Winter has moved over to indie label Winspear, joining a roster that includes Teethe, Wishy and villagerrr. Tapping into the cherished memories of her time spent in Los Angeles, Winter presents Adult Romantix as “a lost L.A. summer,” where her celestial whispers and whirling, fuzzy guitar effects offer up sun-kissed melodies and nostalgic vibes.

Featuring guest appearances by Tanukichan’s Hannah van Loon and Horse Jumper of Love’s Dimitri Giannopoulos, Adult Romantix feels like an album I’ve always tried to will into existence. If “popgaze” is in fact a thing (Bandcamp seems to think it is), then Winter has offered up a blueprint for how to do it to perfection, and set the bar for everyone else to try and beat.

You recently moved to New York from Los Angeles. How has that change been for you?

Okay, so right now I'm in L.A. working on some videos for the album. But I just moved to New York last year. I’m mainly living there, but I have a lot of collaborators I like to do songwriting sessions with here in L.A. too. There are a lot of reasons for me to spend some time in L.A., so I'm gonna try to do both. 

How hard is it to juggle being in those two places?

We'll see how it all lands, but I'm just kind of used to being in motion. I’ve always been in transit. Growing up in Brazil I was moving around a lot, so basically up until I was ten I spent my childhood in different countries. I was born in New Mexico, then I spent some time in Mexico. Then some time in Brazil, then Miami, and then I just stayed in Brazil for the rest of elementary school until I graduated high school. 

And then you moved back to the U.S., to Boston? 

Yeah. I really love Brazil and I love going back, and I could see myself one day living there when I'm a little bit older. But I think for right now and for the past decades, since I've moved here, it really has been pulling me to be in the U.S. to be part of a music scene, a community. I moved to New York last year, and then I was touring off and on, coming back to it. New York and L.A. truly are different cities, and there are different pros and cons. I'd say, yeah, getting around. L.A. is actually not too bad if you live in neighbourhoods that are close to each other. But it means a lot more driving and being in traffic, it's such a different lifestyle. L.A. is a place that is really good to miss. I think it's a great place to have nostalgia for. And so I think it's always just going to have such a big place in my heart. Even though I never thought I would ever live in New York, it just lined up in my life. And it has been a fun adventure. 

So you're back in Los Angeles. What does that city mean to you as an artist? 

I think for me, even though the band started in Boston, L.A. was just so formative for me. It's where I played DIY basement shows and found a community where people were throwing shows and were trying different types of nights out. Once I got to score a film and I've dabbled in ambient music. There is a side to me that loves making more abstract music. So I really got into making L.A. my playground, even if at the time I wasn't trying to. When I was packing up and leaving, I had just so many memories rush through me and it just really inspired me to write this new album. Honestly, it's all about L.A. and the transitory period of stepping away. 

When I think of L.A. I my brain always goes to Gregg Araki’s Nowhere for some reason. 

My last record was crazy inspired by Gregg Araki. I keep returning to his films as a source of inspiration, but I think specifically with this record, it does really connect to that world. I think he is just able to capture innocence and teenage irreverence so well. I could watch his films with the sound off, but the music to me was always so important. I learned about quite a few bands by seeing his movies and listening to the soundtracks. 

I could definitely hear Winter on a Gregg Araki soundtrack. Does cinema play a part in how you write your music? 

The visuals come later for me. For me the melodies flow through me first. I am a little bit of a synaesthesia type of person, so sometimes it does happen where I have certain visuals or colours. But I'd say when I'm at the studio recording and hearing the song back that's when I'll imagine the music videos. 

The new album is inspired by late 18th century Romanticism, French New Wave and ‘90s rom-coms. What was it about those three periods or genres that played such a big part in your songwriting?

I think I was just curious to explore the themes of fantasy, the boundariess of fantasy and reality. I think French New Wave was so good at portraying the subtleties and the nuances of the platonic and the romantic in settings like a vacation in a sleepy beachtown. In a way, this album has a side to it that's actually so escapist. I'm also really inspired by that comic Drowning Girl, where the girl is just escaping into her fantasies. And reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, it's so beautiful. I was really inspired by the ideals of the romantic movement. Not without a grain of salt. I think it's curious to put a question mark into all of this and just be like, “What are the conventions that we have in our head and what are those stories and how much of it is our own make-believe interpretation of the stories that happen in our lives?” It's all a little bit, I don't know, I love the idea of how memories can have this dreamlike quality to them. All of those things, I think, just inspired the concept of this album. And also just thinking about the romantic period, especially nowadays with valuing pleasure and feeling and romance and love. 

What is it about ‘90s rom-coms that acted as an inspiration for you? 

So the story or the concept of this album is like this indie rock romance between this fictitious couple, the Adult Romantix couple. I think of Sonic Youth's Goo videos. That's just such a part of my life and of all the memories, that was so formative for me. And so I think there's this romantic love that got away. Like maybe it was a short thing, but it did change your life forever and maybe you feel nostalgic about it sometimes. 

It sounds like you're referring specifically to Sonic Youth’s “Dirty Boots” video? 

Oh, yeah, that one. 

It’s really cool that you mentioned that video because it kinda changed my life when I first saw it at the age of 14. I credit “Dirty Boots” for getting me into indie and alternative music in the early ’90s. To me the romance in that video was this perfect teenage fantasy.  

This is what I'm talking about! Sometimes it's the simple things in life, like going to a show and finding out about a band. But I really identify with that. And I'm just inspired by it at this moment too, you know? 

Back to ’90s rom-coms. Were there any specific ones that inspired you?

So “the love that got away” film to me is Before Sunrise. It’s very romantic. Like, just that concept of trying to grasp something that's so fleeting at the end of summer. And that sense of connection. But, yes, that film is definitely a huge inspiration. I love Richard Linklater. I love Slacker too. Also, I would say those Gen X films like Reality Bites and Stealing Beauty because they had indie rock songs in them and this level of fantasy. They were so well done. And it isn’t on the American Hollywood side and I don't even know if it's considered rom-com, but I'm really inspired by Éric Rohmer’s films. He was like the last French new wave director. His Tales of the Four Seasons series of films gave me so much inspiration. 

I sense a lot of that in the album cover. It really fits the album and suggests music that is either about being very much in love or being nostalgic for a time you were in love. Was there a particular feeling you were aiming for with that image?

Yeah. It's funny how the album shaped up to be this love album about love memories, this nostalgia for summers because I started writing it when I was very out of love and in denial too, that I was so out of love. And so I think the album cover, for the first time really ever for me, provided me with a lore of characters. Like in actual real life, when I was writing the songs for the first time, I actually collaborated with more people and had this string of these characters in this phase of my life. 

With the characters from the cover, I was wanting to follow a shoegaze tradition of a very sensual kiss. I was imagining it sort of inspired by the My Bloody Valentine EP Glider. I was imagining that sexy kind of shoegaze, like Gregg Araki or something. I was imagining a really closeup kiss. And we found the couple, who are actually a real indie rock couple. They're both in different bands: Avsha Weinberg is from Lowertown, and Mina Walker is from Daisy the Great. And they're so super in love. They also play music together. Just the way that photo came out too. I felt like it was actually aligned with what the album's actually about, which is like that memory. And so I think it worked out perfectly with the white background and very grainy image. Like it asks, “Is this a dream?” 

Which do you find easier: writing while you’re in love or while you’re out of love?

Easy. When I’m in love. Especially in the beginning, when I’m falling in love. Honestly, even just having a crush, I think it can be really inspiring. I think what gets me about the crush thing, and I think that's why there's so much room for them in your fantasy, is that you still don't know them super well. It hasn't developed yet. As for falling in love, which is the process, I think you have to know and live through some things. You have to show up for them, you know? 

The bio says that sonically you were influenced by Sonic Youth’s Rather Ripped, which I find fascinating because it’s such an underrated album of theirs.

I think with Rather Ripped, we just wanted to capture that sort of sandy, distorted sound, but in these very basic songs. There are just so many bangers on that album and I liked the saturation and the colour. So I was just pulling from different things. 

And it also mentioned a couple of California bands like Further and Starflyer 59, who again, are quite underrated. What is it about those bands that appealed to you?

There are a couple of different things where we actually wanted to do this soundtrack to a lost L.A. summer. There is this style I've always tried to figure out, this sleepy, heroin-y kind of music that is sort of shoegaze, like Tomorrows Tulips. I went to a show a couple nights ago and I was like, "This what I'm talking about. A California summer.” It’s sleepier than the East Coast bands, but it's just like this tradition. I think those bands like Further, they're kind of skater/surfer people. And I just love it. 

And then the guys in that band went and formed Beachwood Sparks after Further. That sound you were describing made me think of a different California band called Acetone. Are you familiar with them?

Yeah, it's like Acetone. I think because I was also writing and recording here in L.A., I wanted that feeling that you're a little bit sunburnt, you're smoking a cigarette - this California shoegazer vibe. 

Both Dimitri Giannopoulos (Horse Jumper of Love) and Hannah van Loon (Tanukichan) appear on the album. I actually interviewed both of them last year. What was it about those two that made you ask them to contribute?

Well, I toured with Tanukichan when my last album came out, and I just love her. I was such a fan of hers for literally forever, since she put out her first EP. I've just always loved her music and touring with her, it was so great getting to hear her voice every night. When we finished recording “Hide-A-Lullaby,” it was just me singing and I just felt like it could use something else because this album's really textural. So I was like, “Oh, it'd be so nice to have another voice.” And I was imagining a girl's voice. Hannah immediately came to mind because she does that sort of whispery vocal and it would be so cool to work with her. I just love her music. And then I reached out and she was down to sing. That's how that happened.

And then with Dimitri, I'm a huge Horse Jumper of Love fan. I met him when I went to see him play once, and we just kind of kept in touch. We were always saying, “Oh, we should jam or work on something together.” So when we were working on “Misery,” it needed a second verse, and I thought it’d be cool if there was a different perspective. So I just thought of Dimitri, and, yeah, I’m just so stoked because they're both so amazing and so cool to have on the record. 

So there are the collaborations on this album, as well as the last album with SASAMI and Hatchie, but also the EP you did with Hooky and one of my favourite songs from last year “Perfectly Blue” with RIP Swirl. What is it about working with other solo artists that appeals to you? 

That's true and I didn't even notice! I am a solo artist and I love writing songs by myself, completely being the director of Winter. That's my job. It's my project and I'm responsible for a lot of the decisions. But I also love getting to collaborate with people. I think because I am a solo artist, sometimes it's just fun to make art with your friends. But I didn't realize it was all with other solo artists. I think I just like working with one other person sometimes. It’s kind of easy when it's just you and another person. I don't know. I guess they just happened naturally because I gravitate towards that type of musician. 

How do you feel about the term shoegaze being used for your music? 

So I grew up in Brazil and I had never heard of it. I hadn't heard of dream pop and I didn't know about any of those bands. I wasn't into indie music in high school either. I didn't know about those styles until college in Boston and going to shows there, and then discovering records with my friends in my early 20s. And it was the time where shoegaze was not cool. Duster was not cool. I'm not trying to sound snobby, but it was truly kind of lame. But I think it was also exciting to discover something that other people didn't know about. I think the part of it that bums me out a little bit these days is that these are really great records by, like Cocteau Twins, and the music is just being played on TikTok. Like, the context of it is getting lost. It feels a little bit like a shallow experience that is connecting people to these albums. I want to make sure people are listening to the whole album and also know about the bands, you know? 

It shouldn't be a shallow experience. I think that shoegaze is really beautiful and powerful and can connect you. I can get poetic sometimes just talking about shoegaze and dream pop because I do think it's really beautiful music with a lot of possibilities. The parts of dream pop and shoegaze that resonate with me are maybe not what resonate with other people. I think you can connect with them in different ways, but for me it's the ethereal and androgynous sensuality. I also do love just blasting it and entering a trance-like experience through a wall of sound. I think it can be so cathartic to experience shoegaze and dream pop in a sonic setting. So I just invite people to listen to that music and really feel your senses because I do think it was made from a place of feeling and reacting. 

Finally, as a Canadian I feel obligated to ask about last year’s single “shaniatwainlovestory.” What is the story behind that song?

Okay, so I watched her documentary [Not Just A Girl ] and I just got really mad about what happened to her. With the husband leaving her for her best friend and then he was her producer. You know when you watch a movie and it stays with you, I like to call that feeling “cinemagic.” It's like you can't live it, you kind of feel the movie inside of you. I had that with the Shania doc and I guess I just was like, “I'm going to write from the POV of finding your husband and producer cheating on you.” And it's funny that it's just so literal, but I was just like, you know, my Shania Twain love story.

Full disclosure: I used to edit Jasamine White-Gluz’s reviews when she was a freelance writer for Exclaim!. This was 15 to 20 years ago, when I was an associate editor at the magazine and a few years before the formation of No Joy, her long-running shoegaze project she started in 2009. On top of that, I actually interviewed Jasamine for Exclaim!, covering both No Joy’s debut album, Ghost Blonde, and its follow-up, Wait for Pleasure, when the Montreal band were one of just a few shoegazers breathing life into the genre.

No Joy have continued to evolve and steadily release music over the years for labels such as Mexican Summer, Topshelf and Joyful Noise, including a collaborative eponymous EP in 2018 with space rock/drone music legend Sonic Boom (aka Pete Kemper). Now signed to Sonic Cathedral in Europe/UK and Hand Drawn Dracula everywhere else, Jasamine has readied her fifth No Joy full-length, Bugland.

While the easier thing to do would be for No Joy to join the current shoegaze renaissance and turn in something closer to the band’s earlier recordings, Jasamine chose to continue her musical journey of trying something new. Bugland sees her teaming up with Chicago’s Fire-Toolz (aka Angel Marcloid), a genre-bending producer who offered just the unpredictable and innovative perspective Jasamine was searching for. Together they took inspiration from the creepy crawlers inhabiting the rural surroundings of Jasamine’s home in Hudson, Quebec and created one of the most audacious shoegaze albums of the year.

I wanted to start off by talking about bugs. Where did that interest come from? Do you fancy yourself an entomologist? 

No, not at all. It was from being around them. Where I live is full of nature and I was paying more attention to them and other things around me like plants and trees. But there are so many bugs. And I guess I wasn't seeing them as much when I lived in the city. So I got to take a closer look. They're gross and cool and cute and I don't know…

I guess you're cool with bugs landing on you and crawling over you? For instance, I saw the photo of the tarantula on your head.

Oh yeah, I'm fine with that. That tarantula is actually very sweet. I think her name was Rosie or the type of spider is called a Rosie tarantula [a Chilean rose hair tarantula, perhaps?]. But it was somebody's pet. I was looking for bugs to shoot, and I was trying to wrangle bugs in from the yard and it was harder than I thought. So I found an educator who goes to schools and teaches kids about bugs. I asked him, "Can I borrow you for two hours?” He had spiders and stick bugs and snails and all that stuff. 

So these were bug models?

Yes, exactly. Some were better than others. I have to say the praying mantis was a diva. It was totally cool, but then when the camera was going it was refusing to cooperate. Like, “You cannot take my photo.” But we got her in the end. 

Did you credit them in the album notes?

I don't think so. I mean, I forgot. Umm… I definitely should have gotten their full names. Oh, you know what? I did ask the owner before if there were any special names I should credit and he was like, "I don't know why you're asking me this.”

What is the company? I can give them a shout-out here. 

It is called Pat's Pet Show. He's local, in the west part of Quebec here. I had found him because he also does wildlife rescue. So sometimes when people find a turtle on the road, they'll just call him and he'll go move the turtle or the owl or whatever's in the way. But on the side he also has a lot of bugs. 

You're now living in a rural part of Quebec. Are you better suited for that kind of lifestyle as opposed to a city lifestyle at this stage? 

Yeah, I think so. After living in a city for so long, it was weird to learn that's why I was always stressed or that's why I couldn't sleep. In the city, there are obviously perks because you’re around everything, and I used to live near all the venues so I’d go to see shows and catch up on stuff. But now I definitely feel like at this stage it's way more my speed to be outside the city, for sure. Once you live without the noise it's just such a different thing. The downside is that I'm not as spontaneous. If someone invites me to come to the show tonight, it's going to take me an hour to get there, and by the time I get there, it's over. So I have to plan my moves a little bit more in advance. But that's okay. 

Being where you are, how hard is it to stay in touch with what's going on in the Montreal music scene? 

I would say it's a little difficult because in the past I lived next to venues where I would go see an opening band out of curiosity or I'd just go there and see what's happening. Whereas I don't really do that as much now. So it's more of the digital world where I'm keeping up on stuff. I'm trying to find a happy medium where I can still explore. There is a music scene here in Hudson but it's more like that there are professional musicians in my neighbourhood. Like, my neighbour is in the Sam Roberts Band. But it’s not the same as being in Montreal. So it's a little bit harder to keep up with what's going on. I definitely think I've paid more attention to the local invasive plant species lately more than local bands, unfortunately. 

You asked Nick Flanagan to write your bio. Not only is he funny, but he can also write. I find music bios these days are way too earnest and focused on how many streams or playlist covers an artist has achieved. Some of the bios I read sound like they were generated through AI. It’s pretty sad. Getting a comedian to write your bio really is a stroke of genius. How did you come up with that idea?

Bios are the worst written things. It's brutal. And the last thing I wanted was, like you said, something earnest or just trying to throw out comparisons or use big language to describe something. Because the record is really just what it is. It's very truthful. Like, it’s not trying to be something it’s not. And so I definitely wanted somebody who would hear the humour in the music and know how to put that into words. And so I just DMed Nick and asked if he would do it. Because he's so funny, and he's such a good writer that I felt he would get it, and he did right away. He totally got it. 

You mentioned humour in the music. Is that something that you focus on when you're writing? 

I don't know. I think maybe that comes after the fact, but I don't take myself too seriously. Like, even songs that are heavy musically or the subject matter or whatever, there's still some quirk or optimism or something that is a little bit light about it. Just because I don't take myself that seriously. It’s fine for people who can, but I just can't do it. I'd make fun of myself if I started taking myself so seriously. I think there's always a little tongue-in-cheek or a little prank in the music somewhere. 

One thing I really liked about the bio was the mention of you writing reviews for Exclaim!. As we both know, I edited a lot of those reviews for the magazine, and one review you wrote that has always stood out to me was your review of My Chemical Romance’s second album because I was a huge fan of theirs at the time. What do you remember about your time as a music writer? 

Well, I started writing when I was much younger to get into shows for free. I had a fake zine so I could interview bands but it was a zine that nobody ever saw. From talking to bands I knew I wanted to be a musician, but I was trying to figure out how I fit in. I started when I was younger, just out of high school, and asking them weird questions to try and get a different perspective. As I got older and began writing for Exclaim!, I felt like it was a dark time, especially with live reviews. That was the Buddyhead era of journalism, like when everyone was trying to find something wrong or like with Vice, where everybody's just overcritical. So I think in the background of my mind, I had to say something negative in a review. And as a musician now, I think, “You didn't have to say that about their live show. Maybe they were just having a bad day.” So I definitely feel like I was pretty harsh on some bands for no reason. But sometimes shit-talking stuff gets more attention than just a glowing review. 

I don't know how music journalists can listen to that much music and be able to stay critical and have new thoughts in this age where there's so much out there. Like, kudos to all the writers because I don't think I could do it now. There's just so much out there. 

Speaking of that, shoegaze has blown up and more attention by the music press than it has in decades. It’s become almost this mainstream phenomenon. Having made shoegaze-adjacent music for as long as you have, how do you feel about what is happening? 

I feel like there was maybe a little shoegaze moment before we were out there, like with Asobi Seksu and Blonde Redhead. There have been glimmers in the past, but I think what's interesting about shoegaze is that you've got to fall into a type. Like, you've got to be a Slowdive type or a My Bloody Valentine type, and I feel like Nothing very early on were this Deftones-style of heavy shoegaze. It feels like sometimes listeners expect a genre style to be that way.  

But I feel like a lot of the new bands have this sound to them that is falling into a new category of shoegaze that is just much heavier. So I just find that sometimes you have to be this or that in the genre to reach a bigger audience. But I mean if it gets some of my peers and some of these older bands more listeners and sells more records that’s great. 

Do you listen to a lot of newer shoegaze bands? 

Umm… I try. My favourite kind of thing to listen to is when it's different, and that’s why I love Fire-Toolz because it was confusing to the point of where I'm like, “I don't know what the hell is this!” And maybe on my first listen, I think, “Did I like that?” So I try and listen to things that are a bit more out there; music that wouldn't be categorized as shoegaze. But I'm trying to keep up. Often I think the algorithm is like, “You’re too old. You're not our demographic,” and the music just doesn't come across my feeds or streams. It's not directed at me, which is funny. 

Have you noticed people taking an interest in No Joy recently who might not have known about them before this shoegaze trend took off? 

Yeah, definitely. You know what? Every time I put out a full-length I take a while in between because I'm always trying to figure out what is going on in the music industry. What kind of format is better? What should I do? Every time, even before More Faithful, I was trying to figure out what was going on. What kind of music should I be making? Not necessarily to create something for the industry, but just to understand the world in which we exist. And so I feel like now I have a better hold on things like streaming and social media. So, yes there are more people discovering it, but I would get bored if I made the same record over and over again.

At the same time, if I had stayed in the same lane and made the same record again I’d probably have more listeners. Like, if I made Ghost Blonde right now, I'm sure there would be people who like all of the new bands that would be into it. I just have no interest in doing that again.  

Right. Instead of doing that you worked with Fire-Toolz. How did you hook up with her? 

I just heard her music, first when I was making Motherhood with Chris Walla, who used to be in Death Cab For Cutie. He was engineering a couple songs and he said, “You should hear this. I think you'd like it.” This was like 2018, I think. And I was just so confused. It was so crazy, but it's so hook-y. I didn't know what I was listening to. So I just reached out to her and said, “We should try and write a song together,” because I felt like her production was similar to when I had first heard Lansing-Dreiden and Jorge Elbrecht. I knew that this person understands melody and has a really fearless production style. So we worked on the song “Bugland” together and it took no time to finish. And then because it happened so quickly, I was like, “Okay, let's just keep going and work on other songs.” So it really just happened organically like that. 

Would you describe it as like a full-on collaboration, like what you did with Sonic Boom? Or did she operate more as a producer? 

No, it was a full collab. I would bring in a song, and some were more fleshed out than others, so she took more of a mixing or a production role for those. And then for others, I'd give her a demo that needed something more and then asked her to contribute parts to it. And we weirdly had very similar tastes in music. So everything she added was a perfect fit. 

So it was almost like she was a band member. Is she a part of your touring lineup? 

No, unfortunately, not. But maybe for a special Chicago show she could join us. 

How has it been trying to present this album live compared to previous ones? 

We did three shows last year where we tested some new stuff live to see and it's been fun. I've been adding more of a vocal station so I can do some live mixing, where I’m looping stuff, because some of the songs are kind of vocal-heavy compared to older material. It's always hard though when we record a song with 91 tracks and try to figure out how to play it live. So we do have backing tracks that help with synths and extra stuff. It's a challenge. Some of these songs are not going to sound exactly like album versions; they'll just sound like new renditions of the song. 

I really liked how you featured the saxophone on “Jelly Meadow Bright.” That song feels like you were really going for broke. The bio speaks of channeling a wide variety of tastes into something cohesive. Is there anything that didn’t fit? Or is that what brought the chaos?

Pretty much everything we tried fit into that song. We did have other songs that we started and tried and we just said, “I don't know.” Sometimes the songs needed to cook a little longer. The song “Bugland” was a demo I had from 2016 and it used to be called “White Zombie” because it had a guitar tuning that I was trying out, which I had put it on every record, but it just never clicked. And then with “Bugland” it clicked. But pretty much every idea we had we put in there. 

So the term “Bugland” had been kicking around for a while then? 

Yeah. It’s such a stupid story, but before I moved to the country, I lived in the city with my husband and our cat. One day our cat was trying to eat an ant, and it was on his tongue. It's really not an interesting story at all, but we kind of joke like, “Oh, we're in bugland.” And from then on we kind of always said that we lived in bugland, because there were bugs everywhere. But then once we moved here, it was like a whole other level where you find beetles in your hair. It's pretty wild. We began referring to the house as Bugland; it’s just our way of referring to home. So that title of the record is like an homage to the home that we've built, but also the bugs that live beside us as well. 

The album has a song called “Save The Lobsters.” Do lobsters need saving? 

My mom became a vegetarian when she was 12. And in my head, she became a vegetarian because her mom was cooking lobster, and she couldn't stand it. That story's not actually true. I don't know where I came up with that story, but that's what I imagined happened. But I was on a trip with my mother, and we were walking on the beach and about nine or ten lobster traps had washed up on the shore with live lobsters still in them. And this was at like five in the morning. So I just said, “I am going to break all these traps and release all the lobsters.” I broke all the traps, which as I say this I’m realizing was probably a felony, but I broke all them, one by one, and escorted the lobsters back into the sea. 

For me, it was a meaningful thing because I'm a vegan and I’m always trying to help the environment and help animals. And sometimes donating to rescues and stuff like that is great, but sometimes it feels like it’s not enough. So in that case, I felt like I was doing something with my own hands that was at least helping many dozen lobsters back into the sea in Maine. 

Bugland is being released by Sonic Cathedral in the UK. I interviewed Nat about the label’s 20th anniversary last year. How did you end up working with him?

Nat had done our show in the UK, and I think it was maybe one of the worst shows I've ever played, but he promoted it. So we've known each other for a long time, but I had never put out music on a UK label, and to me shoegaze is synonymous with the UK. I felt like I needed more of a presence over there just because there's such a large fan base and so much history behind the genre there. So I was looking for labels that would have some presence in the UK and Europe. I just sent them the record, sort of like, “Hey, do you like this?” Because Sonic Cathedral has some of the heaviest hitters in shoegaze. I wasn't sure if he would be into the record just because it's not, well, it can be classified as shoegaze but it could also be something else. But he was down, so it just happened from there. 

Did he send you a SHOEGAZER T-shirt? 

Not yet. I kind of want the SHOEGAZER socks though. 

After losing all of its major sports franchises over the past few years, the city of Oakland, CA seems to be filling that void left by the Raiders, Warriors and Athletics with… shoegaze? Or maybe that’s just how I perceive the city coping with that loss, because here I am writing about a third artist from the Bright Side of the Bay’s impressive scene.

In previous posts I profiled Tanukichan and Softie, and now here comes Welcome Strawberry. Formed by Cyrus VandenBerghe, who also spends time in the Smoking Room-affiliated, dreamy synth-pop trio Still Ruins, Welcome Strawberry have put out a few releases over the past few years that have seen VandenBerghe work with some of music’s best ears: Nick Bassett (Whirr, Nothing), Dylan Wall (Weed, sunshy) and Jorge Elbrecht (Tamaryn, No Joy).

Their self-titled debut album from 2022 was a widely-overlooked gem that offered a heady dose of shoegaze, psychedelia and dream pop to near perfection. One year later it was followed by a beautifully raw EP called Scared to Look. And now their sophomore album, desperate flower, has arrived via the excellent tandem of Cherub Dream and à La Carte Records. From “fragrance net,” the opening hypnagogic slow jam, to the levitating blissed out closer “unraveled smiles,” Welcome Strawberry have successfully built a mood board where everything they throw at it sticks (including Elephant 6-inspired psych-pop, pillowy ambient, Flying Nun jangle pop, and maybe even a nod to Curve’s industrial-leaning shoegaze).

On your Bandcamp page you wrote: "scent is the most underrated artform." Can you elaborate on this sentence and explain what you mean?

Cyrus VandenBerghe: I feel that each art form whether it be music, painting, architecture, cooking, dance etc appeals to a certain sense primarily and that scent is often overlooked. I really got into sampling fragrances the last few years and it’s a rabbit hole like any other. Every scent elicits a completely different feeling or image in my head and can totally influence the way I present myself. The artistry that goes into the actual craft of making scents is underappreciated too. And there’s the fact that the olfactory bulb is directly connected to the emotion/memory regions of the brain unlike the other senses. It’s so fascinating to me how intensely tied together memory and scent can be because of this. Smelling something can bring up such strong emotions and nostalgia. Plus it’s nice to smell nice!

Did you ever consider using the scratch-and-sniff gimmick for the album cover or just spraying it with a particular fragrance to give it a scent?

I totally did! I really wanted to get a custom scent made to go along with listening to the album. I considered either candles or a rollerball fragrance, but after a little research I quickly realized it was way out of my price range. In my dream scenario the record would have come with an eau de parfum called Violets & Honey and would have landed somewhere between Naxos by Xerjoff and Mojave Ghost by Byredo.

Can I get a quick summary of how Welcome Strawberry formed?

I always wanted to attempt making a full-length album so I decided to go for it with the help of my buddy Daniel [Baylis]. Since then I’ve tricked all my friends into either helping with recording or playing live.

What other names did you consider for your band?

This was the first and only name I considered. I didn’t think about it much. Stuck now.

Any chance you'd have some fun with the name and record a Strawberry Switchblade cover some time in the future?

I’m not opposed! Also a random thought but doesn’t the Rose McDowall rendition of “Don’t Fear the Reaper” kinda rock?

What are your influences?

Gregg Araki, the 32-bit era of gaming, Toonami, Fuse TV, Animal Collective, the Mediafire-era of internet indie.

What is it about Gregg Araki that inspires you?

Oh man, I’m gonna try to keep this somewhat concise. His work just totally speaks to me. I got the chance to meet him and I’ve never been more starstruck in my life. Like I was shaking.

It’s easy to point to the aesthetics paired with the soundtracks (which are both amazing), but it’s also the way he handles the subject matter. He can be completely brutal and dark in one scene, but then be super gentle and sweet in the next. His sense of humour is fucking perfect too! I really relate to him not being afraid to let his influences shine through and make direct references to other films, which I do in my music a lot. I love how unfiltered and all-in he is.

I’ve seen all of his films multiple times, but Nowhere is the one where I truly “got it.” I had seen Doom Generation when I was younger, but I wasn't quite ready for! Splendor and Three Bewildered People in the Night are underrated in my opinion. Loved his show too!

Another influence seems to be Vaughan Oliver and Nigel Grierson and the work they did as 23 Envelope. Am I right in thinking you're paying homage with the album cover?

Nyle Rosenbaum [visual artist]: Yes, you get the vision. Head Over Heels by Cocteau Twins. Genuinely a perfect example of amazing photography and thoughtful graphic design. Underrated af.

What is your favourite 4AD album cover?

VandenBerghe: Either Microcastle by Deerhunter or Eye Contact by Gang Gang Dance.

There is also mention of Elephant 6 in your bio. What is it about that collective that speaks to the music you make?

I love how they all seemed to have the same influences but took them in completely unique directions. And how supportive they would be of each other and play on or contribute to each other’s records and side-projects. Neutral Milk Hotel and of Montreal were the ones for me. Particularly the records Satanic Panic in the Attic and Live at Jittery Joe’s. I got into The Olivia Tremor Control and The Apples in Stereo way later but they are equally as mind-blowing. Plus the music and aesthetic are so fun and whimsical!

How did you discover shoegaze?

VH1 had this “100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock” show that I studied religiously and I discovered Sonic Youth and Hüsker Dü through that and downloading them on Limewire (or maybe it was Kazaa?). This led me to My Bloody Valentine.

What is your favourite shoegaze band?

My Bloody Valentine

What is your favourite C86 band?

Close Lobsters

What is your favourite Elephant 6 band?

of Montreal

What is your food of choice while recording?

Sparkling water or green tea.

What TV show does the band watch together?

The Rehearsal, YuYu Hakusho

What album is played most when the band is hanging out together or on tour?

Model/Actriz’s Dogsbody. The new record rocks too!

What is an activity the band does together outside of music?

Late night sushi at Koryo.

What is the hardest part of being a band?

Editing and organizing tracks for mixing.

What is the best part of being a band?

Smiling when someone messes up.

I spoke to Hannah from Tanukichan last year and your labelmate Softie a few months ago about Oakland's music scene. How would you describe the city's music scene? Are you involved in it much?

I love it! It feels super inclusive and supportive. Between venues like Eli’s, Tamarack, Beauty Supply and Oakland Secret, there are a ton of opportunities for newer bands in all genres to cut their teeth. I’m going to go see Parallel tonight at Thee Stork!

What is another band from Oakland that fans of Welcome Strawberry should know about?

Non Plus Temps!

If you had to pick only one subgenre listed on your Bandcamp page to describe your music which would it be?

Psychedelic

What are most of your lyrics are about?

Solitude, time passing, memory decay.

What is your favourite venue to play and why?

Rickshaw Stop. I’ve seen so many of my favourite bands there. It is the perfect size and layout. Staff and sound are amazing!

What is your favourite record shop in the world?

Amoeba SF

What is your favourite band of the 1990s?

Mr. Bungle

Tripping Daisy were never supposed to be here, touring across North America, 26 years after calling it a day. As far as frontman Tim DeLaughter was concerned that band was done and dusted. He had The Polyphonic Spree, the substantially-membered (currently 26 of them!), choral-psych-pop collective he formed out of the ashes of Tripping Daisy in 2000. Still going strong after 25 years, the group have often been mistaken for a cult due to their heavy, spiritual vibes and penchant for wearing robes. But the Spree have done well in their time, appearing in films and TV shows, playing to far bigger rooms, and even touring arenas with the late David Bowie.

As it turns out, business for Tripping Daisy was unfinished. Not convinced at first, DeLaughter took up an offer to perform as Tripping Daisy again, along with former members that had graduated to the Spree with him - Mark Pirro, Nick Earl, Dylan Silvers and Bryan Wakeland - and Philip Karnats of Preteen Zenith, one of DeLaughter’s side-projects. A couple of triumphant one-off shows in their hometown of Dallas, Texas took place over the past few years, leading Tripping Daisy to realize that hey, people still love the zany alt-rock they were cranking out in the ‘90s.

Formed in 1990 by DeLaughter, Pirro, Jeff Bouck and Wes Berggren, Tripping Daisy built a loyal following in Dallas, leading them to sign a major label deal with Island (with the approval of industry legend Chris Blackwell!) following some buzz they built with their debut album, Bill. Island re-released the album, which produced minor alt-rock radio hits in “Blown Away” and “My Umbrella.” While Bill didn’t change the world, it established the band enough to build some anticipation for the next album, 1995’s i am an ELASTIC FIRECRACKER.

Featuring a now iconic album cover with Italian artist Guglielmo Achille Cavellini (the guy covered in red paint) on it, FIRECRACKER quickly found an audience with its first single, “i Got a Girl.” That tune flirted with the mainstream and became one of alt-rock’s biggest hits, thanks to its unhinged music video that found regular airplay on MTV and MuchMusic. While the album sold well (platinum in Canada!!), follow-up singles “PirANhA” and "Trip Along" stalled and Tripping Daisy were relegated to alt-one-hit wonders in the eyes of the masses.

Which is a damn shame, because the band’s next album, 1998’s Jesus Hits Like The Atom Bomb was an ambitious and sonically awesome bit of psychedelic Americana that should sit alongside modern classics such as Mercury Rev’s Deserters Songs, Grandaddy’s Sophtware Slump and The Flaming Lips’ The Soft Bulletin. But as soon as they released the album, which saw them add Karnats and drummer Ben Curtis (Secret Machines), Tripping Daisy were dropped by Island. In typical major label fashion, Island underwent personnel changes following Blackwell’s sale of the label to the Seagram Company of all things. The band kept touring the album, but in October 1999, co-founder/guitarist Berggren died unexpectedly of an overdose. Devastated by the loss, Tripping Daisy ended abruptly, there and then. A fourth, self-titled album would see a posthumous release in 2000, but the band chose not to promote it.

But now here we are. Last month, Tripping Daisy embarked on their first tour in 27 years, playing i am an ELASTIC FIRECRACKER in its entirety, along with a second set of fan favourites across North America. Vinyl reissues for FIRECRACKER and Atom Bomb will soon follow, thanks to the hard work of their late manager Chris Penn, who suddenly died last April.

During their stop in Toronto to play Lee’s Palace (you can watch some of that here), I sat down with Tim DeLaughter to reminisce about the good old days, find out what led to the reunion, and ask what is next (spoiler: a new album!).

There has been some band activity over the years, so why did it take 26 years to bring Tripping Daisy back?

Tim DeLaughter: Honestly, I had no intentions of going back to Tripping Daisy, and it wasn't till a couple of years ago. I mean, I would do these little one-offs in Texas to please fans and the guys in the band, but my heart just wasn't in it. At the time we were busy full-on with Spree, and then we played a show at the Kessler in Oak Cliff in Dallas for my friend Chris [Penn]. It was an Alice Cooper tribute because he was deep into Alice Cooper, so we covered a song for Alice Cooper. And since we were in Texas, we decided to do a surprise show the following night at the club. Well, we played that show and I don't know, call it the spirit or whatever, but it got into us and we kind of went off on a little tangent and did some improvising like we used to do back in the day. 

That's what I really loved about Tripping Daisy. And we had never done that before prior to that night. So we did it, and God, I had the biggest blast. Like, this is what I loved about Tripping Daisy - being put on the spot and writing these songs. That was an element I really missed that I don't get to do with the Spree. My roots are in rock’n’roll, and it just all came together at that particular show. I told Chris, I said, “Man, I've got a newfound energy for this band that I haven't had or felt since the time I was in it back in the '90s.” And I go, “I want to tour this thing!” And that's where it came from, that one show. And it just kind of happened like that. So the wheels started to go in motion, we talked to an agent and said, "Hey, do you think we could try to find a tour for Tripping Daisy?” And here we are. 

So the timing is perfect because it’s the 30th anniversary of i am an ELASTIC FIRECRACKER. Did that cross your mind when you were putting the tour together? 

I had no idea that FIRECRACKER was turning 30 at that point. This took two years to get into motion. And it was just coincidentally that it fell on the FIRECRACKER anniversary, so it kind of worked out. So yeah, this was never in the cards. 

But the timing of it has worked out well because you're also pressing the record again for the album’s 30th anniversary. Everything has lined up nicely. 

We saw where we were at and we saw where the anniversary was lying. It was like, “Wow, we might as well just make hay when we're making hay.” So we're repressing FIRECRACKER and putting it out on Good Records (the label and store DeLaughter co-founded with Penn) for the first time. Previously I was selling [vinyl] copies of FIRECRACKER from my own personal vault. At one point I had like a thousand copies of FIRECRACKER on vinyl. When we got dropped from Island, they gave me all the inventory. And so I kept everything from the '90s in my storage. So I've got a lot of that stuff, a lot of merch from '93 to '98 for sale. It's all vintage, original Tripping Daisy stuff.

I've seen videos on Instagram of the bundles you’ve been assembling. Are you a big nostalgia guy? 

You know what? I used to be. I had a huge massive toy collection. I used to be a collector of things, and I had a big storage debacle where someone, this particular storage unit, had our life in there because we were moving, and they sold our storage unit for $250. It had literally, my whole life, my kids’ life, all of my collectables, musical instruments, recordings - everything that you'd hate to lose was in there. And from that point on I was just done with it. So I’m no longer nostalgic about things. That kind of ruined a lot of stuff that I enjoyed about my life. 

But then this started happening, and goddang, I started reconnecting with people that I haven't seen in 30 years, you know, that were diehard fans and had such spirit at the time. To reconnect with them 30 years later and look into the eyes of people that I connected with when we were in our 20s, it's just kind of a trip. You can't help but get nostalgic about it. 

How different is it touring this album in your late 50s compared to your late 20s?

So, the spirit's still there for me. And physically, you know, thank God I'm in a position where I can do it. My voice is good and I can still belt it. I don't quite have that tenacious, unstoppable energy I had in my 20s, but I can still kind of hang in there. At least in my head, I feel like I'm in the moment, which to me, it feels the same. I'm older, but in my mind, I feel like I’m having a blast. And then when I see people out there smiling and singing the songs, geez, it’s like, no time went by. 

How does it feel looking back at these songs that you wrote like 30 years ago? Have your opinions or feelings changed about them? 

Not at all. I found that when I'm singing certain lyrics, they’re as relevant today as they were back then. My overall arc of songwriting is usually kind of optimistic and looking forward and trying to get past these things. Even in the Spree, it developed the same way. So at the core I've kind of always believed the glass is half full. I'm like, “Wow, this works for right now, and this is relevant.” It's kind of timeless. 

The band originally wanted to release “ROCketPop” as the first single but the label put out “i Got a Girl” instead. Looking back on the success that song had, do you think that was the right call?

Yeah, and they just went hog wild on that song, which was great. The song was a hit. It did really well, great here in Canada. But who knows? Back then, I was pissed because I really knew what that song was. It was a novelty song, and we knew that they were going to gravitate to it because they kept talking about it before it was even finished. So we saw where they were wanting to go with it. They had already said, “This is the one!” and all their radio people had decided on it. We wanted “ROCketPop” and knew that we would get to “i Got a Girl,” but there's also "PirANhA" and “Trip Along” and "RAINdrOP." There are so many songs on that record that we thought would work. But they came out and said that it was “i Got a Girl” and it pretty much stayed “i Got a Girl” for the longest time. We really didn't get to visit any other single. 

What's your relationship with, “i Got a Girl” these days? 

Well, she's my wife, and we're hanging on by a thread. We've been together since high school and we’ve got four beautiful kids and one of them's out here selling merch. I brought my oldest son Oscar along. 

But what about the song itself? I don't know if you had resentment for it back then, but do any of those feelings kind of come back to you now? 

I mean, yeah. Except she blames that on her period; she's getting menopause now that she no longer has a period. 

Very true! Is there a way to rework that lyric? 

I guess I could but I'd probably piss off a lot of people. 

Or more people could relate to it now because a lot of your original fans are going through menopause too. How did you feel back in the day when Beavis and Butt-head “critiqued” that song? 

Oh, shit, it was funny as hell. It was awesome. I remember one of them said, “Zip it up!” when they were about to unzip the bag. It was funny just to be recognized by that show, which was part of pop culture at the time. 

It's always better to be mentioned on the show and trashed than not to be on that show at all. 

Yeah, totally.

What do you remember of touring with Def Leppard? I always found it strange that Tripping Daisy was an opening act for that band.

That was a blur because we were already completely spent by that time. We had toured nonstop as a young band. And we were crashing and burning and ready to be done for at least a couple weeks. We needed to take two weeks, maybe a month off, and head back out for three to four months, and at that point, we were completely done. And then we got the request to do Def Leppard and we're like, “Oh, God.” I didn't know if we could make it. We barely made out alive, but we got some good friends out of it. I'm still friends with the guys in Def Leppard this day. 

Were you a fan? 

Oh, yeah, I love Def Leppard. I covered “Wasted” off On Through the Night in my high school band. So, yeah, I loved early Def Leppard. 

Did they treat you well? 

They were great, man. Like I said, we're still friends. Joe was always so welcoming, always helpful. We hung out. It was great. A great tour. We were really tired, really burnt out, but we made it through it. And I still go see those guys every time I get a chance. 

I heard around that same time Tripping Daisy played a really awkward show with Tesla in Sacramento, which seemed like a very ‘90s thing to happen. Does that ring any bells? 

I remember we played that show in Sacramento, which I call the butthole of California, even though it's up high. They fucking hated us. I went out there and they started calling us “fags.” And so I just kind of played into it and even more. I was dressed up like a woman on this one song called “Creature” and they just weren't having it. They started throwing bottles of piss, trying to hurt us, and it got kind of scary because I kept riling them up and taunting them. But yeah, it was just kind of a rough time. 

The last time Tripping Daisy played Toronto was on September 21, 1998. I heard that was also the day you were dropped by Island. I read a quote from Island’s chairman Davitt Sigerson at the time raving about Jesus Hits Like The Atom Bomb, saying it was “more epic and more emotionally connecting… better than what has come before." What do you remember about getting dropped by Island? Were you surprised?

Well, he flat out told me to my face that he wasn't gonna drop us but that there were gonna be some changes. And two weeks later, literally, I get a phone call saying they're dropping us. He was a piece of shit. Chris Blackwell signed us with James Dowdall and Rose Noone, and Chris took care of us. But he called me during the making of Atom Bomb and said, “Tim, I just got off the phone with Bono. I’ve decided to sell the label. But you're going to be okay. I've told them about you and you're going to be okay.” I think he had sold it to Polygram who then sold it to Seagram, the alcohol bran. And I was gutted because the whole reason I went to that label was because of Chris Blackwell. But he sold it for like $350 million, which was incredible. He built that company from the trunk of his car and turned it into a major label that was still an independent. Goddamn, what a pioneer. I love that guy. 

Anyway, so Seagram bought it and didn't know what the hell they were doing. They sold it back to Polygram, and then that's when it happened. But unbeknownst to me, all this was going on at the time with Sigerson. He blatantly told me. I mean, we had released "Waited a Lightyear” as the first single, which was… well, I had creative control when I chose that and it turned out to be a horrible idea. But I was like, “I'm tired of these people telling us what to do. Why not have a six-minute-long single? Why does it have to be these two-minute songs? Why can't it be something adventurous like this? Look at Queen and ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’! Why can't we get back to that again?” And so that was a kiss of death, because obviously it didn't go anywhere. We had songs like “Sonic Bloom,” “Mechanical Breakdown,” these songs that were just screaming to be singles that would work. 

So we released the album and two weeks later we were dropped. I was pissed. But, you know, at the same time, it was like we were out from under all of that, and it was done. We could feel a new way of life, a kind of beginning as far as labels and an independent side that was kind of happening, which was cool. And we were so burnt out at the time. It just ended in a bad way because Atomic Bomb is such a great record that never got its shot. At the same time, I think for us spiritually, we were ready for a new path. 

I was going to ask you about Chris Blackwell. How much time did you get to spend with him? 

Quite a bit. James and Rose are the ones who found us, and then they made Chris come down and hang with us in Dallas. He came down and approved of us. He was a very gracious man. We recorded FIRECRACKER in his studio and mixed it in South Beach. So we lived there for two months. And then, we went and mixed Atom Bomb in the Bahamas at his place. So we lived there for three months in the Bahamas. We signed our contract at his place in Ochos Rios, Jamaica. I spent a month there in Jamaica too. And then I'd run into him in various places in different parts of the country and we'd always have dinner and hang out. He was a very cool guy, and very down to earth. 

You never got to tour the self-titled album but you’ve been playing some of those songs on this tour. Was there ever any talk of trying to do a proper tour playing that album?

Yeah. We’re eventually going to do that. We never talked about it then though because when Wes died and when the band ended, I never looked back. I thought that was just a chapter in my life. I was done. I couldn't go back to it. So I never even thought about playing records or doing anything. For those little one-offs we did we just played bits from each record and I wasn't really into it. This is the first time we've ever played the whole record. We never played any of our entire records, even back in the day. So the next record we'll do is Atom Bomb. And we'll play it in its entirety. And then we'll do the self-titled one, then probably Bill. 

So what can you tell me about this new album you’re working on? 

There are little things happening. You're gonna see a band tonight that's totally connected and creatively we're there. Nick and Mark play with me in The Polyphonic Spree. Brian does shows every now in the Spree too. So there is that connection there. Phil was in Tripping Daisy for Jesus Hits and self-titled, but Phil and I also have a side-project, Preteen Zenith. So this band we have right now is great, we're really connected and it's got history and depth and creatively, we are firing on all eight cylinders. And yeah, there's definitely gonna be a new record. We're writing songs right now. Okay. 

Can Tripping Daisy and the Polyphonic Spree co-exist in a world where you record and tour with both bands?

When I get back from this tour I'm playing a Spree show where we’re gonna play Together We're Heavy, the whole album. And there has been talk of trying to do a tour with both Tripping Daisy and The Polyphonic Spree at the same time, which would be extremely demanding on myself, obviously. I don't know if I can do that. I think it's a bit overzealous to think I could, but yeah, I'm in a position right now where my kids are grown and I've got the energy for it. I've been doing music my whole life. It's all I really do. So I'd like to think I could keep my foot on both pedals, you know. 

Any chance you’ll be reissuing those early Polyphonic Spree records? 

Yeah. We're doing a re-release with a record label out of Brighton, UK run by Tom Friend, who was my A&R guy at Warner Brothers and 679, when we released The Beginning Stages of... over there. And so we connected and he wants to right the path of what went down. So right now he's repressing that record and Together We're Heavy. It's going to be pretty cool. 

One of the many things I never saw coming with the popularity of shoegaze was to see a whole new pack of subgenres emerge from what is essentially a subgenre itself (or really just a scene). If you had asked me what was going on even just a couple of years ago I may have only answered “nu-gaze,” which was more of term used to distinguish shoegazers that arrived after the original scene of the 1990s. But any Google, Spotify or Reddit search will turn up a number of compound words doubling as new subgenres that people really do believe exist.

As you can see, some people are understandably in denial (I will fight to the death that “American-shoegaze” is simply BS), but grungegaze is definitely something that has stuck. It’s not hard to imagine what this music sounds like, which is essentially shoegaze through a more distortion-heavy, rock-based sound. And so you have the likes of Narrow Head, Heavenward, Leaving Time, Day Aches, all under heaven, and the wildly-popular-but-I-do-not-get-it-all Superheaven.

While I do like some of those bands, I will say I don’t find any of them incredibly catchy, which is how I’ve always liked my grunge. So when a friend of mine told me about thistle. from Northampton, England I got excited because A) they’re a bit ‘gazey and B) a bit grunge-y, C) the music sounds lo-fi, and D) they actually know how to write hooks.

Formed in 2023 by Cameron Godfrey, Lewis O’Grady and Judwyn Rushton, thistle. haven’t exactly been inducted into the, uh, grungegaze scene yet, but they sure do blend those two genres better than any other band I can think of at the moment.

In just two years, the band put out a handful of tracks that just kept getting stronger. This has all culminated in an excellent debut EP released on Venn Records called it's nice to see you, stranger, in which I hear a little bit of Nirvana, My Vitriol, Ovlov, Idlewild and early Swervedriver in thistle., which is quite a heady concoction. It’s easily one of my favourite records of 2025 so far and thistle. really is the only band I will accept as grungegaze moving forward. Or rather, I think the band hit the nail on the head with their own description: post-shoegaze. Not to be a purist or anything, but let’s face it, post-shoegaze is basically what all of these newer bands are making these days.

I was doing my research and discovered that Creeping thistle is quite common to your area in England. Apparently it’s even called “Canada thistle” over here. Are any of you flower-heads or enthusiasts?

Lewis O’Grady: I was aware of the Creeping thistle as it is very common around here, but I think we all had in our heads the famous Scottish thistle when thinking of the name. None of us are really flower-heads, but we all appreciate nature, for sure.

What inspired the band to add a period to the name?

Cameron Godfrey: I would love to give you an awesome back story behind the full stop but to be completely honest I think it was just to make us stand out a little more.

I think most people hearing thistle. for the first time would assume the band is American. Would you say there are any traces of Britishness in the music? Does that reflect the music you grew up listening to?

Judwyn Rushton: We listen to a lot of American music, a lot of the material and influences that we reference come from the States. Cameron and I are both half American, so it feels very natural, the way we write.

I only know Northamptonshire from BBC’s Escape to the Country. What is the music scene like in Northamptonshire?

LO: The music scene in Northamptonshire can be very supportive at times. There isn’t as much infrastructure as other places but there is a surprising amount of music. There’s plenty of small venues you’ll find energetic teens bashing away in and a healthy scene for slightly more restrained styles of music. The sad thing about being a music fan in Northampton is that many of the larger venues have shut down or are no longer on the circuit, so you’re unlikely to see any big bands.

You’ll be releasing your debut EP, it’s nice to see you, stranger, on July 4. What would you like people to know about it?

JR: I think it took one million years to record, probably, but in reality we started recording the EP in June 2024 and finished mixing it in March 2025. It’s ridiculous to see written down but we didn’t take any time off to make it. Just fit in recording and mixing sessions when and where we could. That’s also why it’s an EP and not an album. None of us love working like that. I think generally we’d like to avoid the piecemeal approach from here on but we’ll see what’s possible.

Can I get a quick summary of how thistle. formed?

LO: So Cameron and I were in a separate band for years before called Tragic, we went through many bassists before finding Judwyn. We liked Judwyn so much we stopped making punk music, changed our name and started making shoegaze rock.

What are your influences?

CG: At the moment Autolux is probably one of the main bands that inspires us to write. They just have a really cool way of piecing songs together that I haven’t really heard other artists do before.

How did you discover shoegaze?

JR: I was exposed to shoegaze in college. It was a particular ‘90s band and I thought it was the most boring shit ever, coming from more hardcore and emo. I eventually came around to it after hearing Loveless, same as everyone else I reckon.

How did you discover grunge?

NIRVANA

What is your favourite shoegaze band?

DIIV

What is your favourite grunge band?

NIRVANA

What is your food of choice while recording?

JR: We almost never eat when we’re recording. We drink a lot of coffee and, on special occasions, indulge in wine and beer.

What TV series does the band watch together?

CG: We are yet to watch a TV series together but we watch quite a lot of movies. The most recent one was Pitch Perfect.

What album is played most when the band is hanging out together or on tour?

JR: There's been a lot of Autolux’s Future Perfect lately. There was a period last year where I played ROSALÍA’s Motomami more than might be socially acceptable. I enjoyed it.

What is an activity the band does together outside of music?

We talk about climbing but have yet to do it together. We all work different jobs so we end up hanging out during practice and in car rides.

What other names did you consider for your band?

JR: We had a few kicking around before we settled on thistle. Some that I still really like: clipper, lefty, and silicon. If anybody wants to use any of those, go for it.

What is the hardest part of being a band?

JR: Maintaining any sort of work-life balance is always a struggle. The music is full-time work as far as I’m concerned, but work that I love and value so much. Then there’s the other full-time work - valuable in so much as it allows me to eat and pay rent. But when you layer it with writing and recording music, playing shows and all the other sort of design and admin stuff you have to do as a band, it gets really easy to burn out fast. I feel it often.

What is the best part of being a band?

JR: I am in love with writing and recording music and being around people who inspire me.

What is another band from Northamptonshire that fans of thistle. should know about?

JR: bloody/bath. They make anxiety-inducing music and are very good at it.

If you had to pick only one subgenre listed on your Bandcamp page to describe your music which would it be?

JR: Hard to say as, feels like we’re too close to it to really identify what we’re doing. It’s definitely lo-fi, but maybe post-shoegaze? First time hearing that as a genre label. We say shoegaze-adjacent a lot.

What are most of your lyrics are about?

CG: While we were writing the EP I was experiencing a drastic change in my life and I think that seeped through into the lyrics. Singing about all these feelings of bitter nostalgia have helped me let go of a lot of things that I’ve been holding on to. In past projects I wrote a lot of lyrics about things that angered me, and I think I was trying to be punk rock or something. This style of writing has never come naturally to me. I guess I’m not angry about much.

What is your favourite venue to play and why?

CG: I love playing at the George Tavern. It’s where we had most of our first shows and we met a lot of the bands that we hang out and play with today there. It’s the only “tavern” I’ve been to that actually feels like a tavern. It feels like a local is about to give me a quest whenever I’m in there.

What is your favourite record shop in the world?

Our locals: SpunOut and Abington Groove.

If you had asked me at any point in the past 30 years which member of Ride would release my favourite solo album, bassist Steve Queralt would not have been my first pick. Or second. Or even third. Considering he always kept a low profile, it was tough to even think of what the music would sound like. But thanks to Sonic Cathedral, the shoegaze-reviving label I profiled last summer, the world finally gets to hear what kind of music the 57-year-old would choose to make as a solo artist. (Update: Queralt’s Swallow is my favourite solo Ride album, for what it’s worth.)

Following in the footsteps of Ride bandmates Mark Gardener and Andy Bell (drummer Loz Colbert, who has played with everyone from The Jesus & Mary Chain and Supergrass, has yet to fly solo), Queralt has given into temptation and prepared Swallow, his debut solo album. After the release of Ride’s seventh album, Interplay, in 2024, the time is right for Queralt to pursue this endeavour. Earlier this year, Bell released his third solo album, pinball wanderer, also through Sonic Cathedral, giving Ride fans plenty to chew on as the band takes a much-needed break.

Swallow isn’t actually the first music Queralt has recorded outside of Ride. In 2022, he put out a collaborative EP with writer/filmmaker Michael Smith called Sun Moon Town. Going back and listening to it, the EP hints at what he would attempt with Swallow by merging his shoegaze history with post-rock and ambient-electronic soundscapes. But Swallow really is something completely different: a proper, fully-formed album that finds Queralt indulging in his own musical interests while inviting friends such as Emma Anderson (Lush) and Verity Susman (Electrelane) to give some of his music a human voice. (Queralt refuses to sing himself.)

How does it feel to have the spotlight on you alone for the first time?

It's not something I enjoy that much. I'm dealing with it. I wouldn't call it a spotlight, really. But it's a little nerve-wracking, taking full responsibility for something. I'm used to being a quarter of a band, where we take the blows as a four-piece and we take the praises as a four-piece. But this is all down to me, so yeah, it's nervy times.

Your bandmates Mark and Andy have released solo material before. Did they try and pass on any advice to you?

Andy's been really supportive. I sent him some really early demos and he gave me some pointers on how he would do things. Like, “That could be a Ride track, that could be a Ride track,” etc. Andy's always been really supportive.

When he's saying “that could be a Ride track,” is he's saying to keep that song for Ride?

I don't know, actually. I mean, that's how it all started. Basically I put two tracks together, two backing tracks, one of which is on the record, and I presented them to the guys in the band, like I normally do. But we were kind of between projects and considering doing an EP to follow up This is Not Safe Place. So these tracks were put forward for if we were going to do that, but obviously we didn't. So they were shelved and I carried on writing. Then eight tracks later, I kind of thought, “Why don't I have a go at trying to put my own record out rather than just saving these tracks that might or might not ever get used by Ride?” And that's how it all really started. So over the next couple of years, it was all about putting those songs together and trying to find people to work with and to sing on the backing tracks.

Is this the first time you'd ever really thought about doing an album of your own?

Yeah. I did an EP a couple of years ago, a collaboration with the poet/filmmaker, Michael Smith, who did some spoken word over these long, epic prog-electronica type tracks that I made. So I got some confidence from that and I could use my set up at home to make music. It was good enough. So I guess I'm quite pleased that those two tracks weren't used for Ride, and I was able to take them back and build them.

Swallow to me doesn't sound like a Ride album, but it does sound like an album that could be made by someone in Ride. You kind of touched on it, but was there ever a moment where you had to make some changes to a song because it sounded a little too much like Ride?

Yeah, I think the answer to that is that when I write a track that I think would be good for Ride, it gets put into the band sphere and chewed up a little bit. Andy will put his mark on it, Mark will have some ideas, and Loz will have some ideas. So we kind of work through a compromise; what the original vision was may not be the finished version. This time I was able to make my own decisions. I didn't have to worry about what Mark, Andy or Loz would think of it. I didn't have to think, “Does it need to sound like Ride?” It could just be as long as I liked it, that's all that counted. And yeah, you're right. There are a couple of tracks on there, like the opening track, that wouldn't work on a Ride album. The closing track wouldn't work on a Ride album either. So I was able to indulge in my own tastes and make music that I enjoy listening to rather than making something I felt was good enough for Ride. Or think, “Can I imagine Andy singing on it? Can I imagine Mark singing on it?” That kind of thing didn't matter.

How did you find making all of those decisions on your own? Was it easy for you to determine when a song was complete?

Yeah, I think it was. If anything, I think I overcooked things. I do like to layer things up and up and up and then put strings on top. So, yeah, I had no one to kind of pull me back. Some of it is quite dense. It's the way I work, and it's similar with the songs that I write for Ride. The demos I put forward are quite polished and fully realized. I don't really like to put forward any sketches or rough demos. I like to take it as far as I can before I either pass it on or use it.

Obviously, Andy has been releasing music with Sonic Cathedral. Did it just make sense for you to work with Nat and the label to release Swallow? Who approached who?

I wanted it to come out and Sonic Cathedral felt like a natural home for the record. I'm not afraid of being shoegaze-y, so it was my first choice. Fortunately, Nat said yes. If he hadn't I don't know what I would have done with it. Maybe I would have self-released it or touted it around other labels. But Nat’s always been really supportive. He was someone that I sent early demos to just for some feedback. When I got the finished record to him, he said that he would put it out as the final endorsement that I had actually made something that was relatable and I didn't have to be quite so nervous about it.

Did this happen before or after Ride played the Sonic Cathedral 20^th anniversary party in the fall?

This happened before the anniversary party. I remember Emma coming along to that show, so I think she and I had already worked together on it. That was a really enjoyable show. The atmosphere in the crowd was different than a Ride show; there was more of a celebratory feel about it. I know it was an anniversary celebration, but it really did feel like that.

How did it feel to relive your performance from the Reading Festival in 1992 and play the whole set all over again?

I think it was Nat's idea to do that set, and we were like, “Really, you want us to play ‘Making Judy Smile’ live?” It's a strange set with the John Lennon cover. I think because it was a strange set for us to play, it made it even more special and more enjoyable.

The throwback Reading ’92 t-shirts Sonic Cathedral made were very cool. I loved that you guys reprinted those.

Yeah, I actually don’t like those very much. I can't believe we did those back then.

I found an old interview with you from 2001 where you revealed that before Ride formed you were in “various synth orientated bedroom bands which I regard as the ‘80s equivalent of being a bedroom DJ playing cutting edge minimal deep house.” Swallow flirts with electronic music. Was that just a logical path, to go back to electronic music?

I think making electronic music is a temptation for all musicians because you've got all that equipment at your fingertips. If you have Logic downloaded on your on your Mac, then you have access to all sorts of amazing synth sounds. And so it's quite an easy route into making music, and so much easier than it was when I was in a bedroom synth band, where you have two or three keyboards, a drum machine, a bass guitar and a four-track tape recorder. It was a lot tougher then. You had to play in time. But yeah, I've always been fascinated by keyboards and synthesizers. I went through a phase of really liking everything that was released on the ZTT label. I used to love Trevor Horn’s production; those huge soundscapes where he used a Fairlight and everything. Lots of really lovely digital reverbs and delays and huge pad sounds. And that's what I was into when I wanted to make music like that. It's amazing back then a Fairlight would have cost me something like $40,000 to buy, and now I got I’ve got an app that cost me £30 and it's just as good. A purist would probably say it doesn't sound anywhere near as good as an original Fairlight, but it's good enough for me. I think just having everything at your fingertips now makes the temptation to make electronic music very easy.

And I read that Mogwai was an influence for some of the more guitar-based pieces? I know Ride has played with Mogwai before. Have you ever talked to those guys about music before? I bet they likely listened to Ride when they were teenagers.

I like to joke that Mogwai wouldn't have existed if it hadn't been for Ride’s “Grasshopper.” With that song I think we invented post-rock. Obviously I'm not being serious. I'm a big fan of instrumental music, and so that was that kind of enabled me, or gave me enough incentive to make that record. Originally it was going to be a fully instrumental record because I don't sing and I don't write lyrics, so that was the obvious course to take. No one wants to hear me sing and no one wants to read my lyrics, believe me. But what I found is that I'm not actually that good at doing that kind of post-rock-y stuff. I can do a few things, but some of the tracks that I put together for this album were really screaming out for vocals, which is why I approached people to collaborate. So, yeah, Mogwai were an influence and also an artist called Mark Pritchard, who’s more on the electronic side. I love the way he puts albums together where he’ll make a spoken word track, then a track with some haunting sample rotating through it and some instrumental tracks as well. So that's the kind of thing I was aiming towards.

I was going to ask you about whether you'd given any thought to singing. Have you ever tried singing just to see what it sound like, or is the idea just too cringeworthy?

It’s cringeworthy. I mean, I did. There are a couple of old Ride tracks. I think I sang on “Like a Daydream” and maybe “Here and Now.” But just oohs and ahhs in the background. But that's, what, 30 years ago? I haven’t been near a microphone since.

Ride and Lush toured together in the early ’90s. Did you write “Lonely Town” and “Swiss Air” for Emma to sing or did the idea to ask her come after you'd written them?

It was definitely afterwards. I had the backing tracks ready. It was actually the track “Messengers.” There's a vocal sample towards the end of it and when I played it back that suddenly reminded me of Lush. So that's where the idea of approaching Emma came from. I said, “I've got these tracks. Would you be interested on singing them?” And she said, "But I don't sing." And I said, "Of course you do. We were on tour together. I watched you almost every night,” and she was saying, "No, I don't what you watched. I do write a lot of the stuff and I write a lot of the lyrics, but Miki [Berenyi] was always the singer. I did a few backing bits.” So she said, “Unfortunately, no, I wouldn't be able to do it.” And then about a year later she got back in touch with me and said, “Right, I found my voice. I'm making my own album. If you're still interested, send me some stuff and we'll maybe give it a go.” So that's the story of Emma. One of the tracks sounded like it needed a Lush-type vocal on it so I got my wish a year later.

Ha, that would have been insulting if she had put out Pearlies and then she never returned your call. I remember seeing Lush live a few times and seeing her sing too. It was also nice to hear Verity Susman again on the record. I was a big fan of Electrelane, who I thought were getting back together. What brought her to mind for her contribution?

Debbie [Ball], who used to look after the Ride socials and was also in Electrelane briefly, was one of the first people I asked for ideas of who might be up for singing on a few songs, and Verity's name came up. So I contacted her and she immediately said yes. Her track was one of the first that came back to me and it was quite a moment hearing that, because up to that point, it was still just eight instrumental tracks. Verity got involved, sent me back an idea, and it was that point that I thought, “Oh, this might be able to work after all.”

Once you had the tracks done with Emma and Verity, were you ever looking to provide vocals for the rest of the songs?

No. I wanted to keep some of the longer, more post-rock ones as instrumentals. Like “I Don’t Know How To Sing,” which is a bit tongue-in-cheek, we were going to get vocals on that. I remember talking to Matt, the guy who mixed it, saying, I really want someone to sing on this. But I had a holding sample, the one that we ended up using, and Matt did a mix with it quite loud in the mix and it actually sounded pretty good. So we decided that we didn't need anyone singing on it. This is quite a kind of quirky track where we're just using that sample over and over again. So that stuck.

Will you be playing solo gigs?

I would love to, but unfortunately putting a band together is quite expensive, way beyond my means. That's not to say it'll never happen. I would love to put a band together and I'd love to sort of try and play these songs live, but as it stands at the moment, it's impossible.

Do you pay much attention to what's going on with shoegaze these days? Because it's really having a moment, both old and new bands. As a long time fan of that music, it’s kind of shocking to see.

Yeah, I wish I could explain it. But I think Slowdive have just done a really good job of being 100% pure shoegaze, and never, ever changing. Like they are doing it really, really well, and not, you know, going off and doing their reggae album or their jazz fusion album. They've stayed in that lane. And I think they've gotten a bit of help from TikTok. The way that they've kind of paced their career has been really interesting as well. Like, we've put out three albums in in the last ten years and we've been on tour relentlessly. They've just about squeezed two albums in that time and they've stayed away and built up this hunger. And that's been good for us too because the bigger they get, the more Slowdive fans seem to hear about Ride and maybe come and see our shows as well.

Even though shoegaze was derided in the ’90s, it did shine briefly. It just didn’t take over the mainstream charts the way that Britpop or grunge did. So it didn't really get that big. And I think because it didn't get that big, it didn't burn out and people didn't get tired of it. Shoegaze briefly held its head above the water and then kind of sailed away again. And in the meantime, over the next ten to 15 years, there were shoegaze bands popping up in Japan, in America, in South America, just keeping the whole movement alive. Then when Slowdive came back and when My Bloody Valentine came back, and our band came back, there's was already an audience there waiting for it and not just people that were into shoegaze 30 years ago. So there's a new audience there waiting for these new bands to come along as well.

What do you recall of first hearing shoegaze used for Ride’s music?

It was definitely meant as an insult. And of course, as grunge and Britpop came along, they both had larger than life frontmen, and it was all about being quite brash and being very confident, whereas shoegaze bands were too embarrassed to be on stage. You could criticize the lyrics for not really having much meaning, they're very ambiguous. You know, they're all about flying, they're about dreams, they're about, you know, non-tangible things. And then there was Kurt Cobain singing about very definitive things, and Britpop shouting and being very in your face. Shoegaze was more these student-type bands that had nothing to say, and you couldn't hear what they're trying to sing anyway. There was no showmanship because they're interested in looking at their guitar effects, looking down at their shoes. But the term was quite insulting at the time.

You mentioned how Slowdive stuck to one thing and didn't change their sound. The first Ride album I remember listening to was Carnival of Light in 1994. A friend of mine was a massive Ride fan, and when I met her, she had just bought that record. And then Tarantula followed, after the band broke up. Those two albums were so different from the music Ride was making beforehand. I’ve gotta say, it was a confusing time to be a fan. What do you remember from that time with those two albums signalling to the end of the band?

So what happened was, obviously, we made Nowhere and we had no idea that it would be quite that big. So when we went in to do Going Blank Again, we were we were feeling quite good about ourselves and feeling quite confident. We'd done a kind of lo-fi guitar album with Nowhere, so we wanted to spread our wings a little bit. We had Alan Moulder in from the start. We were starting to use keyboards and synths at that point. You know, there are some shoegaze-y songs on there like “Leave Them All Behind” and “Mouse Trap,” but it was a very natural album for us. We didn't go in saying, “We need to do X, Y, and Z, we need to do this.” We just went in and made the album that felt good to make at that time for us. And again, it seemed to work.

Carnival of Light was very different. I think we decided that we wanted to make an album that was a bit more prog rock, a bit more West Coast Americana-sounding because that's the music that the band was listening to. We were listening to Neil Young, The Byrds and Pink Floyd. We were no longer listening to The Smiths, Echo and The Bunnymen, My Bloody Valentine and The House of Love. We were going back in time. So that's the reason. It was a very preconceived idea of what that album should sound like, and slightly or wrongly, you know, that's what we did. And that was the first point in our career where our trajectory cooled off and it flattened. We weren't used to that. It sounds a bit conceited now, but you know, we were still wondering, “Why aren't people loving what we're doing? We're Ride and you know, we make great records. We've made this record and everyone's gone a bit cool on it.”

We did a tour, and the tour went okay, but it was a real sense of us no longer progressing. We had hit a plateau and I think panic set in as a result. Instead of talking about what we should have done next, which was stop after Carnival and take some time and reflect on what we want to do, we rushed in and made another album, which was Tarantula. That album was so rushed. I think the songwriting was pretty weak, and Andy won't mind me saying that. However, I think the sound of Tarantula is actually really good, and the playing on it is actually really good. I think the guy we used as a producer, Digby Smith, caught us playing really well together. So, it's good in that respect. It's just the songwriting and the lack of direction that lets it down.

Plus we also felt that the band was done at that point. We were really going through the motions of, “Let's just put another record out, and see what happens.” But yeah, it was the beginning of the end. So I think with Carnival it was a sudden “oh shit, we've taken a wrong turn!” We should have done what Slowdive did and just stayed in our lanes. We shouldn't have tried to reinvent ourselves as a rock band. We should have made another record that felt natural to us instead of forcing a sound upon ourselves.

When you were making Tarantula, obviously, Britpop was underway. Was that something that the band was paying any attention to?

Yeah, I mean, Oasis had come along at that point, their first album had come out and they were on Creation as well. So, it doesn't matter what you think of Oasis now or what they've become because that first record is still really good. And hearing those songs for the first time was like, “Wow, this band is really, really special.” The other big Britpop band Blur, they had some amazing songs, but that “Parklife” side of Blur really didn't do it for me. I prefer something like “Death of a Party.” But I didn't have time for the Britpop movement at all when it came along. We weren’t that interested in being a part of it. Oasis caught our attention, but that's about it. And I think by the time it got big with bands like Sleeper and Menswear, Ride were done.

Speaking of Oasis, do you have plans to see Andy play with them this summer?

Yeah, we're going to see him on in August at Wembley. So that should be exciting. We'll see how the bass is played properly.

Is it weird seeing him play the bass when he doesn't do that in Ride? I remember when he joined Oasis and I was surprised that Andy Bell was playing bass.

Yeah, I mean, it's funny because we just finished a European tour, and you could tell on the last few dates he was he was really going for it when he was playing guitar. I think he knew that this was his last chance to play guitar on stage in front of people for a while, and he was really gonna enjoy himself. But he's a very good bass player. He can play. He's a really good drummer, he's a great guitarist, he's a really good bass player, great at the keyboards. He's just a very talented musician. He can do things on the bass that I can't do. But I do my thing. I don't think he would have ever come up with a “Leave Them All Behind”-type bass line, but he could probably play “Twisterella” a lot more interestingly than I can.

Full disclosure: The Tubs weren’t a band that I fell in love with at first listen. It took me a few attempts to get into their new album, Cotton Crown, before things clicked. Once it did I couldn’t stop. And putting in the work made listening to The Tubs that much more rewarding. Because lately I’ve found it a little too easy to just write off and disregard music that I don’t immediately connect with.

In discovering The Tubs, I was reminded of a great band from Cardiff I really liked a while back called Joanna Gruesome. Led by Lan McArdle and Owen “O” Williams, they made C86-style indie pop that was loud, noisy as hell and fun as fuck. At the time, it felt like a shame they didn’t last (they officially broke up in 2017 after two albums), but now I’m grateful they packed it in. After both relocating to London, McArdle and Williams would return a year later with a new and even better band called Ex-Vöid that - according to them - was focused more on “making classic guitar pop such as Big Star and Teenage Fanclub and attacking it with the ferocity and economy of a hardcore punk band.”

The two would also co-found a collective of musician friends called Gob Nation, where each and everyone would contribute to any project going, including The Tubs, a jangly outfit with nods to Felt, The Smiths and R.E.M. that Williams formed with George Nicholls (also of Joanna Gruesome). Both Ex-Vöid and The Tubs were slow out of the gate, but the former eventually released their debut album, Bigger Than Before, in 2022, with the latter following that up with Dead Meat in 2023.

While his vocals were often secondary to McArdle’s in his other bands, Williams takes centre stage in The Tubs. With a voice that resembles both Richard Thompson and Bob Mould, his self-confessional, self-effacing and self-humiliating lyrics offered something new and refreshing to indie rock. Their latest album, Cotton Crown, features a collection of thoughts Williams was planning to use for a novel he was writing to grieve the loss of his mother, folk singer Charlotte Greig, who died in 2014 of suicide. Additionally, he paid tribute to his mom by using a photo of her breastfeeding him as a baby on the album cover.

So far, 2025 has been bustling for Williams. On top of promoting Cotton Crown, he has also been working the second Ex-Vöid album, In Love Again, which only dropped in January. Oh, and he’s also currently recording the next Tubs album. But before we hear any of that he and The Tubs will be touring North America in May and June on an incredible double bill with indie pop lifers The Wedding Present.

So you also have a Substack! And it’s called Tubstack, which is such a great name for it. What do you use yours for?

Owen “O” Williams: Well, despite the name, it's not very Tubs-related generally. I mean, I post the odd update there, but I suppose it's basically just an outlet for me to say some music criticism, a bit of memoir I suppose. I don't actually find writing about music that interesting personally, but I kind of like writing prose. I'm basically known as a musician, so I tend to use it as a way of shoe-horning in my interests outside of music.

In one post you documented your recent UK/EU tour and noted that the audience was about 98% male and mostly over 45… which makes me feel seen. Why do you think the band struggles to find non-male fans?

I guess I'm not entirely sure if that's the case in North America. I feel like maybe we skew a tiny a bit younger there. But it's a difficult one because this is generally a trend, especially in the UK. I don't know if you've heard the term, but they tend to get called “6 Music dads,” which is a reference to BBC Radio 6. So it's a bit of a weird, cultural phenomenon across most indie bands. I think it's partly to do with ticket prices going up, more disposable income, and bands basically sounding like they're from the heydays of these guys’ youth, essentially. But I guess what I was alluding to in that post was that for us it seems like a particular problem. I don't really know to be honest.

I think a lot of the young people who like similar kinds of music to us are into this kind of weird, neo-prog music that’s been coming out a lot. I think it's partly to do with music schools and the death of DIY, and I've got like a whole post about this stuff I working on. But I think at the moment that's where the youth trend sort of lies, in these kind of weird, baroque bands, like Black Country New Road. And I think our kind of primitive, jangly, indie rock music at the moment probably only appeals to guys who are already fans of those bands, and millennials like me who were into that music. So that's my take. It might just be our raw, masculine energy or as I said, our sexual repellence.

We tend to just call it “dad rock” over here. It’s everything from classic rock to more seasoned indie rock, and yet Mac DeMarco is also part of it, and he is insanely popular with kids. I think you would find that The Tubbs could fall under dad rock here.

It probably doesn’t help that we’re touring with The Wedding Present.

Yeah, their audience is likely skewing more to the age of 55. Speaking of these types of fans, I feel like based on your description, someone who perfectly embodies a Tubs fan is Mark Proksch, who most people know as Colin Robinson from What We Do In The Shadows. How did you get him to appear in your video for “Round the Bend”?

So it was a bit random actually. It came through this guy Scott Jacobson, who is a writer for Bob's Burgers. He is a fan and he directed some videos for Merge Records and Dinosaur Jr. and stuff. We noticed that he had quite a few celebrity cameos in his videos, including [Henry] Rollins in one of them. And we were like, “Could you get Rollins to be in our video?” And I think he tried to get Rollins to do it, then but he was away touring or something. So then he said he would ask around if any of his friends would be up for it, and told us Mark Proksch would be interested, which was completely out of the blue for us. But I'm a big fan of his, especially his On Cinema stuff. We were just sort of bewildered really, but definitely happy with the result.

Have you watched What We Do In The Shadows?

Yeah, I watched the first season and really liked it. So yeah, it's one of those things where it just felt so random. It's not like we said, “We've got to get Colin Robinson in the video.” It was just like, “Oh, he's in it? Okay, cool!”

Colin Robinson is an energy vampire. Have you ever had an energy vampire in one of your bands?

[Laughs] Yes, although I don't want to put it on record. Let's just say yes. But I think it would be quite easy to deduce who I'm talking about for anyone who knows us.

Another thing you pointed out in that post is that German and Dutch people dislike the Tubs. Why do you think that is?

I don't know. One thing I do know about the Dutch, and maybe the Germans as well, is that they're very blunt and comfortable with just openly criticizing you. So it could just be that we've had more bad reviews or open criticism from them because that's how they speak. Or they're more likely to say that rather than just think it, you know. But in terms of the national psyche of them, I don’t really know.

A friend of mine has told me that German fans are always brutally honest and hyper critical of his band when they tour over there.

There's a funny joke that lots of people tell, where I think it's more about the Dutch but it's the same principle, and they'll be like, [in Dutch accent] “That was not a very good show. I'll take, uh, three T-shirts and a vinyl.” They’ll just tell you if they preferred you before. But we don't get many shows over there. I think we've just got a new German agent so maybe I can go and test these theories.

I was bummed when Joanna Gruesome broke up, but it was cool to see you come back with Lan in Ex-Vöid and then start The Tubs with George, Matthew and Steve. Is it just easier to form bands with friends and people you trust?

Yeah, on a kind of social level it's good to have known quantities in the band with you and people you actually like. But we've got this little collective called Gob Nation, which is basically just the musicians left from the DIY scene or the people in bands when they were younger who are still plowing on. And at this point we're tight and basically collaborate with each other because there’s not many people left. Or maybe we’ve lost touch with other musicians outside of that circle, but it does seem like it's partly down to the DIY scene being kind of diminished.

So did Gob Nation start in Wales or when you moved to London?

There is a big Welsh contingent from the Joanna Gruesome days, like Max who runs Gob Nation was the bassist in Joanna Newsome. George, who was is in The Tubs, is also from Cardiff. So there is a small Cardiff crew. But yeah, it’s basically a random selection of people that we met when we were younger, from touring in England or Scotland. And over time people have gravitated to London, so now we’ve got a big Celtic showing. There are people from all over the country.

It’s interesting to hear you use the word “Celtic,” which I see mentioned a lot when it comes to The Tubs’ sound. Here in Canada, that word has a very specific meaning when it comes to music, mostly to do with traditional folk music from countries like Scotland and Ireland. That style of music is almost exclusive to Canada’s East Coast provinces. I guess I’m just curious to learn how you define that word when it comes to using it for The Tubs.

To be honest, in a musical context, the way you would interpret it is pretty much how it is interpreted most of the time. We just use it in maybe a slightly jokey way, just because we've got a Scottish person and Welsh people in the band. I think when people have used it in relation to us, it's more a description of our nationality rather than a musical term. But we just use it because it's kind of funny to reference the slights of the English-Celtic divide, in a slightly tongue-in-cheek way. What is the east thing about?

A lot of the Scotland and Ireland settlers came over and populated Eastern provinces like Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick. And through their traditions came the Celtic music that I was talking about. Lots of fiddle, bagpipes and accordions.

Weirdly for me, I probably have more connections to English folk music. That was the kind of music mum made and she was English, and I suppose some people have picked up on folky, Richard Thompson-like twang to the band. I think that comes from that, because that ‘70s English folk is the kind of folk music I like. Whereas I don't really listen to Celtic folk. I mean, I guess I probably do because there is some crossover in the revival stuff. So ironically I'm probably more familiar with the English music.

I read a quote from you where you said what sets The Tubs apart from your other bands was that you really try to capture your Welsh accent when you are singing. Is that a natural thing for you to do or do you normally sing with a different accent?

I mean, it's confusing because despite being Welsh, I basically have an English accent. So most people think I'm English. But I used to sing in a kind of transatlantic way, which I would say most people do. But maybe recently in Britain people have been using their own accents more. I suppose it's fairly common to sing in a slightly North American kind of twang and that's how I used to sing. But I guess with The Tubs I got interested in trying to sing in my own accent and that does change the tone of the voice and the way you pronounce syllables changes the melody. And so it made me realize that there isn't really a true accent when it comes to singing. I think it's always something of a performance.

Do you speak Welsh?

No. I learned a bit of it in school, but where I'm from in South Wales it's quite rare to speak Welsh.

I’m always curious and I think I blame that on bands like Super Furry Animals and Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci writing so many Welsh language songs. But I guess it’s no different from someone assuming I speak French.

As a fan of both Joanna Gruesome and Ex-Vöid, I love how you get Lan to back you up on Tubs songs. Was it her particular voice you were looking to add to those songs or did it have more to do with her being part of the Gob Nation?

I knew Lan's voice would suit it, but I was a bit worried about creating too much crossover between Ex-Vöid and The Tubs. Basically Lan is the best singer I know, and I think our voices work well together, so any time I'm writing a Tubs song and I want a higher octave I'll use my special chipmunk vocal or I'll use Lan depending on the feel of the song.

How did you come up with that chipmunk voice?

There is one on The Smiths’ “Big Mouth Strikes Again,” but it's weird because I wasn't originally using it in the Tubs. I had an autotune kind of project I was working on, and it’s more common in R&B and trap to use the high pitch thing. So I was using doing that and realized that I liked the technique because you can just create another octave without getting someone, usually a woman, to sing on it. And I just applied it to The Tubs.

You named the new album Cotton Crown, which is one of your mother’s songs but also the name of an alias you’ve used to release some songs that later become Tubs songs. What does that title mean to you?

Well, you’re nearly there, but it's also a Sonic Youth song. To make matters more confusing my mum used to play that song when she perform live. She used to do a folky cover of it live and it was sung at her funeral by some of her bandmates. And then I don't know, I suppose it was just a little nod towards her when I started the solo thing. Because the idea of the record cover came from how she used that image as a record sleeve, and so I guess I was trying to be contextual using her song title, which is actually a cover, and then the cover of our album being her cover. It's all a bit meta.

One of my favourite things about the album is the cover with that black and white image of you and your mother, and the old-timey border and typeface. Did you design the cover?

No, so that was done by a guy called Luke Simone, he's a French guy who drove us on tour. We originally knew about him because he made a poster for a Tubs show in quite a similar style and we really liked it and we got to know him. So we just got him to do the album cover. I provided the photo because my dad had it, but that stuff is like very Luke. We'll probably use him to design our merch and the next album cover.

You’ve discussed how The Tubs is an outlet for you to write from a very personal perspective and confront your OCD. You have a song about your mom, but on the first album you also sang about a rash on your groin. How often do you ask yourself, “Wait a minute… is this too personal to put out there?”

I actually tend to do the opposite. Sometimes there are certain lyrics where I invent more embarrassing situations than I've actually been in. Because I just find the confessional aspect of it to be fun. Trying to be self-mortifying is fun to me. I don't really find it embarrassing. To be honest, the song with my mum “Strange,” that felt a bit more like higher stakes, I suppose, because my family would see it, but at the same time I'm just drawn to that extreme kind of self-confessional writing.

Do you find that style writing is a form of therapy?

Yeah, I mean, it’s certainly related to something like OCD, but I would think of it more as a compulsion than a therapeutic thing, you know? I think with OCD, you get the compulsion to air your worst thoughts, and perhaps that does have a therapeutic result, but basically I think I partly do it out of a compulsion and partly do it because it's entertaining.

You’ve just wrapped up a UK tour playing in Ex-Vöid and next you’re coming over to North America with The Tubs. How hard is it to keep track of when you’re playing with which band? Is it hard to keep everything organized?

Well, I mean, this interview is case in point. [Ed - It took a couple of tries to make the interview happen.] But it does because the last time I was in a band that was doing well, I guess, was Joanna Gruesome and and I feel like since then, which was like ten years ago, there are a million more administrative things you have to do. Like I enjoy all of the press stuff and talking on podcasts, but it just seems like there are a million more things you have to do but also less money. So it does get quite hard to organize myself and keep on top of it all. Especially going to America, which is an absolute nightmare in terms of getting a visa.

Would you ever tour North America with The Tubs and Ex-Vöid? Or is that too much of a logistical shitshow?

The are pros and cons. Obviously if you can get everyone in a van then great, but sometimes you'd have to split the fees in a way that could be tricky. I mean normally we do entertain the idea because it's makes sense in a certain way to bring both bands. Especially now because our drummer is the same as well. If there was an incentive to do it in America then I'd be fine with it, but I think you'd probably look at as a financial loss. I don't think we'd play to a much bigger crowd just because it's Ex-Vöid and The Tubs.

Have the two bands ever played shows together in London?

Yeah, we have done, but now so much. I think we'd likely end up shooting ourselves in the foot. Because we can make more money doing one Ex-Vöid headline show and a Tubs headline show rather than the two bands playing the same show together. But we’ve got an all-day gig planned, which The Tubs are headlining and Ex-Vöid are also playing that.

Did I read this right that you’ve already started writing another Tubs album?

Yeah, so we’re actually recording it at the moment. We’ve got four tracks done. We’re getting this popular session fiddle player who is on all sorts of folk and country records. He lives in London and he’s coming in to play some fiddle.

Now that sounds Celtic to me!

Yeah, it will be a bit more Celtic. It won't just be a stupid joke. And we're talking to some labels. Hopefully one of the bigger ones will put it out.

So far it’s been Ex-Void album then a Tubs album. Are you messing up that routine or is there an Ex-Void album in the works too?

Yeah, well, Ex-Vöid doesn't have any new songs. I’m just writing Tubs songs quicker because I'm not relying on Lan.

Both bands put out albums in the first three months this year, with just two months in between. Was it hard to pull off playing gigs and doing press for two different albums and different bands around the same time?

Well, it was a bit of a mistake that this happened. It’s too boring to go into, but a few logistical problems happened, which meant both albums were ready at exactly the same time. And it's been quite tough because I've had maybe a week off between the Ex-Vöid and The Tubs tours. I'm pretty knackered and now I'm going to fucking North America.

When was the last time you played over here - was it with Joanna Gruesome or Porridge Radio?

I only ever played with Porridge Radio in Europe, so the last time I would have played over or even been there is 2015 or 2016, which was the last big Joanna Gruesome tour before we split up.

So you’re coming over with The Wedding Present. It seems like a perfect support slot for The Tubs. Would you say that band is an influence?

I've always liked them, but I've only ever known a few tunes really. They're definitely part of that history of band that we’re into. It was a bit random really because we were already in the process of sorting out a a U.S. tour and then our agent just kind of recommended it and now it's sort of changed the whole premise of the tour. But I'm excited to to see them play and meet them. I guess we are spending quite a lot of time with them. Again it’s a slightly unexpected turn of events. But we're going to return to North America in September for a headline tour.

Four years must feel like a lifetime for a musician when it comes to putting out new music. In 2021, under the moniker Softie, Nicholas Coleman released his debut EP, Strong Hold, a bewildering collection of lo-fi bedroom recordings. The five songs sound as if they were recorded underwater (which is good!), twisting and wandering in dithering pathways that recall the fog-thick droning of early Flying Saucer Attack, Grouper’s A I A: Dream Loss or Duster’s Transmission, Flux (also good!).

Now Coleman has returned with a new Softie EP, Somersault, of which the project’s dynamic veers more towards a louder and mettlesome approach. In his bio, it notes that Strong Hold was “steeped in boredom and burning melancholy, [whereas Somersault] embraces a revitalized energy and vibrance.” This change seems to be the result of recording more like a band than just one person. Featuring members of Buddy Junior, Figure Eight, Slugfeast, Christina’s Trip, Fitting, My Pet Fossil, and H. Salt, Coleman has killed off some of that slacker-ish, bedroom vibe for a full-on, blast of explosive, melodic noise that offers something new for those eager to hear more sounds materialize from the shoegaze scene.

How would you say SOMERSAULT differs from your first EP?

Strong Hold started out as a solo “COVID baby” — a project born out of the stillness and solitude that defined those early lockdown days. It was rooted in the quiet, a way of channeling the isolation and uncertainty of that time. Without any expectations or outside pressure, I gave myself space to explore what it would be like to make music completely on my own. It was more about curiosity than ambition—just seeing what might come out when I gave myself permission to create for no one but myself.

The early songs were personal, raw, and often written late at night. I played a few solo shows once things started opening back up, and eventually, a few friends who I’d crossed paths with musically offered to be part of the project. That’s when things started to shift. The sound opened up and the songwriting naturally evolved.

With Somersault, the intention felt different. I wasn’t just experimenting anymore I had a clearer vision for what I wanted to express and how I wanted it to sound. It became less about exploring whether I could do it and more about trying to fully capture the feeling of the songs I was hearing in my head. There was still collaboration, but it was shaped around a more focused artistic direction. In some ways, Strong Hold began with a question; Somersault felt like an indirect answer.

It’s been four years since you put out Strong Hold. What have you been up to since then?

Since releasing the first EP, life has been full and constantly shifting. I’ve been writing steadily throughout it all, even if the pace hasn’t always been consistent. After the EP came out, I spent six months living in Oslo, which was both a pause and a reset — physically and creatively. The change of scenery gave me space to think and reflect, and I ended up writing a lot while I was there, mostly alone and without much pressure. It felt like a quiet incubation period for what’s to come.

When I returned to the U.S., there were a lot of transitions. The lineup of the band shifted — some members left, new ones joined — and that kind of change takes time to settle into. I also spent a while experimenting with recording methods, trying to figure out the best way to capture the new material. It’s definitely been a process of trial and error, learning as I go.

On top of that, I joined another band, started grad school, and got married — all beautiful things, but also incredibly time-consuming. I’ve been staying busy in almost every area of life, which sometimes makes it hard to find space for music, but I’ve made a point to keep writing through it all. It’s important to me not to let another four years pass between releases. A good portion of the next record is already written, and I’m finally starting to feel like the pieces are falling into place.

I spoke to a fellow Oaklander Tanukichan last fall. How would you describe the city’s music scene? Is there a big shoegaze community you feel part of in the city or the Bay Area? I know San Francisco has a strong scene.

The music scene in Oakland is eclectic, diverse, and, inclusive. There's a real sense of openness whether it’s in the sounds being explored or the people showing up to participate. 

There’s also a conscious resistance to being boxed in by genre especially when it comes to shoegaze. While a lot of bands might have swirling guitars or ethereal vocals, people in the scene are pushing against being labeled strictly as “shoegaze”. It feels like folks are more interested in blending influences than adhering to them, and the result is this ever-evolving mix of sounds that feels alive and unfiltered.

Another thing that stands out is how interconnected everything is. Most people play in multiple bands, or they’re running DIY labels, booking shows, doing sound, printing zines, or creating visuals. That kind of cross-pollination builds a real sense of support and mutual respect. It’s not competitive it’s collaborative. Everyone’s just trying to lift each other up and contribute to something bigger.

Okay, random sports question. What are your thoughts on the Athletics leaving Oakland for Sacramento/Las Vegas?

I’m not all that bothered by it, to be honest. I went to a few games as a kid, and I can appreciate the atmosphere the snacks, the crowd energy, and the rhythm of the game, but baseball was never really my thing. It just didn’t click for me the way it does for some people. I’m more of a basketball fan. That said, I do have a soft spot for baseball history. There’s this section in Ken Burns’ Baseball documentary that covers the 1989 World Series between the A’s and the Giants. That part always stuck with me. Maybe it’s because it wasn’t just about the game — it was about the city, the tension, and the unexpected chaos of the earthquake. It felt like this strange intersection of sports and real-life upheaval. 

How did Softie form?

We all met each other in the music scene in or around the Bay Area. It wasn’t one single moment or event, it was more like a gradual weaving of paths crossing at different points in time. At one time or another, we ended up playing shows together in other bands, sharing stages at house gigs, DIY spaces, or small venues, and slowly became familiar faces to one another. That kind of thing happens a lot in local scenes, people move around between projects, fill in on different instruments, or end up on the same bill just by coincidence. Over time, those connections deepened, and we naturally started collaborating more seriously. It felt organic. There was already a sense of mutual respect and appreciation for what each of us brought musically, and eventually that turned into friendship and then into forming something of our own.

What would you say are your influences?

U2, Swervedriver, The Brian Jones Town Massacre and Ringo Deathstarr. 

How did you discover shoegaze?

I think skate videos.

What is your favourite shoegaze band?

Pry and Shallow, an amazing contemporary shoegaze band from Montreal.  

What is your food of choice while recording?

Tacos or burritos.

Are there any TV shows the band watches together?

I don’t think we have ever watched TV together but we talk about Wong Kar-Wai often. 

What album is most played when the band is hanging out together or on tour? 

5824 by MOP.

Name an activity the band does together outside of music?

Talk about basketball. 

Where did your band’s name come from?

I was in a weird emotional place when I was recording the first record. Softie felt like a silly self-deprecating diss. At the time I did not realize there was an indie duo called The Softies. I doubt they are concerned about the similarity.   

What other names did you consider for your band?

I was considering Crush or Crusher, which are much better names, but they were taken by some semi-established bands. 

What is the hardest part of being a band?

Scheduling. We’re all in multiple bands and work full-time.

What is the best part of being a band?

Shutting out the responsibilities outside of music.  

Name another band from Oakland that fans of Softie should know about.

Spa and Pocket Full of Crumbs.

If you had to pick only one subgenre listed on your Bandcamp page to describe your music which would it would be?

Slacker rock.

What are most of your lyrics about?

Lyrics usually take the shape of open-ended streams of consciousness, almost like journal entries filtered through melody. I tend to write about the quiet, in-between moments mundane day-to-day stuff like boredom, isolation, and the complexities of relationships. Those themes might seem small or simple on the surface, but they carry a kind of emotional weight that builds over time. I find a lot of meaning in the ordinary waiting for a text that never comes, walking around aimlessly, overthinking something someone said.

The lyrics don’t always follow a strict narrative or linear structure; they’re more about capturing a feeling, a snapshot of a moment, or the internal monologue that runs quietly in the background. I like leaving things a little ambiguous so listeners can project their own experiences onto the songs.

For example, in one song I recently wrote, the line goes: “crash my car into a setting sun/ just to get away from everyone.” It’s simple, but it says a lot about feeling disconnected or overwhelmed. That kind of imagery speaks louder to me than being overly specific. 

What is your favourite venue to play?

Tamarack.

What is your favourite record shop in the world?

Econo Jam.

What is your favourite Oakland band of the 1990s? 

Too $hort.