… if I hadn’t spent the past two four six eight weeks writing that last *@&!ing Scandal post:
I went through a late 70′s power pop phase a month or so back, centered around classic L.A. trio the Nerves. Previously I’d only known them from two cuts on one of Rhino’s D.i.Y. comps
Asobi Seksu‘s Rewolf
Shonen Knife played at the Rickshaw Stop at the end of October, and I made a rare foray out to see them. At this point there’s only one original member left (the drummer looks like she hadn’t been born when the band formed in 1981, though Wikipedia tells me that she was in fact four), but the band still plays with infectious amateur enthusiasm. Their new album, Super Group
Well, that’s it for now. Expect this quasi-hiatus to last pretty much forever.
: I think this is what Buffalo Tom would have sounded like if they’d decided to record a shoegaze record. Big droning guitars, but the singer’s gruff vocals gives the proceedings a sort of American alt-rock flavor. The album doesn’t quite live up to the promise of the majestic instrumental opener “Cathedral City”, but it’s pretty good.
: Travis’ most recent album, written and recorded on a rushed schedule which resulted in a much more vital, rocking sound than they’ve tried in a decade. That said, my favorite song (so far) is “Song To Self”, which sounds much more typical of the band’s recent, anthemic output.
EP. Furthermore, whereas albums by other scene mainstays like Ride, Chapterhouse, and Slowdive were easy to find for five or six dollars by the end of the 90′s (which is actually how I filled out my library for those bands!), Swervedriver albums seemed quite rare in the used bins.
. I haven’t picked up the latter yet (I try not to over-saturate myself with too much music from a single band), but Raise is awesome. What surprised me, though, is how much of a rock record it is, compared to the other seminal shoegazer albums of the era. My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive records might have had loud guitars and pounding drums, but the bands were still largely working from a dream pop template. But Swervedriver’s foundation wasn’t dream pop, it was swaggering, piss-off rock and roll, which they then layered loads of overamped guitars on top of. There’s a galloping urgency to their music that none of the other scene mainstays had, and Swervedriver end up coming across as the scene’s clear heirs to the Jesus & Mary Chain.
, has been in heavy rotation around here, and still sounds freakin’ awesome. The song’s only shortcoming is that, after building up the tension over its course, it doesn’t really resolve it at the end. But it is the album opener, and given how impeccably sequenced Doves albums generally are, I’m guessing that the next track will provide the tension release. Easily the album I’m looking forward to the most right now.
, 
– The first two are my favorite tracks off 
(which had a more Joy Division-like sound) by mistake first, when it was the 
that I was looking for.
, 
– Terribly overplayed thanks to Trainspotting, but I still love this song. There’s a terribly melancholy, detached feel to it which contrasts brilliantly with the intensity of the driving beats.
– Although Snow Patrol has always seemed like the type of band that I’d like, I’ve never gotten that into them — with the exception of this song.
– My original introduction to shoegaze, picked up used for 99¢ my freshman year in college. It wasn’t nearly as great as the follow-up 
(to say nothing of the peerless 
), so I eventually sold this off, but it’ll be nice to have a digital copy around when I’m in the mood.
– Off Swervedriver’s fourth and final album, 
– An early Slowdive EP. eMusic was worthing signing up for if only to pick up all the early shoegaze albums and EP’s that they have (they just added the first two Swervedriver albums, too).
– I would’ve sworn this EP, with its seeming hodge-podge of tracks, was a promotional disc for the band’s second RCA album, 
, but it turns out it that it came out a full year earlier. Two songs off Fire appear here, the punkish “We’re Not Going To Crack” and an alternate (inferior) acoustic take of “There’s A Fire”. The EP’s title track may be the oddest thing I’ve ever heard by the band.
