Violens’ forthcoming album, True, finds the Brooklyn three-piece blasting us with a wash of 90s sonic pop drawn from artists like Pale Saints, Cocteau Twins and McCarthy. The album’s first single, “Totally True,” celebrates bands like The Chameleons and Martin Newell’s Cleaners From Venus, in its feel. The guitars are clean and jangling, meshing perfectly [...]

Violens' forthcoming album, True , finds the Brooklyn three-piece further amplifying their innovative songwriting with a palette of exquisitely crafted sound. The band's music eludes classification, expertly blending percussive guitar work and silky harmonies, seeking the silver lining yet to be discovered between the sounds we know and love. With a wash of 90s sonic pop drawn from artists like Pale Saints, Cocteau Twins and McCarthy, Violens paint soft watercolor notes across their compositions, adding crucial emotional depth via layered vocal harmonies. The album's first single, "Totally True," demonstrates this with its stone-washed, semi-improvised feel, celebrating bands like The ...

A while back Violens came across our desks here at Pop Stereo HQ and while we liked them and gave them a favorable review, they didn't necessarily blow us away. Well, let's just say what a difference a couple of years makes. Wow. Violens' forthcoming album, True , finds the Brooklyn three-piece further amplifying their innovative songwriting with a palette of exquisitely crafted sound. The band's music eludes classification, expertly blending percussive guitar work and silky harmonies, seeking the silver lining yet to be discovered between the sounds we know and love. With a wash of 90s sonic ...

By necessity, longtime followers of Mark Kozelek have become a patient people. The wait for 2001's last-ever Red House Painters LP was five slow-going years. And after the debut full-length from his follow-up project, Sun Kil Moon , we waited another half-decade for their 2nd album in 2008 (no, I won't count Mark's 2005 time-killing collection of Modest Mouse covers). Sure, there are the relatively frequent live releases and compilations to ease some withdrawal symptoms, but proper LPs and tour dates were hard to come by for good while there. Which makes the recent past so surprising, and ...

Although shoegaze passed away, at the time sadly unlamented, in the mid nineties, there are a number of bands - mostly American such as Asobi Seksu - who have made a living in the first decade of the twenty-first century resurrecting it. Thrushes are one such band. Now the term shoegaze has been applied, incorrectly, to many different types of music and there are some who insist on giving the label to every musician and band which comes along and puts a fuzz box between the guitar and the amp. Nothing could be further from the reality of shoegaze. Unfortunately these nu-gazers ...

Hola! Here is one helluva huge mix. Quite more than just decent tunes. Starts off with a classic from Glen Campbell , he will be performing at the Hollywood Bowl in June, and I am considering attending that concert. Question is whether he'll be in shape or not. Sunflower is a brilliant track, gets me into good mood. Capybara lives in Kansas City and yes that is in Missouri. And yes, it is a one man band - lo-fi, fun and quite inventive. Capybara is also a huge rodent. Former (or maybe still current) Vivian Girl and Dum Dum Girl and ...

The Sharp Five – Comin’ Home Baby The Mountain Goats – Home Again Garden Grove Birth Glow – Transatlantic Homesick Blues Beach House – Home Again The Harpoons – Walk Away Ford & Lopatin – Shadows in Bloom Pale Saints – Way The World Is Sleigh Bells – Comeback Kid Interview with Jonathon Pierce (The [...]

What is it with shoegazers and cats? The Pale Saints ' The Comforts of Madness  features a fine Siamese on the front and here we have Chapterhouse 's Whirlpool  with a curled up sleeping cat on the cover, albeit a cat which bears (to me at least) an uncanny similarity to the foetal position adopted by the dog which was entombed in ash as it was desperately trying to chew through its chain as Vesuvius erupted over Pompeii. Cats are nice. They are warm and fuzzy. They are clever and comforting, silent and soothing. But cats can also be sinister and ...

Frankie Rose has played a key part in bands that embraced big-in-'08 C86 garage pop sound ( Vivian Girls , Crystal Stilts , Dum Dum Girls ), and her 2010 self-titled album with backing band the Outs reflected close knowledge of that specific style. On "Know Me", the first single from her forthcoming solo LP Interstellar , she's looking to the past again-- only, this time, she's drawing from the sweeping romantic shoegaze-y sounds of the 1980's, her voice cloaked in reverb and the guitars wrapped in the same soft gauze that marked missives from bands like the Cure and unsung ...

One of the defining imprints behind the current indie pop boom, it would be churlish to pin Captured Tracks down amongst the cardigan-clad legions. Sticking to its guns, the Brooklyn label has supported music it dearly loves building up a back catalogue that moves from noise pop to dream pop, with a touch of electronics along the way. Retaining a love for the physical format, the pop song and a fuzzed up guitar riff Captured Tracks has constructed an identity without allowing themselves to be pigeon-holed. Believe it or not, but for a good decade or so the shoegaze genre ...

One of the musical trends heard in countless bedroom pop groups in the past year is the obsession over the early innovators of shoegaze and dream-pop, most noticeably Cocteau Twins. Thanks to labels like Captured Tracks -- reissuing a slew of amazing post-gaze bands (Should, Half String, deardarkhead) -- we should see an expansion of new acts incorporating everything in the 4AD catalog. Pale Saints are one of the bands I'd love to see someone tackle (good luck!) as they are a bit more dynamic than most of the wall-of-sound influencers of that era. Here's one of their most driving ...

It has only been a little more than a year since I've begun to understand the possibilities and revel in the beauty of shoegaze.  It can really be a mesmerizing genre, and like many styles of music over the course of time, artists make their small modifications to try and keep things fresh, interesting, and relevant.  Many of the founding shoegazers from the early '90s like Pale Saints, Slowdive, and Ride used heavy distortion and fuzzy textures to concoct dazzling sonic tidal waves, and it was incredible.  Now, with musical advancements and the rise of computers, artists have more ...

Shed a tear, watch it fade...'   Secret Shine (once known as Amelia's Dream) were a Bristol-based band who recorded four 7" singles / EPs for Sarah in the early to mid 1990s. Although their early material was quite typically 'Sarah', in terms of its pop shape, indie form and twee sound, the band fairly quickly drifted into effects-laden shoegaze territory with later releases, especially the 1993 album 'Untouched' (Sarah #615). Indeed, even on this first single,  'After Years'  (Sarah #53, 1991), you can hear shades of Pale Saints, Lush.. even, in fact, The Stone Roses (whenever I play this record ...

Of all the shoegaze albums I possess (and there's not that many to be quite honest) this one has to be the one which drives me to the point of greatest ambivalence. I find it alternately frustrating and irritating: the former because it doesn't ever seem to get going; the latter becasue it adopts too many little tricks to make it seem cool, and these often detract from the integrity of the music. Truth is, The Comforts of Madness isn't really shoegaze at all. It is closer to the dream pop of bands like the Cocteau Twins ...

EDM Night People [Western Vinyl; 2011] by Joe Hemmerling Rating: Early Day Miners, a shifting collective centered around front man and only consistent member Daniel Burton, enjoyed a taste of the limelight during the post-rock blitz of the early aughts. Borrowing equally from the likes of Tortoise and Low, their early records offered a ragged, somnolent take on sprawling Americana. Let Us Garlands Bring , their sophomore release, was a minor critical darling and secured them a loyal cult following. Subsequent records flirted with more recognizably pop structures; song-lengths contracted into the four-to-five-minute range; vocals, once hushed and whispered on the ...