UPDATE: link includes V0 version

Yup, it leaked a while ago. It’s great. I kinda hoped this wasn’t the cover art because I feel like he creates much better (more interesting) stuff, but whatever. The album itself is excellent, though hang onto those old leaked demos and unmastered versions from last year if you have him, cuz there are definitely some cuts and changes. Overall, the record is a delicately refined and polished version of songs you can tell he’s been working on for the past 4+ years or so. An astoundingly beautiful sophomore release. I keep getting more effusive as I write because I started listening when I started writing the post.

Check him out as he tours North America with Broadcast this fall/winter! He’s in Philly October 18th.

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This is one of my favorite albums of all time. Shocking Pinks are from New Zealand, which is an beautiful and nice country. They’re on the most famous (only? jk) label in NZ, Flying Nun Records, home to The Chills, The Verlaines, and numerous other Dunedin Sound pop and post-punk bands in the 80s and 90s. This album is a compilation of their previous two albums released by Flying Nun, slapped together with some fancy/strange cover art and a beautiful DFA logo, their American label home. It’s fuzzy, melodic, and gives me nostalgia reminiscent of New Order and driving fast in the middle of the night. It’s probably all the cowbell.

This album will make you want to stay in high school forever. (Too soon?)

Best tracks: The Aching Deal, Emily, How Am I Not Myself?, Second Hand Girl, fuck it’s only 45 minutes, just loop it

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New album by Philadelphia shoegazers A Sunny Day in Glasgow. I wasn’t sure what to expect from this after Asobi Seksu’s disappointing followup to their amazing Citrus (which along with Ashes Grammar was my most anticipated shoegaze album of the year) but this album totally blew me away. A Sunny Day in Glasgow have created a near-masterpiece: they have built on their talents since 2007’s Scribble Music Comic Journal and made a more structured, complete album. It’s hard to be original in the often-derivative genre of shoegaze, but they pull it off. Ashes Grammar is imaginative and euphorically beautiful- everything present in great examples of the genre. Definitely one of the best shoegaze/dream pop albums of the year so far, and overall one of the best in any genre.

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UPDATE: I’ve included their previous EPs and singles, Too Young To Love, Stop The World, Dominos, Velvet, and a V0 of A Brief History of Love [link after jump]

Without boring you too much, I’d like to say that I think this band is something really special. I’ve been following them since I heard of them and their “post-shoegaze” label, and then about the concept for their album. All songs about love. All its dirty, fucked up, reverbed, fuzzy, droned-out anthemic wistful suckiness. That is sexy and sad and dirty and hopeful and dead and alive.

The album came out September 13th, 2009. The single “Dominos” was released as a free, 320k download a month prior. Numerous EPs and singles have been released in the few years (?) of their existence and are sprinkled around online, and I’ve collected what I’ve found here.

Be sure to check out their Myspace, complete with awesomely obscure and eclectic YouTube clips speaking to love and its many moods, and to see if they’re gonna be in your area when they tour the US this fall/winter!
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THIS IS HOT SHIT. straight up. (blog-crazy folks are like, “um welcome to three weeks ago.” whatever! exam period is rough..)

The Crocodiles are another one of these lofi fuzzed out pop/new wave bands like Dum Dum Girls, Neon Indian, Surf City (NZ represent!). You will like if you like heavier noisy bands like Wavves (beachpunk? what?), Titus Andronicus, No Age, or sweeter shoegazey pop like Vivian Girls (not that sweet) or The Pains of Being Pure At Heart (so sweet). They are a two-piece hailing from San Diego, a location which has given their Jesus and Mary Chain tendencies time to mellow out and come back sounding like a sundrenched Spacemen 3 with hints of early Deerhunter in the punkier songs. Make no mistake, a few of their faster songs still sound remarkably like JMAC, and the singer’s voice reminds me a lot of Jason Pierce’s (hence the Spacemen 3 reference), but regardless, there is a definite punky California feel strongly reverberating around the lackadaisical fuzz.

Best tracks: I Wanna Kill, Summer of Hate, Young Drugs

For fans of: No Age, Dum Dum Girls, Spacemen 3, Jesus and Mary Chain

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so this is the actual album that someone on deek media posted as a fake new mbv leak - bullshit! it’s actually a really good album and came out a few months ago but i kinda forgot about it, now i’m listening to it again and realizing that they really are an excellent shoegaze band that deserves your attention.

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Debut album from previously mentioned Sacramento, CA shoegazers Fleeting Joys. They sound a lot like MBV, one boy and one girl vocals, really nice reverb and feedback, good pop hooks but occasionally dreamy drones as well. If you like MBV you will like this, and I don’t say that too often cuz there are a lot of crap shoegaze bands that try to copy MBV but do it badly.

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Today? On April 1st? I’m seriously skeptical, but I’ll give it a listen and keep you posted.

As for now, it is titled Tumbleweed and has a Resplandor-esque cover.

Regardless, we should be hearing a new MBV record by the end of the year, at least if Kevin Shields keeps to his promise and doesn’t get caught up touring and remembers to sleep!

UPDATE: As expected, it is an April Fools joke, and a snide one at that. The album included in the MBV - Tumbleweed link (to be found at deek media is actually the new album Occult Radiance from CA shoegazers Fleeting Joys, who admittedly sound ridiculously similar to MBV.

BOOOO bad April Fools jokes, quit playin’ games with my heart!

Originally from Philly (wooot!), this artist has two personas - memory cassette and weird tapes (soon to fuse together to create memory tapes on his forthcoming full length LP)

memory cassette is a little more electronic and shoegaze than disco, though still lush and floating music, with more instrumentation and vocals than sampling. weird tapes music is gentle cosmic disco mixed with occasionally pulsing (but more suggestive pulsing) bangeresque electronic beats, sometimes heavy sampling, and it’s really good. i can’t decide which i like more - they’re all uplifting, but from completely different perspectives - it’s nice to see such diversity in one artist. he’s a local, so grab it before he makes you pay for it!

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This is a really good noisey shoegazesque rock album from a band that is irritatingly called women, from canada. i say irritating because it made it a super hard album to find, but whatever, i got it and it’s really good. fans of deerhunter and crystal stilts and wavves and vivian girls should approve. it has some epic, anthemic moments, something the album cover perhaps foretell. also, one of the songs is my birthday (can you guess which one?); it’s not the best, but it’s not bad!

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Lush, dreamy pop-shoegaze from the Philippines. Close yr eyes and float above the clouds, bring yrself closer to the sun (but not too close!!). Or float on the cool ocean, the scathing sun hidden by the ocean breeze. Guess you could also be in Moscow, bundled up in some quiet empty lot, watching the snow paint the Kremlin white. This is music fer thinkin’, drivin’, sleepin’, or feelin’ like the world is pretty (& always fer enjoyin’). TAKE YR PICK.

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