With Scott’s Thursday Throwback series fast becoming an internet sensation, I thought I’d try to ride his coattails with a series of my own called Shoegazing. Every Sunday(ish) I’ll post a song from the sometimes noisy, sometimes melodic, but always ethereal genre of Shoegaze. I’ll be pretty liberal in the definition applied to the term, with tracks ranging from the early instigators like Cocteau Twins and Sonic Youth to the traditional fare of the early 90’s to some of the more recent iterations. Whether it’s pop, electronic, or ambient doesn’t really matter, as long as it’s soft as snow but warm inside…

So where does one begin a series based on a genre that is as ephemeral as its sound? I mean, by the time the term Shoegaze had even been created, a little thing called Grunge was already in full force and what was once “The Scene That Celebrates Itself” was now left to either try its hand at Brit-Pop or to push further into the experimental via Post-Rock, Electronica, or Ambient. But I suppose that’s what makes Shoegaze so intriguing — it’s a forgotten genre that was over before it ever really began. It was a brief burst of layered guitars, blissed out pop, and whispered vocals and then it was gone, leaving us music addicts to sift through the pieces in an attempt to figure out what the hell actually happened. The very nature of the sound leaves much to the imagination. Though, that’s not to suggest that it was a genre destined for anything other than what it got. It came and went, but the influence that it had and still has on music today is undeniable.

So where to begin? As I’m sure is the case with many others, my love for Shoegaze started with 5 minutes of bliss called “To Here Knows When” by My Bloody Valentine. There isn’t much that I can say about this song that would do it any sort of justice, so I’ll go ahead and wrap this thing up… Put simply, this track has some of the most beautiful sounds ever created by a guitar.