I was pretty happy to see Pitchfork use the word “
tweegaze” in describing the first album from
A Sunny Day in Glasgow this morning. A Google search yields less than a dozen instances of the term being used, one of which was my earlier description of the
Aisler Set, but the way things are going, I think it is safe to say that the label will be soon showing up quite a bit. While 2006 seemed on the whole to be pretty musically barren, it appears to me that 2007 could be the year that the new genre of tweegaze really blossoms.
Of course it is debatable whether or not “tweegaze” is actually a new genre, or even a genre at all, since both the twee and shoegaze began to really began to take off during the C86 boom, and many early bands such as the
Pastels or early
My Bloody Valentine could be categorized either way. Many early Sarah bands displayed a spacey reverb laden sound that would be common to shoegaze, and others such as
14 Iced Bears and
Charlottes made such liberal use of fuzzy noise that they must have felt compelled to stare at their shoes while they played. Even after the first generation of twee came to a close and twee and shoegaze were given more rigid definitions by the descendents and imitators of earlier bands, there were still some who blended the genres, most notably
Rocketship, whose 1996 album, A Certain Smile, A Certain Sadness, features cut to the core lyrics floating among waves of synthy reverb and gentle feedback. Still as time went by the twee concept has been filtered through so many layers of cute that it has become best associated with a brand of pop that is sickeningly sweet and purified to a form that is far from the gritty jangle or wandering hum of the early days. At the same time shoegaze seemed to fade nearly into obscurity as the 90s progressed straying into the vague realm of dream pop or into the spacey realm of bands such as
Highspire that possess the white haze the genre is known for but in many ways lack the pop spirit that drove bands that did it best, namely My Bloody Valentine,
Jesus and Mary Chain, and
Galaxie 500.
Fortunately though things seem to be changing as a few twee oriented folks have begun to get innovative and several shoegazers have decided to put the pop back into their songs. Most immediately noticeable from the shoegaze side are
Asobi Seksu and the
Fleeting Joys who both released new albums in 2006. The Fleeting Joys debut, Despondent Transponder, may sound a lot like a Loveless clone, but that is in no way a bad thing, as it is perhaps the poppiest, best crafted shoegaze record to be created in the past decade. Asobi Seksu’s Citrus likewise provides a rich offering of shimmering pop songs that are undeniably catchy, even as they wander towards sonic oblivion.
Recently there has been a lot of promise shown from the twee side of the spectrum as well.
The Manhattan Love Suicides’ self titled album, released at the end of 2006, is filled with the hissing feedback and raw fuzz that has not been heard on a twee record since the Rosehips closed shop. Along with the fuzz, the album is filled with somewhat playful female vocals and distinctly poppy lyrics, not to mention a cover of “Indian Summer”, the signature anthem of Beat Happening, one of twee’s founding families. So far 2007 has seen the emergence of
A Sunny Day in Glasgow, from Philadelphia, and
The Twilight Sad, who are actually from Glasgow. While it is only the Twilight Sad who carry the accent, both bands have the Glasgow sound, with echoes and fuzzy ethereal screeches bouncing over ever hissing cymbals These bands certainly carry hints of dozens of bands which came before them, say the Cocteau Twins or Pastels, but they don’t really sound like any of them. The echo and fuzz on these albums seems to be filling a much larger, better refined space than that of their predecessors. The fuzz and jangles don’t sound primitive as they did in the C86 era; rather these effects are carefully controlled and blended with MBV precision.
Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters from The Twilight Sad, A Sunny Day in Glasgow’s Scribble Mural Comic Journal, and Manhattan Love Suicide’s self titled album are each a good deal short of spectacular, but the ideas and techniques that drive them are both innovative and extremely promising. If these bands continue to move in the direction they have stuck out towards and if shoegazers such as the Fleeting Joys and Asobi Seksu continue use pop melodies as the framework for their albums, then perhaps others will follow them, and “tweegaze” really will become a genre in its own right.
Highspire
Morningrise
