Ten albums that define shoegaze

The name started out as a joke at their expense, because these bands stood still on stage with their heads down, and the British press decided they were staring at their shoes.

They were looking at pedals. Distortion, delay, reverb, all of it on the floor. That’s where the head was, because that’s where the sound got decided.

These ten records came out between 1990 and 1993, and they aren’t in date order, they’re grouped by the label that put them out, which is the only arrangement that makes the pattern visible.

Five on Creation

Ride, Nowhere (crelp 074, October 1990). Out of Oxford, and the first of these five Creation records to reach the shops.

My Bloody Valentine, Loveless (crelp 060, 4 November 1991). Eleven tracks. It’s the one everybody reaches for first. Its catalogue number is lower than Ride’s, who’d been in the shops a year earlier.

Swervedriver, Raise (CRELP 093, September 1991). Thirteen tracks, nineteen catalogue numbers on from Loveless.

Slowdive, Souvlaki (crelp 139, 1993). Ten pieces, and seventy-nine catalogue numbers separate this from Loveless.

Medicine, Shot Forth Self Living (CRELP 142, 1992). Here’s the surprise. Medicine were from Los Angeles, and in Britain they came out on Creation like everyone else on this page, while Def American handled them at home.

Two on 4AD

Pale Saints, The Comforts of Madness (cad 0002, February 1990). Lush’s Gala is CAD 0017 from the same year. Fifteen numbers in nine months.

Lush, Gala (CAD 0017, November 1990). It isn’t quite an album. 4AD files it as a compilation, because it gathers the early EPs for the American market.

Three elsewhere

Chapterhouse, Whirlpool (Dedicated, DEDLP 001, 1991). The first album catalogue number Dedicated ever issued.

Curve, Doppelgänger (Anxious, ANXLP 77, March 1992). Flood and Alan Moulder are the ones at the desk. Ten tracks.

Drop Nineteens, Delaware (Hut Recordings, HUT LP4, 1992). Hut took them in Britain. Caroline put the record out in America.

What the catalogue numbers say

Five of the ten carry one label’s prefix and run from 060 to 142, which is eighty-two catalogue numbers end to end, and inside that stretch sits half of this list, a band from Los Angeles included.

The rest splits four ways. Two on 4AD, one on a Dedicated that was opening for business, one on Anxious and one on Hut.

How it ended

It didn’t run out of ideas, it ran out of room, because within a couple of years britpop had arrived in Britain and taken all of it.

One detail says how untidy the story really is. A three-disc set tracing the scene from 1988 to 1995 came out in 2016. My Bloody Valentine aren’t on it, because of a dispute with a label.

So the band that fixed the look and the sound of the genre is missing. The box that was meant to tell that genre’s story goes ahead without them.