10 Shoegazing Epics You May Not Have Heard

2. Yo La Tengo €“ More Stars Than There Are In Heaven

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XPYIJdVOhw Even had they not been steadily releasing sweet, noisy, elegant and shambolic albums since 1984, Yo La Tengo would still boast serious shoegaze chops. Their wonderful 1997 single Autumn Sweater was remixed by Kevin Shields himself; the results being very much as you'd expect. Shorn of such connections, their music remains sublime, and they're rightly lauded, in some circles, as one of the most consistently brilliant guitar bands of the past three decades. More Stars Than There Are In Heaven is from 2009's Popular Songs €“ an album which, like many of theirs, is so bursting with quality that it plays like a greatest hits. A sad croon of a cello sets the stage for a simple yet refined guitar that sticks around for the remainder of the song's nine and a half minutes. It doesn't do a lot, but what it does it does very well. So well, in fact, that you don't ever want it to end. This song performs a trick that's common amongst the best of the shoegazing subgenre. Its constituent elements are relatively simple. But when mixed together it's alchemy. It's magic. It's sublime. More Stars Than There Are In Heaven creates an utterly captivating atmosphere that, depending on your frame of mind, can either be romantic like a moonlit walk; or deeply saddening, like an afternoon spent leafing through photo albums of the lost and departed. Further Listening €“ Big Day Coming (Painful, 1993)