10 Shoegazing Epics You May Not Have Heard

1. Mercury Rev €“ Frittering

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dms5WyiNZJU I'm one of those charlatans who got into Mercury Rev through Deserter's Songs and All Is Dream - two albums of soul-enriching, life-affirming symphonic dream pop of which I don't believe I'll ever tire. It was simultaneously a shock, a revelation and something of a rite of passage to eventually discover that all which came before, whilst no less wonderful, is significantly louder. Frittering is the centrepiece of Yerself Is Steam, their 1991 debut. A band that would go onto create something so utterly beautiful some decade or so later can hardly be said to have peaked too early, but still. Being able to judge their entire career in retrospective, I find it hard not to conclude that Frittering is the best song they've ever done. It starts off so quiet, so distant €“ with a lazily strummed acoustic guitar and Jonathan Donohue's plaintive vocals. But round about the two minute mark, you can just faintly hear an impending maelstrom of distortion. It kicks in at exactly the same time as the drums, and from that point onwards, Mercury Rev own your mind. There's a bit of respite towards the end, but it's only a breather designed to give guitarist Grasshopper enough time to gear up and unleash hell. He's one of those guitarists who's capable of making their instrument sound like a screaming solar flare; and towards the end of Frittering he shows you exactly what he's capable of. And that, right there, is perhaps the essence of what makes shoegaze so fantastic. These guys have dangerous levels of volume and devastating potential at their fingertips, but rather than using it to create something bleak, ugly and foreboding (like a metal guitarist would); they use it to create something colourful, uplifting and dreamy. If any music were ever capable of inducing a higher state of consciousness, I'd argue that it's shoegaze. It's perhaps the most quintessentially psychedelic music imaginable, as at sufficient volumes, it can cause your mind to manifest €“ making you feel as though you're floating several feet above your body. But I've said enough €“ and I haven't even had time to talk about Spiritualized! So I'll turn it to you. Are there any lesser-remembered shoegaze rackets you'd like to share?