12 days of shoegaze

"I love gay people
I won't say shoo to gays, but I love shoegaze"

-Fraxiom, "Jumpin the Caac"

introduction

Shoegaze first found me on a november evening in 2017. Right before my forrays into the /mu/ board (i'm sorry) I pilfered through a hard drive with digitized CDs that my dad owned. I downloaded loveless because of the cover recognition and found it to be unlistenable. Not in an inherintly negative way, but in a way where it just seemed too intense and layered for my feeble minded brain to pick up. I made "Only Shallow" my alarm because a song that loud seemed fitting in the efforts to wake me up every morning, and over the following month I feel deeply in love with loveless. It is warm, it is wistful, it is melancholic without laying it on too thick.

like every fifteen year old, I decided to stare blankly at the famous shoegaze chart and work my way around it. Like many other fifteen year olds, I got about seven albums in and gave up on it. Shoegaze was boring me, I thought I could find at least a dozen albums like my sweet sweet loveless, but in its place I had to interface with lush. Listen, I have warmed up on lush over the years, but even I can admit that they leave something to be desired. Over my late adolescence I chalked it up to a fad, a genre with a handful of masterpieces but a sound that cannot truly extend into greatness in the ways that its forefathers mastered. I would call for shoegaze winters, but I would never believe in shoegaze the same way.

On a cold tuesday last week I visited my friend brandy. I could have napped at my girlfriend's house, waiting for my buffalo wild wings dinner, but I opted to socialize in that time, and I was not all that tired anyways. For whatever reason, I was inspired to play shoegaze songs on the roku television while she did an extensive gel nail application, and I was getting unreasonably emotional. "In Your Room by airiel,two days later, would evoke so much emotion in my walk that I doubled down on this challenge. There is an aspect of shoegaze music that will alwyas make me feel like I am sixteen, at least the more memorable songs of that time in my life. It is not an inherintly postiive emotion, because that was not an inherintly good time, but the fact that I can feel so strongly about these little alternative rock albums inspired me to commit to them for a couple of weeks. What better way than celebrate the true twelve days of christmas.

Rules

• Each day I will alternate shoegaze albums, one day will feature an album I have heard before, the next day will feature a new discovery.
  "new discovery" will be loose as hell. I decided after writing this that my scope of shoegaze is so poor and there are a lot of shoegaze albums i have technically heard that I remember almost none of. I might also reserve some of the "have heard" albums for albums i know but have forgotten a number of tracks on.
• Shoegaze as a genre is wide in scope and it has its purists. From those who say it can only be from the UK in the 90s to those who think that the new harry styles album has shoegaze vibes. Usually I tend to judge shoegaze on the volume of the albums, but instead I am going to be more scene based. No shoegaze from after the year 2005. Dream Pop and Alternative Rock albums that are close enough to the scene will be allowed but it ought to have that noise specialty.
• I am writing my own version of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" on this list and each day I'm adding another line. holding myself to it.

albums