For Against "December" (Chameleon, 1988)

Artist: For Against
Album: "December"
Release Date: 1988
Label: Chameleon
Genre: Indie-Pop, Dream-Pop, Shoegaze, Post-Punk
Mood: Intimate, Gloomy, Bitter, Wintry
Reminds Of: The Sound, REM, The Chameleons UK, Echo & The Bunnymen
What People Think: SplendidMagazine, PopMatters
Definitely Worth Buying: CdUniverse, RedSunRecords

Tracklist
1. Sabres
2. Stranded In Greenland
3. Svengali
4. They Said
5. The Effect
6. December
7. The Last Laugh
8. Paperwhites
9. Clandestine High Holy

Nebraska's lone entry into the dream pop world, For Against initially consisted of bassist and vocalist Jeffrey Runnings, guitarist Harry Dingman, and drummer Greg Hill. Dingman and Hill left after 1988's December to form the Millions, and they were replaced by Steven "Mave" Hinrichs and Paul Engelhard after a replacement lineup failed to work out. (Dingman later returned for 2008's Shade Side Sunny Side.) Since its inception, Runnings' band has consistently produced a drifting yet distinctly rhythmic sound, soldiering through the myriad alternative scenes of the '80s and '90s. With one foot in the British post-punk of Joy Division and the other in the gliding atmospherics of Kitchens of Distinction, For Against are treasured by shamefully few; geography and infrequent touring have not helped.

For Against's stark and chilling second album is their best, one of the most powerful dream pop releases of the late '80s. Harry Dingman's icicle shots of chiming guitars, Greg Hill and Jeffrey Runnings' agile rhythmic thrust, and Runnings' boyish (but every bit as forceful) vocals rarely combine for a less-than-riveting listen. With its fluid bass-and-drum punch and enveloping twists of guitars, December's most fitting reference point is the Chameleons' Script of the Bridge. Balancing the aggressive with the reserved just as well as its prime inspiration, December's nine songs float, skip, and roam with a level of immaculately-paced grace that can't be heard on most albums of the era. Runnings' anguished expressions of despair, resentment, and embittered bile hit with the same scythe-like precision of Bob Mould's best output -- in fact, given the atmospherics and complementary production at play (including the ideal amount of reverb), the songs are even more haunting than Mould's relatively pure-pop leanings. "The Last Laugh" is one of the first places to go for an example of the album at its best. After Runnings accuses a partner of giving him a nervous breakdown and pleads to get his life back, the song shifts into a dextrous tempo change that recalls the controlled jerkiness of post-punk's upper tier and spins catharsis back into fraught tension. At 36 minutes, December plays briefly but leaves the effect of an epic. Understated but full of ambition, it's a sticky trap. Though it was released on a respected label -- albeit one with limited distribution and exposure -- it's frustrating to think of how revered it would've been if it had instead featured a 4AD catalog number.

(source: AllMusicGuide)

“Deceptively boyish delivery…”

Slowdive "Just For A Day" (Creation, 1991)

Artist: Slowdive
Album: "Just For A Day"
Release Date: September 2, 1991
Label: Creation
Genre: Dream-Pop, Shoegaze, Indie-Rock
Mood: Intimate, Ethereal, Gentle, Bittersweet
Reminds Of: Ride, Mojave 3, My Bloody Valentine
What People Think: AllMusicGuide, Boomkat
Definitely Worth Buying: Boomkat, Amazon

Tracklist
1. Spanish Air
2. Celia's Dream
3. Catch The Breeze
4. Ballad Of Sister Sue
5. Erik's Song
6. Waves
7. Brighter
8. The Sadman
9. Primal

Named after a word in one of Nick Chaplin's dreams -- not from a Siouxsie and the Banshees single -- Slowdive formed in Reading, England, in late 1989. The group orginally consisted of Neil Halstead (guitar/vocals), Rachel Goswell (guitar/vocals), Christian Savill (guitar), Adrian Sell (drums), and Chaplin (bass). Formed when they were mostly in their teens, Slowdive was initially lumped in with the remainder of the early-'90s British shoegaze scene; Slowdive's later releases extended upon the likes of the Cocteau Twins and the more atmospheric sides of post-punk, and they closed out their career with an excellent and misunderstood ambient LP.
Signing with Creation, Slowdive's early singles received glowing press and chart placement. Their debut single, Slowdive, thinly veiled an indebtedness to the Byrds and My Bloody Valentine, with no traceable punk influence. (In fact, they were probably amongst the first batch of young rock bands to ignore the movement.) Just after Slowdive's recording, Sell left for university. Neil Carter subbed for less than a year, lending his skills to the follow-up single, Morningrise; former Charlottes member Simon Scott hopped on board prior to the band's third single, Holding Our Breath. The sleepy escapist psychedelia of both Morningrise and Holding Our Breath made significant impressions on the British indie chart. The press dubbed them part of "The Scene That Celebrates Itself" -- a small, loose, conglomerate of like-minded bands who could be seen at each other's shows, frequently hanging out together within the same circle. This "scene" included Lush, Moose, Swervedriver, Curve, and Blur. Not associating with themselves as a move of self-importance, grandstanding, or high society, it was merely a means for those involved to get into shows for free. Most of those involved were university dropouts on the dole. A dastardly move by the press, the tag just made it easier for them to lasso a group of bands into the to-be-expected derision. With the Brit-pop trend close behind, they could cast aside their champs of yesterday with one fell swoop.
For some, Slowdive will always encapsulate all that is wrong about the so-called shoegazing movement. The disaffected vocals, bowl-headed haircuts, the over-reliance on FX pedals and their vague lyrics were all at odds with the music media's then obsession with grunge and Britpop. Certainly, Slowdive weren't to everyone's taste but in a relatively short time they produced three largely excellent albums; each of which featured a signficant development in their sound and now well-respected as essential references in the dreampop movement. As if to prove that Slowdive were always more concerned with melody than they were given credit for, founder members Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell now ply their trade in the spare, more countrified work of Mojave 3.
Their debut album 'Just For A Day' has - on the whole - aged surprisingly well and is a more focused effort than one could reasonably expect from the band members who were still in their early twenties at the time. Granted, the vocals tend towards the effete but there were already signs of the tougher, more robust effects which would be perfect by their second album. Evidence of this is plain to see on the sinister finale 'Primal' and three minutes in to 'Catch The Breeze' as the floating melody is cruelly overtaken by a heavier, darker surge of guitar. In contrast, at this stage of their career, Slowdive were more comfortable with glacial soundscapes of which 'Celia's Dream', the mournful 'Ballad Of Sister Sue' and the gorgeous instrumental 'Erik's Song' stand out the most.

(source: Leonardslair.co.uk)

“For all that I have is written in waves…”

Manitoba "Up In Flames" (Domino, 2003)

Artist: Manitoba
Album: "Up In Flames"
Release Date: 3 April, 2003
Label: Domino
Genre: Indie-Electronic, Noise-Pop, Dream-Pop, Folktronica, Shoegaze
Mood: Detached, Hypnotic, Trippy, Ethereal
Reminds Of: Four Tet, Mercury Rev, Stereolab, My Bloody Valentine
What People Think: PitchforkMedia, AllMusicMedia, ShakingThrough
Definitely Worth Buying: Amazon, BoomKat

Tracklist
1. I've Lived On A Dirt Road All My Life
2. Skunks
3. Hendrix With KO
4. Jacknuggeted
5. Why The Long Face
6. Bijoux
7. Twins
8. Kid You'll Move Mountains
9. Crayon
10. Everytime She Turns Round It's Her Birthday

Canadian laptop whiz Dan Snaith is tired of "all this lazy, complacent, shitty electronic music" that has surfaced in recent years. This, coming from a guy who specializes in the cut-and-paste musical form otherwise known as IDM, or laptop, usually one of the coldest, soulless musical genres out there. Laptop artists like The Notwist and Four Tet's Kieran Hebden, though, excel at creating off-kilter, oddly beautiful sonic collages, but the genre really hasn't had the big breakthrough it needs, an album that would explode out of the artificial confines if its narrow pigeonhole and transcend all labels entirely. Well, that masterpiece is here, and it took a 24-year-old, London-based, Canadian math student from Dundas, Ontario to do it. Electronic music has had its share of great moments recently, but very few artists have managed to combine the precision and energy of the music with pure pop songwriting skill. Snaith, operating under the moniker Manitoba, abandons the conventions of laptop music on his new album Up in Flames, and plunges blindly with wide-eyed abandon in territory heretofore unexplored by his peers. He beats his buddy Hebden at his own game; with this stunning CD, he makes Radiohead look like a bunch of tuneless novices, he shows The Flaming Lips just how to combine electronic music with blissed-out pop in a way that would make Wayne Coyne envious, and above all else, he creates some of the most euphoric, mind-blowingly beautiful music we have heard in years. Remarkably, this album, which is so rich in texture and depth, was created on the same minimal computer set-up as his debut album, 2001's Start Breaking My Heart, with only the slightest additions of guitar, saxophone, glockenspiel, and keyboards. Despite being a largely electronic album, Up in Flames bears a remarkable similarity to My Bloody Valentine's 1991 classic Loveless; Snaith, along with his collaborator Koushik Ghosh (another budding producer from Dundas . . . what are they feeding their kids over there?), provide vocals on several tracks, but like Loveless, what exactly they're singing isn't nearly as important as the extra layer of melody the vocals provide. And like that record, Up in Flames offers up a revelatory experience every time you put it on; you always wind up hearing something new. "I've Lived on a Dirt Road All My Life" starts off furtively, with effects-laden, Stone Roses-style vocals by Snaith (any hint of this being an obsessively-crafted opus is shattered a minute in, when you hear Snaith cough in your right speaker), as the song explodes with layers of breakbeats as the vocal harmonies swirl around your head. There's a naïve, childlike innocence that runs through songs like "Skunks", whose happy, Byrds-style guitar melody is offset by a free jazz sax solo, and "Bijoux", a song that sounds like a joyous combination of The Beach Boys' Smiley Smile and The Flaming Lips' The Soft Bulletin. The single "Jacknuggeted" sounds like a mystical collaboration between Nick Drake and Syd Barrett, a blend of gentle folk music and acid-laced psychedelia. "Twins" comes off as a mix of The Byrds' "Eight Miles High" and Fatboy Slim, with its simple Rickenbacker guitar riff and thunderous beats. The last 15 minutes of the album serves up a spectacular climax. "Kid You'll Move Mountains" is as uplifting as the title indicates, another trippy Stone Roses homage a la "Don't Stop", while "Crayon" has Snaith playing the happiest glockenspiel melody you can imagine as Koushik sings a dead-perfect Yo La Tengo impersonation. It's "Every Time She Turns Round It's Her Birthday", though, that steals the show. A nearly eight minute minute electronic epic that the Chemical Brothers could never match with all their gadgets, it combines every one of the album's myriad influences in one song, with a few more Beatles and Mercury Rev sounds thrown in as well, adding up to one mesmerizing piece of work. The song is an unabashed explosion of joy, the most uplifting music we've been privy to since Moby's Everything Is Wrong album in 1995. Allen Ginsberg once wrote a line in a poem that plainly said, haiku-like, "Heaven balanced on a grassblade." I can find no more perfect way to describe this music. It's so sublime, so organic, so achingly beautiful. For such a lush album, it's surprisingly economical, with a running time of only 39 minutes, but since the album is so intoxicating, you wind up hitting the repeat button and listening to it a few more times, and before you know it, two hours have passed. Never has a laptop album sounded so gloriously human; Snaith fumbles along at times, trying any new thing that comes to mind, having fun with his music, but it's that positive energy that greatly supersedes any technical flaws there might be. Up in Flames is easily one of the best albums of 2003 so far, an unequivocal treasure.

(source: PopMatters.com)

“Up In Flames is a record in love with music made by a music lover, futurepsychenoisebeatpop that reaffirms how much fun music can and ought to be.” [STYLUS MAGAZINE]

“There hasn't been a song-oriented psychedelic album that's had this sort of life-affirming, full-bodied roar since Mercury Rev's 1993 classic, Boces.” [ALTERNATIVE PRESS, June 2003, p.110]

“Approaches the psychedelic grandeur of Spiritualized or Mercury Rev at their finest while still offering a wealth of carefully placed sonic detail.” [THE WIRE, #229, p.71]

“Both adventurous and accessible, a record in love with the obliterating power of sound.” [UNCUT, Apr 2003, p.120]

“All of a sudden a cloud personified as a person personified as God personified as a giant pink bunny throws Easter eggs at our balloons and pops them one by one…”