When shoegaze was labelled as a rock sub-genre back in the late eighties and early nineties, it was at the same time considered innovative and one-dimensional, meaning it wasn’t given much of a lifespan by the same music journalists that put it on the sub-genre map in the first place.
But then bands like Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine started truly proving that initial inventive tag, and here we are today, decades on, and shoegaze is not only still around, but seems to be getting new shapes and forms as artists are trying to expand further on the initial great ideas the originators, like the two above, brought in.
Deaf Star and Ivan Zoloto, this band’s key personality, just might be the ones not simply carrying the shoegaze torch, but trying to bring (or sneak) in fresh ideas within the ever-popular sub-genre, as their latest album Sunset Overdrive shows. In all of it, Zoloto’s and the band’s move from San Francisco to Barcelona might have something to do with it.
And yes, it is no chance that Slowdive and MBV are mentioned here, as Zoloto tries to further expand on the original ideas of the two by giving everything here an additional layer of noise to the proceedings as might be heard through the ears of Kevin Shields, which are carefully interwoven throughout by Slowdive’s Simon Scott, calming down the proceedings with dream pop touches (‘Song for Ivan’), and controlling the noise in the right manner as amply titled ‘Chain Reaction Bardo Pond’ shows.
Next time music critics try to build up and then discard a certain sub-genre, this album might show them that things don’t always work the way they think they should, and that it turns out to be the right way anyway.
