ILM's Best Shoegaze / Dream Pop / Post-rock TRACKS poll - RESULTS THREAD

There were several ties in the low end of the ranking (even 4 song ties) so I'll be giving preference to those songs with the most number of votes. If two or more songs have the same number of points and votes then I'll be considering them as ties.

There were some great songs below the top 100 that didn't make it even tho several of you were enthused by them and gave them top scores. At the end of the ranking I'll post the top 200 and the excel spreadsheet.

For reference:

Nominations thread: NOMINATIONS THREAD for ILM's Alltime Best Shoegaze / Dream Pop / Post-rock TRACKS poll (nominations end 10/10/10 11:59 PDT)
Voting thread: VOTING THREAD for ILM's Alltime Best Shoegaze / Dream Pop / Post-rock TRACKS poll (ends OCT 25)
Youtubes thread: Youtubes for the Shoegaze/Dreampop nominations

Ok, here we go.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51tGBsj8cUL._SL500_AA300_.jpg
100. Cocteau Twins - Cherry Coloured Funk
Heaven Or Las Vegas (1990)

Oops forgot this bit:

(3 votes, 90 points)

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/516tOgh7kHL._SL500_AA300_.jpg
99. Mahogany - supervitesse (4 votes, 90 points)
Connectivity! (2006)

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41ZW%2B2K1rPL._SL500_AA300_.jpg
98. Moose - Suzanne (5 votes, 90 points)
Cool Breeze (1991)

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51AIUh3oqEL._SL500_AA300_.jpg
97. Slowdive - 40 days (3 votes, 91 points)
Souvlaki (1993)

http://s.dsimg.com/image/R-517744-1134680006.jpeg
96. Low, Transient Waves & Piano Magic - Sleep at the Bottom (3 votes, 92 points)
Sleep at the bottom / Green Acres 7" (1998)

"Suzanne" was in the last round of cuts I made while editing my ballot. It is my favorite gaze-era Moose track & I'm glad to see it made the list!

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/513L0WkwbxL._SL500_AA280_.jpg
95. My Bloody Valentine - Cupid Come (5 votes, 92 points)
Isn't Anything (1988)

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41GYRD0GZJL._SL500_AA300_.jpg
94. Cranes - Starblood (5 votes, 93 points)
Wings of Joy (1991)

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41AF9H42J1L._SL500_AA300_.jpg
93. Mogwai - Mogwai fear Satan (5 votes, 94 points)
Young Team (1997)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a6/MyBloodyValentineLoveless.jpg
92. My Bloody Valentine - Loomer (5 votes, 95 points)
Loveless (1991)

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51wx2i8yMKL._SL500_AA300_.jpg
91. Bardo Pond - Tommy Gun Angel (4 votes, 96 points)
Lapsed (1997)

'Suzanne' sneaked into the bottom of my list too - nice to be making some sort of difference (nothing else has showed yet!)

I'll be having some quick lunch, come back to post the next batch of 10 and give it a rest until tomorrow. Anyone knows how to post youtube links but without embedding? I don't want the thread to load slowly.

post the url, but with 'xxxx' instead of 'http'. We'll work it out from there.

And be sure to let us know what you're having for lunch. These things have to constitute a full immersive experience imo.

Kind of kicking myself now that I didn't put my list in order. It was just too difficult.

Youtubes

Cocteau Twins - Cherry Coloured Funk
Mahogany - supervitesse
Moose - Suzanne
Slowdive - 40 Days

Poll countdowns with youtube embeds aren't nearly as bad as threads just stacked with them. Just post the video with each placing track and hope for some discussion between them.

Woah, slow down!

Oh, never mind. I just now noticed you're posting cover art (which didn't load for me the first time...hmm).

I don't know Mahogany at all, and I couldn't sing a Moose song at gunpoint. Think I voted for the Cocteaus there though.

More Youtubes

Low, Transient Waves & Piano Magic - Sleep at the Bottom
My Bloody Valentine - Cupid Come (live at London, 1989)
Cranes - Starblood
Mogwai - Mogwai fear Satan (Pt. 1)
My Bloody Valentine - Loomer
Bardo Pond - Tommy Gun Angel

Ok I'll do this: For the next batch of songs I'll post one song every 15 minutes or so and instead of embedding youtubes I'll post a link to the video.

Poll countdowns with youtube embeds aren't nearly as bad as threads just stacked with them. Just post the video with each placing track and hope for some discussion between them

that's true, actually - once you get the first fifty posts up (halfway there already!) the thread'll never get too youtube-heavy after that

Only one so far for me, but I'm glad I helped squeeze "Supervitesse" into the list. It's definitely not shoegaze or post-rock, but I think it fits the present-day definition of dream pop rather nicely.

ah, ignore my last post then. What *did* you have for lunch?

But doing a click on new tab wont hurt anyone... although if you'd rather have me embed the videos directly to thread I'll do it, no problem.

xpost: I had a banana and yoghurt.

http://www.cocteautwins.org/~robin/images/blackspring.jpg
90. Lush - Nothing Natural (4 votes, 97 points)
Black Spring EP (1991)
Youtube

I really like 'Supervitesse' and the video looks great. Well done Johnny et al!

wow, a wealth of great songs already. particularly happy to see that lush song represented.

I should've voted for "Starblood" really.

Yeah, and "Nothing Natural"

Another one that very nearly made my final edits & that I'm happy to see love for. Lush's first three albums (including Gala were so cohesive that isolating individual tracks was difficult for me.

That Bardo Pond song is great, but I didn't vote for it cos I guess I kind of associate them with a whole different lineage of post-Dead C cosmic wobble. Same with FSA.

I think I need to go on a Lush binge again fairly soon.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41BxgaZZ6lL._SL500_AA280_.jpg
89. My Bloody Valentine - Swallow (5 votes, 97 points)
Tremolo (1991)
Youtube

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/414joCTkbDL._SL500_AA300_.jpg
88. DNTEL - This Is The Dream Of Evan and Chan (4 votes, 98 points)
Life is Full of Possibilities (2001)
Youtube

MBV dominating the lower reaches. Will this be a constant, or will a few truly great songs season the top 50?

DNTEL, for real?

I'm pretty sure this list is gonna be like 1/4 MBV

Yeah I was just thinking potentially 15-20%

wait no there were only 18 mbv songs nominated so it'll be more like 1/6

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87. Yo La Tengo - From A Motel 6 (6 votes, 99 points)
Painful (1993)
Youtube

I love the DNTEL song, wasn't planning on voting for it tho since I didn't think it actually qualified but since I saw other people voting strongly for it I decided to give it a little push as well ;)

Loomer is my favourite track on Loveless, but I'm more interested about these other songs I've never heard of.

Is it wrong if I prefer Lali Puna's cover of '40 days' than the original one?

From a Motel 6 was my very first exposure to YLT. I still love it, but didn't vote for it.

Youtube: Lali Puna - 40 days

Was there a Morr label compilation comprised of slowdive covers?

Keith is summoning shoegaze demons! Be careful.

i considered pale saints shoegaze in 1992 and i consider them shoegaze now

("dream pop" as a genre signifier didn't exist for me til the mid-late 90s)

yeah, but the pale saints wrote catchy pop songs, that's not very shoegazey. x-post times 6.

So did Lush.

So did Ride and Chapterhouse and even occasionally MBV if you strip the noise back, in fact, so did every single damn first wave Shoegaze band except Slowdive.

I feel like the annoying dronerock paperclip that pops up and says "when you typed shoegaze there, did you mean DRONEROCK?" at some of these complaints.

Gotta say that I never heard the term dronerock until I saw it on ilm. Was it a term in wide use? Having said that, i CAn't really remember what the likes of spacemen 3 and loop were referred to as genre-wise. Maybe 'the new psychedelia' or something?

Well, I basically remember "dronerock" as a catchall term for all those children of the Velvet Underground who started popping up in the mid/late 80s. (I always ask this, but wasn't there a set of VU reissues in the 80s?)

That's the whole hypnotic, droney, no-tune aesthetic. Shoegaze had tunes as well as sonic cathedrals.

I first read the term drone-rock reading a review of a Fall show ca. 79; the Fall opened with "Before the Moon Falls" and the reviewer said they were shaping up to be a rahter good sub-Velvets drone-rock band...

that's what drone-rock usually means to me: stuff on Dragnet like Before the Moon Falls and Flat of Angles, or Clean songs like Point that Thing Somewhere Else. Those bands were heavily influenced by VU and a bit ahead of the curve as far as that goes (Dragnet came out in 79; Boodle Boodle Boodle came out in '81 I believe; I'm thinking that open VU worship in the American/British rock underground began outright with The Dream Syndicate's Days of Wine and Roses, which was '83??? and then JaMC came out with Psychocandy in '85, trying to outWL/WH Reed & Cale, and that's kind of when shoegaze started to materialize???)

Gah. Can't decide between:
a) albums only poll
b) separate albums and EPs polls
c) joint albums and EPs poll
d) no more fucking polls

― Running the Gantelope (Nasty, Brutish & Short), Monday, November 1, 2010 6:21 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

imo there is no reason not to combine EPs & LPs for this. there is such an embarrassment of riches for both formats in this case that I think pitting them against each other objectively would make for the most rewarding results anyway.

I have some ideas of what a loose set of parameters might be, mostly in keeping with Moka's but with a few delimiting factors to prevent w/ too general an overlap with certain strains of post-punk, IDM, indie, post-rock etc. But I am also definitely for keeping it diverse and inclusive enough to cover various splintering genres & also the occasional wild card b/c limiting an entire albums poll to OG shoegaze bands would not give us enough fodder to make this interesting.

how is it that 'mad as snow' did not make the top 100?

never really heard much KoD myself. the name always put me off for some reason, among other reasons. suppose i should hear more.

"drive that fast" is some serious shit

So bummed I Only Said is so high on the list. The shoegaze "solo" in that song is the most mesmerizing 20 seconds in all music ever 4ever ever.

So bummed I Only Said is so high on the list. The shoegaze "solo" in that song is the most mesmerizing 20 seconds in all music ever 4ever ever.

― time for a chimmy changa run (kelpolaris)

This make no sense to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVj-fc1M_D0

1:47

MBV never really diverted from riff/verse/riff verse on Loveless save for this song.

how is it that 'mad as snow' did not make the top 100?

guessing votes Death of Cool-era KOD were split among MAS, On Tooting Broadway Station & Breathing Fear. All A+ trax imo.

I started listening to that song again, and I have the same problem with KoD now that I had then.

I think it's lovely and beautiful until the guy starts singing and then it's all over for me. I remember I had a couple of their albums, which I ended up giving to my brother.

...which is kind of ironic because yer man Patrick Fitzgerald is one of the few males in this genre who's got a strong singing voice IMO. Sounds a bit like an indie Martin Fry.

I don't know that people get into shoegaze for the strong vocalists.

Nah, the main thing I remember about KoD was that I didn't like the vocals. Been a long time since last I heard them, though.

I don't know that people get into shoegaze for the strong vocalists.

You're not wrong! KOD were fatally handicapped by good singing and meaningful lyrics. Oh and a cock-awful name obv.

Well apart from the fact that, erm, as I state often enough, I don't really like male singers (far prefer female vocalists, always have, always will, on a pure sound level... I especially don't like male singers who really *sing* (see also Brendan Perry of DCD)

if I have to put up with a male singer, I'd much rather have the speak-singy non-singers of dronerock or, preferably the male "etherial boy" equivalent choirboy type a la Ian from Pale Saints, Mark Gardener, thems out of Chapterhouse, etc.

But that us just my personal foible, I don't expect anyone else to share or even understand.

No, I think that's as much as anyone was looking for from the genre at the time.

So bummed I Only Said is so high on the list. The shoegaze "solo" in that song is the most mesmerizing 20 seconds in all music ever 4ever ever.

― time for a chimmy changa run (kelpolaris)

This make no sense to me.

― Moka.

Ok, already understood. You meant you're bummed 'i only said' is so low on the list and not the other way around. I was a bit confused about it :P

I dunno, I cant agree about the wispy vocal thing, I mean sure it is what the genre was about, but I've never been put off by a clear vocal, male or female.

Is this why people thnk Swervedriver aren't shoegaze? What about the Boos? They sing quite clearly !

sice has/had a very pretty voice

So sorry not to vote in this poll
Can't wait to delve in too because I reckon there are some missed gems in there for me. Am I allowed for being too lazy?
Thanks for the hard work Moka

Fwiw, at the time Swervedriver were the only band I liked from the so called Scene That.... And it took me a while to discover them because of the hate generated by stupid genre inventing/hopping journos in such a naive young idiot.

MBV were always outside of all that scene though from what I remembered. They just didn't know how to pigeonhole them. And that remains so in most cases.

sice's voice was lovely. i didn't much like it when he tried to "rock". is 'drive that fast' the acknowledged gem of 'strange free world' because for me it was always 'railwayed' but then that wasn't nominated. listening to 'mad as snow' now, hmmm...vocals are passionate and really very nice and of course he was the only shoegazer who could write lyrics. now i see?

oh and mbv were not outside of the scene but everyone seemed to think they were a level above the rest. which they weren't really but you know.

It's not "clear" that I dislike, it's that studied, "professional" sounding, singery, show off their chops, ultra-styled almost operatic tone of voice that people like the dude from KoC (see also Martin Fry, Brendan Perry, that Frank Sinatra crooner style, etc. rife through a lot of 80s music, Rick Astley on down.)

In male singers, I prefer a more naive, unmodified tone. OK, not so unschooled that they can't actually hit the notes (i.e. no indie fuX0rs please) but that whole crooned, vibrato, chest tone thing with deep breath support, I don't like it.

Sice had/has a really pretty voice, which is utterly perfect for shoegaze - high register, clean tone. And I'll agree that he had a "good" voice in that he was able to hit and sustain the notes he went for. But on that level, so did Ian Masters, another (male) shoegaze singer whose voice I genuinely truly love. Shoegaze was full both of useless breathy whisperers (hello Andy Bell, Slowdive, etc.) but *also* good singers who weren't... *singery*. I'm probably not expressing this very well. I just like rock singers to sound like choirboys, not like operatic "three tenors" type singers.

Now I'm going to shut up because I'm starting to take a Geir-like "this is the best thing!" attitude which I really don't feel. It's just my personal preference. And I'll skedaddle before Dan comes in to be singing teacher police and tell me I'm wrong.

I see what yr sayin K :)

TBH I love Brendan Perry's voice! But, it suits the band he's in. You *want* DCD to be pompous arses, thats what they do. See Wolfgang Press for similar comparison. Hey, curious they didn't crop up in this poll and neither did Dif Juz. Hm.

The odd thing about DCD is that Lisa Gerrard sings in a very similar operatic, over the top kind of way, and I have absolutely no problem with her and love everything her voice touches. So it is probably completely sexist on my part ha ha ironic. But yeah. That's why there's chocolate and vanilla.

don't know about the rest, but the lead singer's voice is DEFINITELY the reason I didn't put any Boo Radleys tracks on my ballot...

Personal preference isn't wrong! "I don't like so-and-so's voice" is a wholly different animal from "so-and-so can/can't/doesn't sing" and I only ever wade into the latter argument.

Well, it's the vague line between "can sing" meaning "can hit the notes in a timely and on pitch manner" vs anything from "can emote in an evocative and effective way" to "uses a showy kind of technical proficiency" but you're right, we don't need to have that argument.

I like Mark Gardener and I don't like dude from KoC and now I'm going to go back to staring at photos of Cedric Villani and thinking about time reversible entropy... ::little swoony sigh::

I think one of the key features of shoegazing was the contrast between the aggressive, noisy, FX-laden guitars and the soft, 'dreamy' vocals (as opposed to shoutier 'rock' vocals by, say, Nirvana or The Pixies, or the gruff-strangulated vocals of, say The Wedding Present, Happy Mondays, The Fall).

http://web.archive.org/web/20011202075606/http://www.thewire.co.uk/out/1297_4.htm

^ this is the original Simon Reynolds post-rock piece from the Wire that I mentioned unthread but couldn't find at the time

Never Lose That Feeling is just fucking brilliant. Listening to it so much at the moment

Ah yeah, totally!

actual l-o-l @ yr DN fwiw

Thanks feller

just wish someone wd notice the Autechre-flavoured brilliance of the one I've been sporting

Cap.Off Monsieur

"the scene that celebrates itself" is the worst genre name in hell.

fortunately it's not a genre name

The dream that celebrates its shoes.

In my world, Slowdive's "When The Sun Hits" would have won this poll.

It's shoegaze week at mah crib!

perfect damp cold weather to listen to this playlist all over again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShaAPL0eF6M

fuck, these guys should not be forgotten