Tag: Dream Pop
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Sway ‘The Millia Pink And Green’ (2003)
Sway’s The Millia Pink and Green EP is one of those quietly brilliant records that has never got the recognition it truly deserves. It’s pretty much completely unknown outside of a cadre of hardcore shoegaze fans. You have all the typical shoegaze tropes, layered guitars that shimmer and dissolve, while vocals float like whispers in…
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Slowdive ‘Souvlaki’ (1994)
Souvlaki was marked by some pretty unfortunate circumstances from the outset. Recorded after the band scrapped an entire batch of recording sessions (40 full and completed songs that they simply discarded) it came out in 1993 right as the British press decided that they had enough of shoegaze. The label troubles didn’t make things easier…
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Beach House ‘Depression Cherry’ (2015)
Depression Cherry is music made for quiet, misty mornings when the world hasn’t quite decided what mood it’s in yet. The album found the duo drifting back to their earlier, simpler dream pop sound, crafting lullabies for millennials who enjoy spending their evenings past the stroke of midnight. The band purposefully scaled back the big…
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Wisp ‘Pandora’ (2024)
It’s not often I immediately replay an album I’m hearing for the first time from a new artist. Listening to one album per day across over the last two and a half years will do that to a man, creating an insatiable desire to find the next thing that will delight the ol’ eardrums and…
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My Bloody Valentine ‘Loveless’ (1991)
Every once in awhile an album comes along that completely changes the trajectory of music history. The Velvet Underground inspired a legion of miscreants to start their own bands in 1967 with their lo-fi avant garde production quality, Eric B. & Rakim’s 1987 magnum opus Paid In Full introduced complex rhyme structures that changed the…
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Cigarettes After Sex ‘Self-Titled’ (2017)
We’ve talked previously about how some albums are an aesthetic as much as they are a collection of songs (The XX’s self-titled 2009 debut and Bon Iver’s 2008 album For Emma, Forever Ago being two great examples), and Cigarettes After Sex is undoubtedly a band that fits that mold perfectly. Featuring reverb-soaked guitar arpeggios, soft…
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The Weeknd ‘After Hours’ (2020)
The Weeknd’s brand of dark and brooding R&B was a revelation for the genre in the mid 2010’s, breathing new and fresh life into a storied but somewhat stale industry. On After Hours The Weeknd took those R&B roots and pushed everything a bit further– delving into dream pop and synth-driven instrumentation, crafting a semi-concept…
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The Flaming Lips ‘Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots’ (2002)
The Flaming Lips 2002 album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots was somewhat of a watershed moment in Indie pop history. Featuring a bevy of electronic instruments, dreamy delays, and wispy vocals from frontman Wayne Coyne, the album played a sizable role in taking traditional pop music song structures and blending them with the avant-garde to…
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The Cure ‘Disintegration’ (1989)
Epic. Grandiose. Expansive. Just a handful of words to describe The Cure’s 1989 magnum opus Disintegration. This was the album that returned The Cure to their goth-rock roots, and what a gloriously incredible return it was. One of my favorite albums this year. Lead songwriter and vocalist Robert Smith is a musical and cultural icon,…
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Cocteau Twins ‘Heaven or Las Vegas’ (1990)
Soaring synths. Pulsing bass. Lucious landscapes. Tom’s and snares pitched for maximum reverb. This is dreampop at its finest, delivered in a way only true pioneers of the genre Cocteau Twins could deliver. Elizabeth Fraser’s vocals in particular stand out on this record, her mysterious Scottish-tinged soprano floating above dense arrangements like a ray of…
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