Ride, Nirvana, and leaving a musical legacy

No. 1441: Ride - Nowhere

Despite being one of the earliest and most prominent shoegaze bands, it’s remarkable that Ride’s influence hasn’t been nearly that significant on the contemporary, umpteenth wave of shoegaze. That’s in large part because the most common reference points for young millennial/Gen-Z-gaze are Hum and Deftones and Smashing Pumpkins, none of them proper shoegaze but rather grunge and heavy rock/metal with some spacey elements, but even so, My Bloody Valentine’s influence — and to a lesser extent, Slowdive — remains impossible to avoid, even with a grungier, nu-metal-ier crunch to everything. You could argue that a lot of the new class is as loud as Swervedriver, but not necessarily with the same knack for writing hooks. (Also, increasingly we’re hearing bands that borrow the breakbeat-y swirl of Chapterhouse, which I’m 100 percent on board with.)

That doesn’t mean you don’t hear it in contemporary bands; High Vis, who are not a shoegaze band but more of a post-punk group with dreamy elements (and more than a little hardcore in their DNA), nod to bands like Ride in their music. But their shadow doesn’t loom quite as large in the contemporary ‘gaze, which leads to the inevitable question: Why? Just spitballing here, but I’d wager that their sound—heavy on psych-rock jangle and baggy, Stone Roses-y grooves—is a little far afield from the crunchier, denser sounds of a song like, for instance, My Bloody Valentine’s “Only Shallow.” It’s a little more paisley, a little more Beatles-y (check the “Taxman” bassline on “Seagull”). I’d say too British, to borrow an accusation that a number of bands in the ‘70s and ‘80s had to weather from record labels, but considering all the first wave shoegaze bands were British, maybe that’s not accurate. 

That said, Ride are still legends of shoegaze, and you’ll see plenty of Ride appreciation on r/shoegaze, and they play festivals. And, oh yeah, Nowhere is still one of the best shoegaze albums of all time. They did a reissue campaign at the end of 2022, putting their first three studio albums back in print after two previous rounds of pressings sold out. And rightfully so—while all their albums are strong, Nowhere in particular is an essential. 

As I mentioned, they have as much in common with The Stone Roses as they do with Slowdive, maybe even more so, and that’s part of what makes it stand out in the crowd. It’s a little groovier, a little more loose-limbed, which is part of the appeal. But it’s still dense; in opener “Seagull,” there are lots and lots of guitars layered over each other, dense sheets intertwined with jangly Rickenbacker tendrils. It’s a wonderful sound, really. As is “Dreams Burn Down” or “Decay” or especially the soaring closer “Vapour Trail.” I could pretty much just recite the tracklist here. If anyone tells you this isn’t on par with MBV or Slowdive, go tell ‘em to gaze directly at the sun. Rating: 9.5

Listen: “Vapour Trail”

No. 1442: Nirvana - In Utero

I went a long time without choosing to put on a Nirvana album to then buying all their studio albums plus the Incesticide compilation in the span of about two years. It wasn’t as if a switch was flipped or anything—I saw an inexpensive (new!) copy of Bleach at Deep Groove in Richmond and thought, “you know what? Sure! I don’t have this on vinyl,” and it spiraled from there. But it took the longest for me to finally pick up In Utero, in part because the copy I kept seeing in racks was a little on the pricey side. You shouldn’t have to pay $45 for this record. It’ll almost certainly never be out of print for more than a couple of months at most. And that’s a really big if. You can find it somewhere. Bands like Nirvana don’t end up having their catalogs buried by labels, because people still buy these records. All the time. Hell, I did! 

But it’s sort of ironic that In Utero took so long for me to finally pick up, because it’s my favorite by a pretty good margin. Nevermind is, obviously, the one that broke them, that made them into household names. But In Utero feels a little more true to what I think Kurt Cobain wanted to be all along. The songs on Bleach, after all, are pretty sludgy and abrasive, only occasionally reaching the pop accessibility of its follow-up, like on “About a Girl.”

In Utero isn’t a return to the sound of Bleach, but it also showed that Nirvana weren’t interested in writing a bunch of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”s. If anything, Cobain fought like hell to put that song behind him. It’s not like they could completely abandon it, but he didn’t like playing it, and he said that it typically made a bad set worse. (This, I should note, isn’t entirely rare; Radiohead stopped playing “Creep” for a long time before lightening up a little and adding it back to the setlists in the early ‘00s.) And it’s not like “Teen Spirit” is a bad song or anything, but after hearing it I don’t know how many hundreds of times, I don’t really need to hear it again either. 

I said as much in a feature I wrote about this album in 2023, but you know what? I’m not sick of “Milk It,” I’m not sick of “Scentless Apprentice,” I’m not sick of “Very Ape” or “Serve the Servants,” and believe it or not, I’m not even sick of “Heart-Shaped Box,” which feels considerably darker than any of their prior singles. I might be a little sick of “All Apologies,” but that doesn’t hurt the hit ratio all that much. (It also loses a point or two for being the go-to choice for Nirvana cover song in the mid-’90s, replacing “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” naturally.) 

My journey back into Nirvana’s music has likewise led me to be somewhat annoyed by a recurring social media phenomenon in which someone suggests that if Kurt Cobain were still alive he’d be maga or some shit. To which I ask: Why?! I have no reason to believe this would be the case. Krist Novoselic became a libertarian, sure, and there’s examples of previous youth-revolution icons like John Lydon becoming conservative. But Cobain was pretty outspoken about not wanting hateful, closed-minded people to listen to his music, and for that matter, plenty of progressive/left artists have remained as such over the years, like R.E.M., Rage Against the Machine, etc. So I don’t buy it. But then again, on the internet, people just say any old bullshit.  Rating: 9.6

Listen: “Scentless Apprentice”

No. 1443: Ibibio Sound Machine - Electricity

One of the perils of running a website with the intent to write about as much independent and underground music as possible (and sure, some mainstream music, too) is that the sheer volume of it is always going to overwhelm you. To borrow a phrase from Crowded House, you’re trying to catch a deluge in a paper cup. And while I feel like I’ve gotten much better at being able to home in on the stuff that’s the most interesting, and that we as a team are pretty good at covering as much as we can, I feel like I’m always playing catch-up — no matter the month, year, whatever.

This album by Ibibio Sound Machine is a perfect example. They’ve been around for some time, I’ve been familiar with them since they started releasing music on Merge, but I never listened to more than a song or two. Then they release Electricity, one of my writers raves over it, I think “huh” and listen for myself. And damned if I’m not embarrassed that I didn’t get there first. 

Electricity slaps. Absurdly, jubilantly, enthusiastically so. The UK group’s sound is kind of a hybrid of synth-pop/indietronica with Afrobeat, so it seems fitting that they’d eventually work with Hot Chip, who produced the album. It’s a great match, naturally, but the group just brings an amount of energy and urgency to everything that few can match. Pretty much from the first track, “Protection from Evil,” I’m ready to start doing backflips, even though my soft 40-something physique wouldn’t allow that to happen. But I want to. If a band can do that, then consider me a fan. Rating: 8.9

Listen: “Protection from Evil”

No. 1444: King Sunny Ade - Juju Music

I’m always in the market for more African records, just like I’m often in the market for more Brazilian gems, more dub or reggae that’s particularly heady and interesting, and so on. A favorite activity is going to a record store I’ve never been to and just combing through the various “International” sections and seeing what great stuff is in there that I don’t already have. In this case, it was actually a shop in my own city, Richmond, and a record I was already very familiar with, but didn’t have.

Juju Music was kind of a big deal when it was released, the unusual record for its time from a Nigerian artist to crack the Billboard charts. It’s been credited as popularizing “world beat,” or music that merges non-western music with pop or dance music, and there’s no mystery as to why this record took off when it did. It grooves like hell—just listen to “Ja Funmi” and tell me you don’t want to get up and move. But by that time, King Sunny Ade had already been releasing music for 15 years, having issued a bunch of records in his native Nigeria that, based on Discogs, aren’t impossible to find, but if they’re in VG or higher condition might cost you a little bit more than you thought. But with some wider exposure from Island Records—which also helped popularize reggae in North America—King Sunny received wider distribution and as such earned some modest success stateside. Though modest success in 1982 is probably even better than topping the charts now. Think of it this way: Thriller came out that year, but this album still almost made it to the top 100. And in its aftermath, more African artists gained popularity in the states as well, so you could say it’s kind of important! But also because of the major label distribution, there were a lot of copies pressed, so that’s why it’s not that hard to find one in the used bin. But it’s worth it at any price for moments like “365/The Message” alone—the man could play some damn fine guitar! Rating: 9.2

Listen: “Ja Funmi”

No. 1445: Gold Dust - Late Great Gold Dust

The best thing about being a music writer is that you learn about really good music before everyone else does (usually), and you get a chance to hear so much music that’s well under the radar. And as it turns out, so many of my favorites from recent years are from bands that aren’t splattered all over TikTok. Maybe I’m just nostalgic for good old fashioned underground favorites (who, I should note, have publicists that are doing their jobs right). 

So anyway, here’s me telling you that if you haven’t heard of Gold Dust, they’re an excellent group, fronted by Stephen Pierce, who make a kind of jangly psychedelic folk-rock sound that reminds me of R.E.M. and the Beach Boys and lots of great American music. It opens with a surprisingly dense and doomy track, and sort of lightens up from there, but there are lots of great guitar solos, including one from J Mascis, so that’s reason enough to hear it. Really good record that I ended up getting in the mail gratis from a publicist friend, so that was a cool surprise to get in the mail.

This is also where I add a apretty big mea culpa in that Gold Dust released another excellent record last year and I never got around to writing about it, so I’ll have to fix that. There’s so, so much music that it’s impossible to cover everything worth covering. I still try, though—haven’t determined yet (after 20+ years) if that’s a virtue or a character flaw. Rating: 8.6

Listen: “Larks Swarm a Hawk”