All of this momentum — each in Philly correct and in the best way the scene’s sound is reverberating globally — has been constructing towards one thing like Slide Away. Palermo wished to make sure it was finished proper, freed from company interlopers and culture-vulturing vibe-killers. The main target is all on the bands, and the ambiance of the fest — from the group’s overwhelmingly well mannered conduct to each band’s palpable gratitude to be included — strikes the right steadiness between reverence and revelry. I can inform that the majority everybody within the viewers not solely adores shoegaze, however is totally onboard in appreciating the style’s present second. The best way Slide Away captures that singularity isn’t misplaced on folks.
“I really feel prefer it’s an epochal second in shoegaze,” Eoin Masterson says of the fest. The person behind the web radio station Ignoreradio Shoegaze traveled all the best way from Eire to be at Slide Away, describing the pull to come back as being “drawn right here,” within the non secular sense, by how the lineup connects collectively the final three a long time of shoegaze historical past — and within the metropolis that Masterson considers to be shoegaze’s present-day capital. “I believe Philadelphia is the world heart of shoegaze proper now,” Masterson enthuses. And that is coming from a man who hails from My Bloody Valentine’s dwelling metropolis of Dublin, i.e. shoegaze floor zero.
Masterson says he spoke with one other attendee who traveled from Barcelona, and at one level I chat with a man who made the trek from San Francisco — regardless of the a lot nearer Slide Away in LA happening later this month (albeit with a much less prestigious lineup). This explicit invoice was simply too good to go up on, and to Masterson’s level, it seems like greater than only a live performance, however a watershed second for the style. TAGABOW, Knifeplay, and Glixen are every essential contributors to the continued American shoegaze renaissance. They’re carrying the torch that was initially lit within the early ’90s by Swirlies and Loveliescrushing, and later sustained by Astrobrite and Nothing. That’s 30 years of the American shoegaze lineage all being celebrated below one roof, which is one thing that’s by no means been finished earlier than. That intergenerational linking is precisely what Palermo had in thoughts.
“Once we began doing [Nothing] in 2010 it was very chilly,” Palermo says of the shoegaze panorama. “If I ever reached out to any of the people who I used to be wanting as much as to attempt to play music, I by no means actually obtained a variety of responses or any form of steerage.”
Now that Nothing are within the elder statesman position, Palermo needs to be a nurturing pressure to maintain this factor animated and pure in a method it wasn’t when he was beginning out. “I’ve by no means wished it to be [cold] like that for the youthful bands,” he says. “I wish to be there and assist construct extra of a communal form of factor. And the competition appeared like a method to do it.”
Palermo says his preliminary thought for Slide Away was to line the entire perimeter of the room with amps to make it a “bloodbath” of sound. Nonetheless, after his reserving agent satisfied him “it doesn’t want to harm” concertgoer’s ears, the manufacturing was scaled again to extra tolerable ranges (he was nonetheless in a position to get venue’s decibel restrict raised just a few notches). That doesn’t make it any much less awe-inspiring. Once I step out into the group throughout Glixen’s first music, I’m bowled over by the beautiful videography on the display behind them. Oceanic blues and lusty reds are swirled right into a hypnagogic panorama of shifting shapes and figures, and so they solely get extra alluring all through the evening. Significantly throughout Loveliescrushing and Nothing’s units, the projectionist makes use of real-time footage of the bands and actively inverts the colours and angles, making it really feel extra like an ever-unfolding music video than a mere screensaver. For a style as heavy-eyed as shoegaze, having one thing stimulating to have a look at makes a giant distinction — particularly with eight bands’ price of shoegaze in a row.
Even so, the bands’ music is after all the principle attraction. Glixen are the noobies of the invoice with simply an EP and a few singles to their title, however their MBV-ish quilts of sound are already dialed the fuck in. Their glide-guitar riffs are trendy, their breathy hooks are rosy, and their general sound is so wealthy and voluminous. Astrobrite are subsequent, and whereas they’re establishing I hear a bunch of college-age guys subsequent to me geeking out about Scott Cortez, the band’s singer-guitarist who’ll be taking the stage once more tonight with Loveliescrushing (Masterson unflinchingly dubs Cortez the American Kevin Shields). Astrobrite’s prolific catalog stretches again to the mid-’90s, however their early 2000s albums, significantly Crush and Pinkshinyultrablast (yep, that’s the place the Russian ‘gazers obtained their namesake), are particularly influential on lo-fi shoegaze of the Bandcamp period. Glixen’s set might need been louder and extra arresting, however seeing Astrobrite was a particular second for the heads. I spy Palermo fist-pumping side-stage with an enormous smile, and the band’s merch sales space is mobbed by twentysomethings as quickly as Cortez unslings his guitar.
In between bands, the occasion seems like a daily, albeit prolonged, live performance. Interstitial DJ units from Full Physique 2, Vyva Melinkolya, and Kip Berman (of the Pains Of Being Pure At Coronary heart fame) preserve the temper ‘gazey with out overdoing it, sneaking in breakcore and dream-pop for a recent ear-cleanse. Followers mill about close to the merch or on the bar, and navigating the group is surprisingly straightforward for a sold-out present. There are not any sponsor cubicles, and many of the bands are working their very own merch themselves, making it straightforward for followers to have informal interactions with their heroes. The age vary is genuinely numerous as hell. There’re loads of folks of their forties and fifties, however the common age (at the very least on the ground the place I’m) is the complete spectrum of teenagers and twentysomethings.
I slink via the group to get a great vantage level for Knifeplay, whose six-person lineup guarantees a stage of loudness that I think will trump the three and four-piece bands who performed earlier than them. Or so I assumed. Knifeplay’s set consists of three new songs, two of which they’ve by no means performed dwell earlier than. Each is roughly 9 minutes lengthy, and so they all heart the gut-punching belts of recent co-vocalist Johanna Baumann, who joined the lineup after Knifeplay’s soggy 2022 knockout, Animal Drowning. The brand new tunes all function glacial crescendos with a slowcore twang, and the band go for hollow-body and acoustic guitars as a substitute of the standard-issue shoegaze Jazzmasters. When Baumann and frontman T.J. Strohmer hook the lyric,”take the sunshine away” through the closing observe, they let it wriggle on the road for a couple of minutes earlier than reeling it in for a what seems like a momentous shoegaze climax. Fooled once more. Baumann pulls out a tambourine, Strohmer turns towards the drummer to keep up the fragile nod, and the anticipated distortion by no means clicks on. It’s a daring and intelligent inversion of the shoegaze system, cheekily pulled off within the coronary heart of shoegaze mecca.
Mint Subject’s slinky, trip-hoppy shoegaze brings the loudness again, and the Mexico Metropolis trio obtain big applause after they announce how far they journeyed to make it. It’s solely 7PM at this level, and it’s clear that a good portion of the ticket-holders are holding out for the larger bands. TAGABOW are one in all them. By the point they take the stage, the room is noticeably extra packed, and the vibe of the viewers is extra anticipatory than curious. Talking with me backstage earlier than the present, singer-guitarist Doug Dulgarian makes it very clear that he doesn’t wish to be a poster youngster for Philly shoegaze’s present scene, which is a job he’s usually assigned by others who acknowledge his impression on the tradition.
Between the Julia’s Struggle label he co-runs (who’ve placed on Wednesday, Feeble Little Horse, Glixen, and dozens of different next-gen shoegaze acts from Philly and elsewhere) and TAGABOW’s already-influential sound, they’re simply one of many metropolis’s most necessary shoegaze bands, and their set at Slide Away seems like a testomony to what they’ve helped construct to this point.
“Did I ever assume that I might play Union Switch?” Dulgarian asks himself within the inexperienced room. “I needed for it, however now that it’s all occurring…I really feel grateful.”
Clearly, TAGABOW have earned it. Identical to they do within the 200-cap rooms they’re now promoting out, Dulgarian and his bandmates configure themselves right into a summoning circle on the UT stage, and the singer communicates with the group nearly solely via air-horn honks. The youngsters are consuming up their cryptically confrontational vitality, and 5 songs into their set, the battalion of swaying head-nods snowballs right into a full-on mosh pit. A number of the older of us round me gawk into the scrum of younger’ins with seen disdain, which strikes me as ironic. Nothing are the night’s primary occasion, and there’s an argument to be made that the hardcore vitality they injected into shoegaze through the Responsible Of All the things years is immediately liable for the TAGABOW mosh rascals of as we speak.
The vibes for Loveliescrushing’s set couldn’t have been any completely different. The duo of guitarist Cortez and vocalist Melissa Arpin Duimstra have solely performed dwell about 10 occasions over the past 30 years, however their mystical 1992 album, bloweyelashwish, and 1996 follow-up, xuvetyn, are licensed cult-classics of ambient-gaze. I catch Cortez backstage and pull him into the inexperienced room for just a few questions. He confirms that Slide Away is the largest Loveliescrushing present within the band’s historical past, and tells me, with real gratitude in his eyes, “I’m simply shocked that I’m enjoying it.”
Palermo is, too. “I had a Loveliescrushing tape once I was locked up,” the Nothing singer says. “I’m most likely the one dude ever who was listening to that form of stuff in a jail.” Getting the band on this invoice was a fantasy for Palermo, and he cold-pitched Cortez utilizing an e mail that he pulled off a Bandcamp web page. After just a few days, Cortez responded and humbly requested if Astrobrite might play, too. “I used to be like, are you fucking kidding me? Yeah,” Palermo tells me, laughing in disbelief. Amazingly, Cortez says that when he first noticed Palermo’s Slide Away e mail hit his inbox, he actually thought somebody was pulling a joke on him.
“I used to be like, ‘That dude’s actually cool, why would he be asking me to play some awesome-sounding fest?’”
True to the style’s coy demeanor, none of those bands assume they’re cool sufficient to be in one another’s presences. Glixen’s singer gave the impression of she was on the verge of tears when she instructed the room, “I can’t imagine I’m on this stage proper now,” towards the tip of their set. Dulgarian instructed me he’s grateful “that [Palermo] even thought that we had been cool sufficient” to be on the lineup. In the identical inexperienced room just some minutes earlier, Palermo mentioned with out a drop of bullshit that he thinks TAGABOW and Knifeplay are “one million years higher than Nothing.” The scene actually do be celebrating itself.
Mutual respect permeates the entire fest, however the temper is exceedingly appreciative for Loveliescrushing. With none drums or sand-blasted guitar fuzz, they’re the softest, most docile band on the invoice, however everybody round me seems transfixed. Their sound is just like the aural equal of an open fridge door glowing right into a darkish kitchen; shadowy, comfortingly icy, and by no means rising above an ambient purr. Cortez’s streaky guitar warbles are drenched in a lot delay and reverb that they’re unrecognizable as a string instrument, and Arpin Duimstra’s wordless intonations journey via her desk of pedal board circuitry and emerge from the displays sounding like a refrain of schoolyard ghosts. Neither of them addressed the group with phrases, however on the set’s conclusion, they only seemed up and smiled nervously, visibly shocked by the heat of applause.
A Loveliescrushing present is an occasion in and of itself, however to be adopted onstage by Swirlies made me consider the Uncut Gems scene the place Adam Sandler gushes, “That’s historical past proper there.” The Boston band had been one of many few American teams who discovered success enjoying shoegaze within the early ’90s, and whereas they’ve all the time maintained a revered pedigree on this scene, there’s an entire new technology of ‘gazers discovering them via the web and taking possession of their fandom. For Palermo, efficiently getting Swirlies on this invoice — and for Nothing to be headlining over them — is a surreal full-circle second. Swirlies’ frontman-guitarist Damon Tutunjian caught one in all Nothing’s chaotic early exhibits again in 2011, and the elder musician was instantly supportive of the band’s aggro vibe. It means as a lot to him now because it did then.
“Swirlies are one of the vital necessary bands of all time to me,” Palermo says. “I’ve been attempting to tear off Damon’s stuff for the reason that starting of Nothing.”
Clearly, their affect isn’t misplaced on the youngsters, both, who rip open a mosh pit as quickly because the band kick into the rattling Blonder Tongue Audio Baton basic “Vigilant At all times.” Swirlies’ knotty sound and their effortlessly cool vibe locations them nearer to Sonic Youth-ian noise-rock than every other band on Slide Away, and their sampler-laced squalls set the room ablaze. Sooner or later, a twentysomething climbs up and crowdsurfs throughout one in all their songs, which places a smile on Tutunjian’s face that reads, “What the fuck is going on?” “Cautious,” he quips after the observe cuts.
By the point Swirlies begin packing up their devices, it’s after 11PM. The one actual meals within the venue (smooth pretzels) is long-gone, Swirlies’ merch is dwindling, and as I tempo across the flooring to maintain my aching knees at bay, I see folks propped up in opposition to the partitions and falling asleep on one another’s shoulders. It’s been seven hours of shoegaze, however everybody begins to rally when Nothing assume their positions. They open with the title-track off of their 2012 EP, Downward Years To Come, and the place instantly erupts.
The mosh pits for TAGABOW and Swirlies had been fizzy but comparatively contained, however as quickly as Nothing’s music begins the entire heart of the group opens up like a chasm of chaos. The band is noticeably louder than each group who performed earlier than, and I pray for anybody who wasn’t sporting the complementary earplugs that had been handed out on the door (“so I don’t get sued later,” Palermo tells me). After the intro observe, Nothing don’t waste any extra time in attending to the principle occasion. They play all 9 Responsible tracks in succession, with a assassin’s row of former Nothing gamers approaching and off the stage. The nine-hour rehearsal they pulled the day earlier than clearly paid off, as a result of the rigamarole goes off with out a hitch.. It’s a must to actually know your Nothing minutia to ID many of the visitors, however there’s one individual whose presence overshadows the remainder of the bunch.
Ex-Nothing bassist Nick Bassett is in the home, higher recognized for his personal band Whirr, who haven’t performed dwell since their 2015 cancellation, however retain an ever-growing cult fandom and are one of many web’s hottest shoegaze bands. It’s been a very long time since anybody’s seen Bassett on a stage, and his entrance is met with whoops and hollers, in addition to a handful of individuals shouting “free Whirl,” an Odd Future-inspired catchphrase of types among the many Whirr fandom. Bassett thrashes giddily in entrance of the drum equipment throughout “Bent Nail,” after which returns later within the set to play third guitar for Responsible Of All the things’s closing title-track. It’s a staggeringly affecting music that wrestles vividly with the theme of everlasting guilt (“I’ve given up, however you shoot anyway,” Palermo croons throughout its gutting finale), and contemplating all the bags round Whirr, it takes on an entire different that means to see Bassett up there enjoying it with them.
Earlier than Nothing conclude Slide Away with the Downward Years To Come ballad “The Rites Of Love And Demise,” Palermo offers a speech. Effectively, form of. “I neglect how one can speak proper,” he prefaces, after which struggles to discover a succinct method of expressing his gratitude. At one level, he tells the group that he’s not accustomed to wins in life, however that he’s taking this evening as a “W.”
Earlier backstage, he discovered the phrases to convey that message extra eloquently. For a man like Palermo, who’s been via what he’s been via, and the way a lot work he’s put into Nothing over the past decade-plus, pulling off Slide Away isn’t only a win for the tradition or a win for his band. It’s a win in opposition to destiny.
“That to me is the problem,” he says. “Doing issues that I do know I wasn’t meant to do. I’m breaking the principles of the universe, and that’s what I really like. I really like fucking the universe.”
