Interviews // Ira Bobbins on Shoegaze

Time for another chat with a legend that is Ira Bobbins! We heard him tackling such diverse subjects as vaporwave, McCartney and post rock. His grace knows no boundaries and now the master is back with another rant – this time skewering musicians that look at their shoes way too often….read on if you dare.

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Shoegaze seems appealing at first. You know, the sounds swirl around and it’s all ethereal, but then there’s also all this distortion.

So if you like things loud but are too big a wuss for metal or noise music, you can half-ass it in shoegaze.

Or conversely, if you are one of those ambient weirdos, you can get a guilty pleasure out of some loud almost-riffing.

This is all fine, but the shit’s all the same. Loud guitars, four kinds of pedals (or fourteen), vocals buried so low in the mix, you may as well be reciting the phone book.

And the attitudes? I knew a shoegazer who was so allergic to hearing a proper guitar solo, he looked physically ill when he heard one. If he heard “Comfortably Numb,” he’d probably puke.

Oh, and yes, when they play live, they probably put an X with masking tape for each musician on the stage, so they can literally just stand there and stare down while they mumble their lyrics into the mic.

Slowdive? Whatever. More like Bore-dive. I like it when those French guys add the black metal shrieking, though, that’s good.