Candy Apple Shimmer I

"If All You Dreamed Was New"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the introduction for more background.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

“Dreampop” has a lot of different meanings to different people.  Partially that’s because the genre (or subgenre, or style, or however you want to characterize it) is so flexible.  If it gets hard or punky, it becomes shoegaze; if it gets dark and gothy, it morphs into darkwave.  Infuse it with some electronica and you get chillwave; cross it with trip-hop and you end up with Hooverphonic; crossbreed it with worldmusic and you arrive at Dead Can Dance; feed it recursively back into shoegaze and you somehow come up with Mazzy Star.  It’s many things to many people, and people quibble over the where the lines are (is Lush shoegaze? or dreampop? or both? or is all shoegaze really a form of dreampop?¹), but there’s one thing pretty much everyone agrees on: it all starts with the Cocteau Twins.

And the Cocteaus, as we’ve noted many times throughout this series, started out as goth.²  And goth, as we’ve also discussed,³ is not, contrary to popular belief, all about darkness and death, but rather about high drama and style over substance (which may or may not use images of darkness and death to achieve that).  Well, dreampop is, in a weird way, what you get when you drain the drama out of goth music and you’re left with just the style: the glittery, ethereal, atmospheric style.  In a way, dreampop is a bit like the ambient version of goth:⁴ much of it just floats along, without any strong sense of melody or rhythm—the Cocteaus in particular have a lot of this sort of music.  But, then again, it is called dreampop, after all, and there’s a good deal of it which is quite catchy, even “hooky.” So you can see why people have different opinions.  But, ever since my initial discovery of the Cocteau Twins via an import version of their 1986 masterpiece Victorialand,⁵ I’ve been fascinated with the genre.  Out of the more than 1500 albums I own, the single artist with the largest quantity of titles in my collection is the Cocteau Twins.⁶  So we really have to start there.

For this mix, I wanted to emphasize the poppier side of dreampop.  That’s a little tough with the Cocteaus, who I often describe as angels singing in a pink fog.  For this mix, though, I didn’t want to feature the muted pinks, but rather the bright, glittery reds (which is what the mix name is aiming at, be it ever so obliquely).  For the Cocteau Twins, the first thing that really brought to mind was their most radio-friendly album ever, Heaven or Las Vegas.  It’s my second favorite Cocteau album, and it has the excellent “Cherry-Coloured Funk,” and that has the bright red I’m looking for right there in the title.  Plus you can almost make out a word or two here and there: something about good news, I think, and ... a tiger, maybe?  “In Our Angelhood,” on the other hand, is quite different: from the Cocteaus’ second album, it’s definitely not goth, but it’s not quite the ethereal dreampop they’d be famous for by the next couple of albums either.  Not only can you make out some of the words (note: this does not make them make sense), but some of them even rhyme: “like he said he would ... in our angelhood.” It’s also quite fast, at least for them, and I can’t help but think it was songs like this that really inspired a lot of the dreampop I showcase here.

In the “well, duh” category, I couldn’t avoid paying homage to perhaps the second biggest influence on modern dreampop: David-Lynch-inspired Angelo Badalamenti soundtrack music.  In this case, I went with the iconic Twin Peaks soundtrack, specifically “The Bookhouse Boys,” which is just as moody and atmospheric as the rest of that album, but also expansive and echoey, with just a bit of jazz flair.  4AD supergroup This Mortal Coil had to be here as well, showcasing as it often did different members of the Cocteaus paired with members of Dead Can Dance, Xmal Deutschland, Wolfgang Press, and Colourbox.  “Another Day,” which of course is off my all-time favorite TMC album, It’ll End in Tears,⁷ features Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteaus, Martin McGarrick (who often played for Siouxsie) on cello, and Gini Ball (who played for everyone from Siouxsie to Soft Cell to Psychic TV) on strings.  It’s a spare arrangement with a quite intelligible vocal performance from Fraser, and it flows beautifully into another classic, off one of my best beloved albums-to-fall-asleep-to, Shepherd Moons.  Enya can also be ethereal and nigh-indecipherable, but the lyrics of “Caribbean Blue” are as crystal clear as the ocean she’s singing of:

If every man does all he can,
If every man is true,
Do I believe the sky above
Is Caribbean blue?

Gorgeous.  (This song also provides our volume title, as it happens.)  And, finally, while Bel Canto is not as well known as the other old-school dreampop bands I chose here, this electronica-adjacent trio from Norway had some magnificent gems in the late 80s and early 90s, of which “Unicorn” is one of the best.

For the more modern dreampop representation, I waffled on several tunes from Devics and Trespassers William to represent the LA scene of the late 90s/early 00s.  In the end, I went with TW’s amazing rendition of “Rainbow Connection,” which I felt was a beautiful closer, and decided reluctantly to let Devics wait till next volume.  Because there’s a buttload of mid-2010s stuff I just had to get to: the psychedlic guitar work of Deerhunter’s “Carrion,” the surrealist synth of Taken by Trees, showcased in “Horizon,” and the dreamy power-pop of Scavenger Hunt, especially as epitomized by “Dreamers.” But there are two choices I wanted to highlight.  First, also pushing the “pop” half of the dreampop label, we have Flora Cash, another of those bands whose name sounds like a person.  In reality, they are Kosovo-born Shpresa Lleshaj and Minneapolis native Cole Randall, who met on Soundcloud and then began working together in Sweden.  They have some gorgeous intertwining of female and male vocals, all backed by strong melodies which are very definitely pop, but also containing synth and guitar work that provides the dreamy atmosphere.  “California” is my absolute favorite of theirs, and I chose it to break open the middle third of the volume, opening it with a bang.  Secondly, there’s Chromatics, from Portland, whose magnificent “Cherry” was in many ways the inspiration for this whole mix.  While dreampop has been a passion of mine for many years—decades, even—I’ve been mostly focussed on its more gentle sides, its expansive sides, its darker sides, its psychedelic sides.  But when I heard Chromatics perform in the Twin Peaks revival series, I thought “man, I’ve got to hear more.” And then I heard “Cherry,” and I realized that I’d been a fool to downplay the pop side of dreampop.  Because there are a lot of amazing tracks to be experienced, and “Cherry” is one of the reddest, glitteriest ones in the bunch.

For a bit of infusion of darkwave, I went with one of the brightest tunes from Unto Ashes (of course, bright for them is still pretty dark for anyone else), “Scourge,” and a fairly standard outing from Love Spirals Downwards, “Mediterranea.” We’ve heard from both bands before.⁸  For a bit of shoegaze, I went with the inimitable Warpaint: “Keep It Healthy” is pretty light for them, which, again, is pretty heavy for anyone else.⁹  For a touch of ambient, I had to go with Australis, mainly because they have this great track, “The Gates of Reality,” but its Enigma-reminiscent whispered vocals, occasional though they are, make it entirely unsuitable for the other places I’ve used them.¹⁰

Candy Apple Shimmer I
[ If All You Dreamed Was New ]

“Hannah” by the House of Love, off The House of Love [Butterfly Album]
“Cherry” by Chromatics, off Cherry
“All the Way Down” by the Primitives, off Pure
“Cherry-Coloured Funk” by Cocteau Twins, off Heaven or Las Vegas
“Carrion” by Deerhunter, off Fading Frontier
“Horizon” by Taken by Trees, off Other Worlds
“The Gates of Reality” by Australis, off The Gates of Reality
“Unicorn” by Bel Canto, off Shimmering, Warm & Bright
“Scourge” by Unto Ashes, off Moon Oppose Moon
“California” by Flora Cash, off Nothing Lasts Forever (and It's Fine)
“The Bookhouse Boys” by Angelo Badalamenti, off Twin Peaks [Soundtrack]
“In Our Angelhood” by Cocteau Twins, off Head Over Heels
“Jennifer” by Eurythmics, off Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)
“Making Mirrors” by Gotye, off Making Mirrors
“Another Day” by This Mortal Coil, off It'll End in Tears
“Caribbean Blue” by Enya, off Shepherd Moons
“Mediterranea” by Love Spirals Downwards, off Idylls [Reissue]
“Keep It Healthy” by Warpaint, off Warpaint
“Dreamers” by Scavenger Hunt, off Scavenger Hunt [EP]
“Over the Rooftops” by Gene Loves Jezebel, off Discover
“Rainbow Connection” by Trespassers William [Single]

Total:  21 tracks,  79:53

Which leaves us with the usual run of at least moderately unexpected choices.  Most of these are 80s-throwback tunes: songs that were stretching out for dreampop, possibly without even realizing it.  The single exception to that, though, is our one and only bridge, Gotye’s “Making Mirrors.” While Gotye is of course most famous for his smash hit “Somebody That I Used to Know,”¹¹ he dabbles in trippy little gems like this one, which I felt was the perfect bridge from the poppier middle third (characterized by “California” and “In Our Angelhood”) into the slower downslope of This Mortal Coil leading to Enya leading to Love Spirals Downwards.

It’s bridging from the Eurythmics, as it happens, who are typically thought of as alternapop or possibly new wave.  But I always saw “Jennifer” (with her orange hair and green eyes and her dress of deepest purple) as something different for the normally very synthpoppy Eurythmics.  It’s slow and deliberate, and it sets a very particualr mood that somehow seems more important than whatever Annie Lennox is actually singing about, and I think that really captures the essence of dreampop.

But the iconic 80s track¹² I wanted to open this mix with is House of Love’s “Hannah,” also the opener on their second self-titled album, which is now usually just called the Butterfly Album (similarly to the Beatles’ White Album or Weezer’s Green Album).  House of Love was in the same movement as the Stone Roses (as well as many others like Blind Melon), which I would say grew out of some of the 80s bands like the Church and Echo and the Bunnymen and the Dream Academy.  Sometimes this is referred to as “neo-psychedelia.” But, honestly, it’s pretty much just dreampop.  “Hannah” even has much the same structure as “I Wanna Be Adored”: a very slow fade-in, echoey guitars, reverby vocals, a repeated refrain (House of Love used “this is not my sky” whereas Stone Roses used “I don’t need to sell my soul”), slow verses and choruses that eventually build to a harder breakdown which drops back down to downtempo again ... the songs were even released within a year or so of each other—almost certainly too close for one to be a rip-off of the other, but also too close to be a complete coincidence.  And, while I really dig “I Wanna Be Adored,” I think “Hannah” is the superior offering, and that’s why it needed to be the opening here.  It really sets the tone for what follows.

Admittedly the other two are a bit more of a stretch.  Gene Loves Jezebel is sometimes described as new wave and sometimes as post-punk (which is quite strange, since inasmuch as “post-punk” means anything—which isn’t inasmuch of much—it means something nearly diametrically opposed to new wave¹³), and Wikipedia actually has the balls to call them goth, which ... no.  Just, no.  What they are is a bit unusual style, a lot echoey, ringing guitars, and healthy dose atypical vocal performance.  It is proper dreampop?  I suppose not, though I always found something dreamy in it.  Besides being a fascinating story of maybe the only time in history that identical twins ended up hating each other, Gene Loves Jezebel is a wonderfully 80s phenomenon that produced an iconic album (Discover) which is sadly now mostly forgotten.  But I felt that “Over the Rooftops” deserved to be resurrected here.

Last but not least, the Primitives are emblematic of the cusp bands that lived in that brief period when the 80s weren’t quite over but the 90s weren’t quite sure who they were yet.  Another band that some try to cram into new wave while others think they can be squeezed into post-punk, the Primitives were, along with the Darling Buds, and (to a lesser extent) Transvision Vamp, female-fronted alternapop that was glittery and synthy and very definitely not the sort of stuff I would eventually collect on Sirenexiv Cola.  That was all serious and folky—Tori Amos and Alanis Morissette and Liz Phair—but this was not deep at all.  This was just fun, and poppy, and occasionally just the slightest bit trippy.  Like Hooverphonic, Dead Can Dance, or Blondie, it was rare for you to hear male vocals from the Primitives, but, when you did, it was nearly always worth it.  Oh, don’t get me wrong: the best Primitives songs are still the ones Tracy Tracy sings—“Way Behind Me” and “Crash” and “Keep Me in Mind” and “Shadow” and “Out of Reach” and “Summer Rain” and their cover of “I’ll Be Your Mirror”—but when Paul Court took the mic, it was always different and memorable.  He sang “Carry Me Home,” and “I Almost Touched You,” and especially “All the Way Down,” which is the one I chose here to highlight just how dreamy they could be.  It isn’t ethereal at all, and it isn’t quite psychedelic, but it does have something that is evocative of the dreamiest dreampop, and I thought it worked particularly well here.  I put “Cherry” first, of course, but this wasn’t a bad follow-up.

Next time, we’ll crank it up to eleven.

__________

1 The proper answer, of course, is that shoegaze is related to, but separate from, dreampop, and, while early Lush is shoegaze, there’s really no way you could call Lovelife anything other than dream pop.

2 In particular we noted it on Penumbral Phosphorescence, where we featured one of their very goth tracks from their first (very goth) album.

3 Again, see Penumbral Phosphorescence.

4 For way more discussion on ambient, check out Shadowfall Equinox III.

5 For more on that, see Smokelit Flashback II.

6 I own 11 of the Cocteau’s albums, for those who are curious.  Number two is Jeff Greinke, who is featured so heavily throughout Shadowfall Equinox, with 8, and then 7 each for the Cure, INXS, and They Might Be Giants.

7 See Shadowfall Equinox II for a deeper dive into my affection for this album.

8 Unto Ashes on Penumbral Phosphorescence I and Dreamtime I; LSD on Smokelit Flashback V, Shadowfall Equinox I, and Rose-Coloured Brainpan II.

9 We first encountered Warpaint on Dreamscape Perturbation I.

10 Such as Mystical Memoriam I, and Shadowfall Equinox IV.

11 Which I used on Rose-Coloured Brainpan II.

12 While it was technically released in 1990, I still consider this very much an 80s song.

13 See also Totally Different Head for deeper dives on the crossovers between punk and new wave.