The Best Shoegaze Albums of the 2010s

Twenty-two years after Loveless, Kevin Shields self-released this through the band's relaunched website — which crashed within minutes of going live. Worth the outage: 'only tomorrow' hangs whole verses on a guitar line that keeps bending away from its note and snapping back, drums pushed deep like they're playing in the next room. Nobody has replicated that glide sound in three decades of trying.

Nobody expected the reunion to sound this vital. First album since Pygmalion in 1995, released on Dead Oceans, and it plays like the band never lost the thread: 'Sugar for the Pill' rides a dry, clean bass hook and lets the guitars shimmer around it rather than over it — restraint the young Slowdive didn't have. The elder-statesman record of the decade, and the calmest.

Metacritic's best-reviewed album of 2013 was a metal record with a pink-orange cover — the first metal album ever to top the site's year-end ranking. Blackgaze border case, flagged as such: 'Dream House' runs nine minutes of shrieked vocals over chord changes lifted from the shoegaze songbook, tracked raw and live-sounding by producer Jack Shirley. Half the newer bands on this list owe it their audience.

Domenic Palermo fronted Philadelphia hardcore band Horror Show before this, and you can hear it — Relapse Records signed a shoegaze band and nobody blinked. 'Bent Nail' compresses the genre into three minutes: verses that sulk, a chorus that detonates, cymbals mixed like static. The record that made 'hardcore kid discovers reverb' a career path, and still the best thing to come out of that move.

Call it a dream-pop border case, admitted willingly. Zachary Cole Smith wrote this 17-track set — pressed as a double LP on Captured Tracks — as a recovery diary, with Sky Ferreira singing on 'Blue Boredom.' The linked 'Dopamine' is the tell: a wiry motorik guitar figure that circles instead of surging, closer to krautrock jangle than pedal worship, though the haze around it earns the seat.

Iceland did something to this band. Recorded at Sundlaugin studio with Sigur Rós producer Birgir Jón Birgisson — and with Neil Halstead of Slowdive guesting on 'Away' — Shelter is the one Alcest album with no black metal in it at all. The reverse border case: 'Opale' is chiming, major-key rush, tremolo picking repurposed for joy. Fans of the screams were furious. They were wrong.

Underrated then, underrated now: Jasamine White-Gluz and Laura Lloyd of Montreal made the decade's most overlooked pedal record for Mexican Summer. 'Hare Tarot Lies' works the band's signature move — a riff that chugs like grunge one bar and dissolves into vapor the next, vocal melody floating through untouched. No Joy never got the comeback-cycle press; the songs hold up better than most that did.

Revivalists with better hooks than half the bands they're reviving — that's the pitch, and 'So High' delivers it: a bubblegum boy-girl melody over bass fuzz thick enough to clip the speakers, gone in under three minutes. Colour Trip came out on Club AC30 in the UK from a trio based in Austin, Texas, whose name alone tells you the canon isn't being treated as scripture.

Captured Tracks talked the original trio — Brad Laner, Beth Thompson, Jim Goodall — into their first record together since 1995's Her Highness, and got the strangest comeback of the decade. 'Long as the Sun' stacks Laner's shredded treble noise over an almost funky drum groove, pop songcraft buried in glare. The rare reunion album that came back weirder than the originals.

Seventeen years off did nothing to the engine. 'Autodidact' opens Swervedriver's first album since 99th Dream (1998) at cruising speed — guitars overlapping in slow arcs, Adam Franklin's voice as unbothered as it was in 1993. They were always the highway wing of shoegaze rather than the bedroom wing, and the layoff changed nothing about how the thing drives.

Half this list plugs into pedals Oliver Ackermann builds — his company is Death By Audio — so Worship doubles as a product demo conducted at hostile volume. On 'You Are the One' the drums run cold and mechanical while the guitar arrives in sheets of controlled feedback, less a riff than a weather event. Dead Oceans released it; play it at a volume your neighbors will report.

Whirr share a guitarist with Nothing — Nick Bassett — and Graveface released Sway the same year Guilty of Everything broke, making 2014 his year twice over. 'Press' opens the record with drums that hit like a rock band and guitars that behave like fog, a combination sustained for forty minutes without blinking. The band's online conduct later torched their reputation; the record itself remains enormous.

St. Petersburg, Russia, was an unlikely address for the decade's most precise shoegaze, and then 'Umi' made the case: needlepoint guitar patterns at post-punk tempo, vocals deployed as one more high-frequency instrument, everything mixed for clarity instead of murk. Co-released by Shelflife and Club AC30, from a band named after an Astrobrite record — exactly the level of scholarship the songs display.

Gothic patience is the move here, where most of this list opts for blast. On 'Heavenly Bodies' the New Zealand-born singer stretches long, low phrases while Rex John Shelverton's guitar tolls underneath in slow, chorused swells. It's the last Tamaryn album made with Shelverton, released by Mexican Summer in 2012, and it has aged better than louder records from the same year.

A Canadian, an American, a German, and a Brit formed a band in London, and Wichita Recordings signed what sounds like the setup to a joke. The self-titled debut plays it dead serious: 'Get Tight' hits a Dinosaur Jr.-sized riff, sandpapers the vocals into the mix, and exits before the fuzz wears out its welcome. Sturdier and less precious than most revival-era records, which is why it wears so well.

The fidelity upgrade is the whole story: Jack Tatum took his one-man project to producer Nicolas Vernhes at Brooklyn's Rare Book Room and came back with dream pop proper — flagged as the border case it is. 'Shadow' earns the spot honestly, though: a chorused guitar figure so clean and melancholy it does what other bands here need six pedals to do. The prettiest record on the list, and it isn't close.

Gothenburg runs on jangle, and Westkust — who share members with Makthaverskan — turned it up until it blurred. 'Swirl' opens Last Forever at a sprint: drums at punk tempo, guitars smeared into one bright streak, vocals fighting up through the middle and mostly winning. Run for Cover handled the US release. Summer music, played like summer ends in ten minutes.

From Leuven, Belgium, with a Manchester-raised singer up front — Slow Crush closed the decade pointing at where the genre went next. Aurora arrived on Holy Roar in 2018; opener 'Glow' sets the template, bass carrying the actual melody, guitars poured over it like syrup, Isa Holliday's vocals sitting at just-audible on purpose. The current crop of heavy shoegaze bands largely starts here.

Before The Pains of Being Pure at Heart took off, drummer Kurt Feldman ran this project, threading Famicom chip-tones through shoegaze arrangements — Spirit Youth, on Kanine, is where the trick became a style. 'Dream About Me' sets an 8-bit lead line against full-sized guitar wash, one texture precise and one smeared, each flattering the other for the length of the song. Nobody has copied it well since.

Chicago lifers who took a decade between albums and spent it sharpening: Molten Young Lovers landed on Shelflife in 2017, Airiel's first LP since The Battle of Sealand. 'Cloudburst' is the payoff, a chorus that climbs in stages while the guitars gain density behind it — arena moves executed at club scale. A deep-catalog favorite of the people who moderate shoegaze forums, which is its own credential.