I still remember the first time I heard Loveless by My Bloody Valentine. It reminded me the way one puts their tongue against a 9-volt battery--electrifying, shocking, and jolting all through my veins. The actual music gave me a euphoric feeling the same way that an electric current travels from a charge. I was immersed deep within this idea of distortion and wanted badly to aurally take in as many other bands that had the same sound.
I took a film class on the History of American Motion Pictures and one unit focused on Film Noir. There was an assigned reading from John Belton's "Film Noir: Somewhere in the Night" and in his essay he discusses how there are many critics who disagree over the definition of Film Noir. Since there are similarities, one can apply his analysis to the way critics and listeners see Shoegaze as well.
For instance, there are individuals who believe Shoegaze is a genre. There are bands that use the same technique to produce a similar sound and contain trends that unilaterally bind them together in a category. If this is the case, then Shoegaze bands rely on their aesthetics that comprise the overall concept. Distorted guitars, waves of sound, droned out lyrics, angel-like harmonies, angsty lyrics, repetition, and picturesque soundscapes are the core units that in fact define a band as Shoegaze.
On the other hand, there are others who grossly disagree and rather perceive the term as a mode. If this is the case then instead of relying on its aesthetics to classify it within an overall genre, it focuses more on the individuality of the core aesthetics. If a band uses pedals to achieve a high distorted sound, then it is operating within the mode. That being said, if something can operate within a mode, then it can just as easily fluctuate in and out of the mode. This translates to a song that uses high distortion on the chorus can ultimately become or evolve into Shoegaze. By creating the simple characteristic, it is engulfed into the mode.
Unlike both genre and mode there are others who define Shoegaze by its temporal revelation. They associate it more to the time period when these bands originally emerged and when it peaked - the late eighties and early nineties. It is seen more of a historical perspective and operates merely within that single time frame. By their logic, it is more about a cycle or series of bands like My Bloody Valentine, Lush, Ride, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Slowdive, Swerverdriver, Chapterhouse, Catherine Wheel and Spacemen 3 that ARE Shoegaze but contemporary or modern bands that use similar aesthetics like The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, Yuck, M83, A Place To Bury Strangers, Pity Sex, The Vandelles, A Sunny Day in Glasgow, Airiel, Mogwai, and Washed Out ARE NOT. Even by this definition, The Vandelles' cover of Spacemen 3's "Losing Touch With My Mind" while it might posess the Shoegaze sound that is rooted within Spacemen 3's original version, it remains grounded within its origins and does not translate through to the band covering. Like the early nineties hip hop movement or grunge, it is rooted more within the culture or a series of bands/people than the link and unifying aspect from its aesthetics. For example, in Islands' song "Where There's a Will There's a Whalebone" a member of the group raps in the bridge, however this song nor its band is associated with hip hop the same as Gucci Mane or Juicy J.
All of this aside, Shoegaze no matter how anyone defines it, is music. So much of the time, individuals allow themselves to get caught up on labeling or assigning meaning that it dilutes the music. It is like two parents fighting over a child and the child is just looking up existing by itself in its own relm. Why is it more essential to know what it is than how it operates? It's music--a live entity that has the power to evolve and transform lives. And in the words of Stevo from the film SLC Punk (1998), "Who cares who started it, it's music!"
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