Well into the twenty-first century, the Pacific northwestern area still produces some of the best music in the country. The early alternative rock movement in the very early 1990s jammed the region's first stake into the soil, claiming the sister cities of Seattle and Portland as fertile grounds for new music. Stepping forward with a fresh foot... [+] Read More

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Brisbane duo Cellophane Rain began in 2002 with a dreamy, hazy pop sound influenced by Joni Mitchell and Smashing Pumpkins. Their early songwriting and recording experiments caught the ear of Garageband.com listeners, drawing comparison to bands like the Cocteau Twins and My Bloody Valentine. The song 'Orchid' reached number 1 on the all-time... [+] Read More

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By using their influences as a mere launching pad and consistently developing their many strengths, Catherine Wheel was able to outlast all of their early peers. With their initial singles and first album, the band from East Anglia fit snugly with the remainder of bands that the British press eventually labeled as shoegazers, a short-lived... [+] Read More

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Boston, MA's the Drop Nineteens were one of America's contributions to England's shoegazer movement. In the late '80s and early '90s, the U.K. fell under the spell of young bands that stared blankly at the ground while they played layers of blurry, dissonant riffs with timid vocals that faded in and out of the mix. Taking inspiration from the... [+] Read More

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Not so much a band as a long, strange trip, the chaotic avant pop pranksters Mercury Rev formed in Buffalo, NY, in the late '80s. Originally comprised of vocalist David Baker, vocalist/silver pickup guitarist Jonathan Donahue, guitar shaper/single-exhaust clarinetist Grasshopper (born Sean Mackowiak), rooster-tail bass flutist Suzanne Thorpe,... [+] Read More

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Not so much underrated as unheard, Moose grew up in Britain's distortion-heavy shoegazing movement of the early '90s but soon shed the fuzzy wash of their compatriots to embrace a clean, acoustic-based style -- inspired by '60s icons Burt Bacharach and Tim Buckley as well as jangle merchants like the Byrds and R.E.M. -- that still relied on the... [+] Read More

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Spirea X was a short-lived dream pop/noise pop act on the 4AD label, spearheaded by ex-Primal Scream member Jim Beattie. The other members of the group were Judith Boyle and Andrew Kerr. In 1991, the group released the Chlorine Dream and Speed Reaction singles, along with the full-length Fireblade Skies. Combining sweet vocal melodies with... [+] Read More

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The band who brought the car song into the shoegaze era, Swervedriver was formed in Britain in 1990 by vocalists/guitarists Adam Franklin and Jimmy Hartridge, bassist Adi Vines, and drummer Graham Bonner. Fusing the swirling textures of the shoegazer aesthetic with the more traditional boundaries of pop, the group debuted with a series of... [+] Read More

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A hard to classify guitar rock band with none of the fashionable influences of the early '90s -- although their Krautrock fixation would go on to become a badge of hipness in the latter half of the decade -- Th' Faith Healers didn't fit in the U.K. indie scene of their time, but their records hold up much better than those of many of their... [+] Read More

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Formed in Liverpool in 1988, the English guitar pop group the Boo Radleys developed a dedicated cult following in the early '90s before crossing over into the mainstream in the middle of the decade. Originally, the Radleys were one of the lesser lights of the loud, noisy My Bloody Valentine-inspired psychedelic trance pop bands labeled... [+] Read More

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Named after history class notes on Abraham Lincoln, the Livonia, MI-based sonic manipulators His Name Is Alive formed when multi-instrumentalist/producer Warren Defever (also of shockabilly group Elvis Hitler) was still in high school. Defever, former schoolmate Karin Oliver (vocals), and drummer Damian Lang released self-produced cassettes of... [+] Read More

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The lush, dreamlike British pop trio Kitchens of Distinction was formed in London in 1986 by singer/bassist Patrick Fitzgerald, guitarist Julian Swales and drummer Dan Goodwin. Taking their name from a Hygena advertisement, they issued their 1987 debut single "Last Gasp Death Shuffle" on their own Gold Rush label, signing to One Little Indian... [+] Read More

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