The Manchester quintet Alfie (singer Lee Gorton, guitarist Ian Smith, cellist Matt McGeever, bassist Sam Morris, and drummer Sean Kelly), came about in the late '90s after Gorton became increasingly fed up with the local music scene -- when most bands at the time were merely rehashing Oasis songs. The band caught a break with their very first... [+] Read More

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Blumfeld is an indie-rock group from Hamburg, Germany, in the Pavement vein; in fact Blumfeld has toured with the American band. Where Blumfeld differs from Pavement and from such fellow Teutonic indie-poppers as the Bartlebees is in their lyrics, which are in German -- though singer Jochen Distelmeyer is known to drop in the occasional English... [+] Read More

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Led by the multi-talented Joe Cassidy (the only constant member), a native of Belfast, North Ireland, Butterfly Child burst onto the music scene in '91 with two well-received EPs on A.R. Kane's H.ark label. Signing to Rough Trade in '93, Butterfly Child released both the brilliant Ghetto Speak EP and equally wonderful Onomatopoeia album. It was... [+] 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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Combining an inclination for melodic '60s pop with an art rock aesthetic borrowed from Krautrock bands like Faust and Neu!, Stereolab were one of the most influential alternative bands of the '90s. Led by Tim Gane and Laetitia Sadier, Stereolab either legitimized forms of music that were on the fringe of rock, or brought attention to strands of... [+] 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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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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The post-Smiths guitar pop of the House of Love was popular for a short time in the late '80s, as many college and alternative rock fans became converts to their mixture of shiny ringing guitars, pseudo-psychedelic melodies, and bursts of noise. The British group formed in 1986; it featured Guy Chadwick (vocals, guitar), Terry Bickers (guitar),... [+] Read More

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Long acclaimed as among the most innovative and spellbinding bands on the contemporary British pop scene, the Verve finally broke through to a mass international audience in 1997 with the instant classic "Bittersweet Symphony." By no stretch a study in overnight success, the group's rise was instead the culmination of a long, arduous journey... [+] Read More

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