Scene Report: Whirr at Revolution Hall

To the uninitiated, shoegaze might be just one thing – dreamy, indistinct vocals buried behind sheets of thick psychedelic guitars. Page through RateYourMusic’s Shoegaze Charts for even a split second and you’ll see there’s a lot more to it than that. Yes, the wall of sound of My Bloody Valentine‘s Loveless is well-represented, but so is the Cocteau Twins‘ sugary euphoric dream pop, Have a Nice Life’s miserablist slowcore, the beat mutations of Sweet Trip, or the fuzzy grunge of The Smashing Pumpkins. There are clearly many different ways to do shoegaze with more being invented all the time. 

A stacked bill on a scorching late summer evening to a packed house at SE Portland’s Revolution Hall showed off three different approaches to modern shoegaze to devastating effect. No matter your preferred flavor, you were sure to hear something to make yr body twitch and flail, to put yr head in the stars. 

Vancouver, BC’s Softcult was wrapping out ripping up Revolution Hall’s ample stage with their addictive shoegaze/noise pop when i wended my way through the ¾ capacity crowd, finding a sweet spot between the radio-friendly grunge shoegaze of The Smashing Pumpkins with the jagged corrosive industrial metal of Curve. Expanded from the core duo of twin sisters Phoenix and Mercedes Arn-Horn for the road, Softcult were as savage as a pack of panthers, guitarist Phoenix Arn-Horn slashing the stage in vicious ecstasy as the band rode wave after wave of volume and climax to noisy climax over and over and over again, like Sonic Youth if their noise sensibility and pop tendencies weren’t so often at odds with one another. An absolutely ferocious opener, Softcult threatened to upstage the rest of the bands, despite their legendary statuses. It’s a good thing that Nothing were up next or they’d have been desperately outclassed. Softcult are headlining a tour this fall, so do not sleep if you like heavier shoegaze that is still dreamy and catchy.

Philadelphia’s Nothing amped up the metal even more, exploring the heaviest intersections of shoegaze, math rock, post-hardcore, and even sludge metal as they played material from the last decade. Heavy as dark matter, catchy as the superflu, Nothing revealed themselves as not only one of the most talented shoegaze bands of the evening but of the last 15 years.

Heavy as dark matter, catchy as the superflu, Nothing revealed themselves as not only one of the most talented shoegaze bands of the evening but of the last 15 years.

They also laid to waste the notion that shoegaze bands are boring live – disaffected, unattached, and disengaged – with their trio of guitarslingers racing around the stage like electric gazelles on amphetamines. There were even jokes to go with the stage-to-floor visuals! One of the most entertaining, engaging shoegaze sets i’ve ever seen.

It’s tempting to call Whirr the main event, as this tour marks the San Francisco shoegaze/dream pop/noise punk shows in a decade. “Most-anticipated” might be more accurate, as i legitimately can’t declare one band superior to another in this incredible lineup, just different. Whirr were the closest to the traditional My Bloody Valentine wall of sound shoegaze style, favoring the buried vocal style and storm in a teapot crescendo structure of post-rock. A nice, dreamy, contemplative end to a fabulous midweek shoegaze showcase and a fabulous introduction to Whirr’s new album, Raw Blue.