defining shitgaze

so today, i discovered that i listen to shitgaze. i already liked a whole movement but i guess i didn't read the right blogs or forums or whatever. since when has the internet become a necessary part of musical pretentiousness? there's nothing concrete written about it yet (except for some interview with psychedelic horseshit, who i don't really listen to, who i guess coined it when jokingly talking about themselves), mostly a bunch of tags and arguing, so it's kind of hard to grasp right now. especially when its first use was a total joke, anyway.

anyway, the newer the forum posts get, the more people talk shit about the term "shitgaze," mostly that it's an unnecessary genre for a bunch of bands that only have lo-fi guitar rock in common. but what threw me is, on the last.fm tag page [http://www.last.fm/tag/shitgaze], the second most tagged artists was blank dogs. blank dogs are one of my favorite newer bands. they have a real cool blog [blankdogs.blogspot.com], too.

i never thought of blank dogs as purposely shitty and lo-fi. sure, purposely muddled and weird, but nothing with the crunch or kitsch of other bands thought of as "shitgaze" [the most popular bands that have been called shitgaze right now seem to be no age and times new viking]. what struck me immediately about blank dogs was how the depth of their sound, and how absolutely fucking perfectly calculated their effects were. case in point [LISTEN TO THE VOCALS THEY ALWAYS SOUND LIKE THAT SOOOOOOO GOOD]: [youtube EEihrFQ_85s]

"shitgaze" undoubtedly comes from shoegaze, a mostly-90's genre marked by intricate use of effects and creative guitar noise. i like the term "shitgaze" because, instead of being an arbitrary name to stick on a bunch of bands the same groups of people tend to like [notably the folks over at slitbreeze records], it does describe a unifying and purposeful aesthetic: calculated use of effects and creative guitar noise to create an end-product that sounds muddled and, well, conventionally shitty. in the case of some bands, it just sounds like you're pretending you're broke, leading to the "why do you make this much of an effort to sound like shit" question. but there's so many different, calculated noises you can make within "shit." why can't you make a lot of effort not to just sound like shit, but to sound like that exact shit?

in the case of blank dogs, it's more oversaturated than anything, but still muddled and unintelligible. the aesthetic is only partially an image; mostly, it's an aesthetic all its own. bands like blank dogs being grouped with the rest of shitgaze throw the genre off being purposely broke- and shit-sounding and into "you calling my music purposely shitty is a judgement call on aesthetics" territory.

and sure, doing things just because they're the opposite of what everyone wants is really, really old. but that is exactly why this sort of thing should now be okay.

p.s., i got on this tangent because someone tagged the plot as "shitgaze," which doesn't make that much sense - not too gazey.

anyway, r.i.p. willy graves.

[youtube FqI07ofl1lc]