You know that one episode of Hey Arnold where Gerald reveals his love for fancy cheese? The stinky kind? “You don’t eat it,” he explains to Arnold, who is disgusted by the slimy grey mass oozing on Gerald’s plate. Undeterred, and eager to enthrall Arnold with a sophisticated insider’s tip, Gerald emphasizes: “You smell it.” Gerald takes a whiff and basks in an oblivion of ardor, and invites Arnold to do the same.
Gerald’s relationship with fancy cheese is kinda like a true aesthete’s relationship with shoegaze. Let me explain: you don’t dance to it, or rock out to it, or even—dare I say it—listen to it. You FEEL it. You SWIM in it. Let it surround you. Sound…erm…cheesy? Well, most refined methods of enjoyment are cheesy. Not to suggest that shoegaze is nothing more than social cavorting—quite the opposite, really. Shoegaze, if anything, is far from social: it’s inward, a search for oneself via deafening, nearly indecipherable sound.
Sorry—you aren’t here to read endless meandering on the nature of shoegaze at large. You’re here for Slug Christ’s cover of My Bloody Valentine’s Sometimes, which, in the canon of shoegaze, is a timeless masterpiece. Slugger’s version is even more lush than the original, a whirling, orchestral, wandering exploration of Kevin Shields’s songwriting and artistic vision.
Stream below. Close your eyes—and smell the cheese.
More about: My Bloody Valentine, Slug Christ
