What are specific, tangible things that make it stand apart? Is it the production? Lyrical themes? The type of effects used? What is Shoegaze?
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The responses here are really good but they kind of sugarcoat what makes shoegaze so distinct from everything else out there.
Shoegaze really came from Cocteau Twin’s who pretty much pioneered ‘dream pop’, which is an alternative rock genre (your standard 3/5 member band which distinct roles creating rock music but what differentiates it from mainstream rock music is it’s usually a bit more jarring, out there, non-commercial) that centered around lulling you to sleep with dreamy, hazy sound effects.
The Cocteau Twins do have a live act, but their sound manufactured incredibly in studio where they can isolate sounds and really ‘sculpt’ their tones. Shoegaze spun from the attempt to emulate that in a live context, so what audiences would see is bands essentially lugging a studio’s worth of audio equipment and sculpt these massive soundscapes using sound equalizers, reverbs, delays, phasers, flangers, distortion etc.
Shoegaze is inherently experimental but what differentiates it from say, noise rock, or experimental rock is how bands approach soundscapes. Noise generally focuses on intensity of sound to achieve the soundscape and experimental tries to go away with songwriting conventions to create songs.
You asked what makes it ‘stand apart’, and it is partially the effects used but how does that draw the line between the instruments and what we hear? So, we’ll make an example with guitar playing to understand.
Generally, with guitar, we go from guitar > distortion pedal (essentially ‘clips’ your guitar’s sound to make it chunky and mean > reverb (emulates the sound of playing in a hall, if you’re using a hall reverb) > delay (repeats your notes played as they fade out) > amplifier.
USUALLY, distorting into a reverb is considered *undesirable* by mainstream guitarists because distortion is used to create meanness, and reverb is to bring chill vibes. A shoegaze guitarist might do away with this and reverb their distortion. Now, the sound of this is HORRIBLE **BUT** if you change your pedals configurations, you can essentially dial in the intensity of the sound using your distortion’s volume and your reverb’s intensity knob and create something that is quite spacey, and nice.
Additionally, a guitarist might want to reverb > delay > distortion. What this means is the guitar’s clean signal (no effects) is reverberated, then delayed, then the distortion turns each of those delayed signals into a mean distortion that is *wet*, meaning it sounds like it’s echoing. This is when bands begin to sound more experimental, but note that it’s not trying to do away with songwriting conventions (akin to experimental), nor is it just trying to make intense noises (like noiserock). The strange, ethereal sounds served their own purpose, usually most shoegaze is quite dreamy, meditative, intense, romantic. It’s everything a standard rock song can be, but the sound is just BIGGER because the way in which the sounds are made are so much more broader than just compressing a guitar and using an overdrive.
So, when bands in the early late 80s and early 90s were trying to achieve the Cocteau Twin’s unusual, dreamy sounds, they would essentially spend half the set playing guitar and then jump onto their pedal boards which were on the floor and begin dialing in bizarre, noisy, experimental soundscapes. Critics hated these kinds of performance because they weren’t your typical “show” and mockingly called it “shoegaze” because that’s what it seemed the musicians were doing, just staring at their feet.
The vocals just fit the vibe. If we’re delaying and reverberating a distortion, then delaying the distorted reverbed, delay sound and then putting it through a tremolo, the sound is so bizarre and undistinguishable that clear cut, sharp vocals just stand out so bands would just hum, or gently sing into a mic. Eventually bands began droning, reverberating and delaying the shit out of vocals and now it is its own thing entirely.
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