#7: Rev Rev Rev – “Des Fleurs Magiques Bourdonnaient”

The shoegaze tag on Bandcamp is a mess. Most of the bands that use it don’t really know what shoegaze is, and even the ones that do are often these heinous genre mash-ups, where they’re like “wouldn’t it be cool to combine shoegaze and EDM.” No. It wouldn’t be. Shoegaze is great. Shoegaze doesn’t need to be “improved upon” by your weak attempts at innovation. When I go to the shoegaze tag on Bandcamp, I want to hear shoegaze, not not-shoegaze.

So I have respect for Rev Rev Rev, a band I found on the tag that plays straight-up shoegaze. They don’t really add new wrinkles to the genre or even attempt to innovate in any way. But they nail the guitar sound that makes me love this style of music and have the right vocals and songcraft, none of which is a trivial accomplishment given how many bands attempt the My Bloody Valentine impression and fall flat.

The Italian group sounds like the usual suspects of classic shoegaze bands, with a more heavy and psychedelic take on the genre that most closely resembles You Made Me Realise era MBV with some of the repetitious elements of space rock. The band mixes in some lighter dream pop elements, but for the most part it’s really loud guitars with light vocals. As it turns out, the formula still works, and it takes some skill to know not to mess with it.

#8: Pleasure Symbols – “Pleasure Symbols”

Pleasure Symbols is one of those bands that comes out of nowhere with a fully-formed, distinctive aesthetic. The duo from Brisbane makes icy, goth-tinged synth rock that combines like 30 different styles into something that feels like a genre of its own. Pleasure Symbols is their first 12-inch and it’s just four songs in about 16 minutes, but I listened to almost every song on repeat at some point.

The defining choice Pleasure Symbols make is taking a page out of the shoegaze playbook and burying their vocals deep in the mix. The cost is that it’s hard to make out a lot of the lyrics, but it adds to the band’s mysterious, seductive quality and is part of what made their album very replayable for me. Their songs rely heavily on repetition, looping one or two synth parts over and over, which along with the vocal mixing makes this a hypnotizing listen.

https://youtu.be/Qijl95yTxyg

#9: Cléa Vincent – “Retiens Mon Désir”

I’ve only really dabbled in French pop, but Cléa Vincent instantly reminded me of one of my favorites: Isabelle Antena, who back in the 80s combined electronic dream pop and Brazilian bossa nova, which was best showcased on her album Camino Del Sol. Like Antena, Vincent makes songs that are elegant and refined (it might just be that she’s French and I’m a boorish American), but her focus is more on the dancefloor, with a sound somewhere between Antena’s and the mutant disco stylings of Lizzy Mercier Descloux.

Vincent funnels those older styles through a modern pop sensibility, using a lot of colorful sounds and instruments to craft catchy hooks. Her music is instantly very warm and inviting, but is also tinged with a bit of melancholy. It’s that “I’m sad, let’s dance” style of pop, like on “Château Perdu,” which starts as a downbeat piano ballad before turning into a joyous saxophone-driven dance floor freakout.

This is another album where I don’t understand any of the words, but they feel even less necessary here, since pop music almost never relies on its lyrics to be enjoyable. (There’s also some practical application: lyrics distract me when I’m working, so this album soundtracked a lot of my writing.) Instead, it’s easy to bask in Vincent’s sunny productions and her charm as a singer, which made Retiens Mon Désir one of the year’s most satisfying pop diversions.