Shitgaze

Shitgaze is a microgenre of rock music and scene coined in 2005 by Kevin DeBroux of Pink Reason to describe the music of Midwestern rock band Psychedelic Horseshit from Columbus, Ohio. Lead singer

Characteristics#

Shitgaze has been referred to as a “microgenre”, a category that proliferated in underground music culture in the late 2000s. while drawing influence from bands in the genres of garage punk, noise pop, and noise rock. Additionally, artists primarily gained popularity through early music blogs and online music forums within the emerging blog rock movement. A Spin magazine feature described bands labeled as shitgaze as " Audio clipping spik ing in the red and cloaked in caustic fuzz. Vocals are intelligible every so often, and snare hits resemble chopsticks on tinfoil. You could say Psychedelic Horseshit’s bass drum sounds like a cardboard box", and that their music was “not too far removed from the output of fellow Ohioans Guided by Voices.”

Etymology#

The term shitgaze is a portmanteau of “shoegaze” coined by Kevin DeBroux of Pink Reason in 2005 as an “inside-joke” to describe the music of the Midwestern rock band Psychedelic Horseshit, he later became the bassist for the band. In a 2008 interview with Spin magazine, DeBroux remarked: “We were sitting around stoned listening to the Psychedelic Horseshit album, and I knew Matt Whitehurst was into ’90s U.K shoegaze stuff, … I’m like, ‘Man, this isn’t shoegaze; this is shitgaze.” The term became associated first with a specific music scene in Columbus, Ohio as both Psychedelic Horseshit and Times New Viking had formed there. In 2015, New York magazine The Fader described shitgaze as a development of “Heavily distorted no-fi guitar rock”; “no-fi” referred to developments of lo-fi music that further emphasized undesirable and experimental elements. In reflection, Beth Murphy, the keyboardist of Times New Viking stated, “I’d rather be called shitpop or tweecore”.

Origins#

According to Spin magazine, Times New Viking’s Dig Yourself (2005) was the start of the shitgaze scene followed by Present the Paisley Reich (2007) and Rip It Off (2008), with vinyl being “the medium of choice for shitgazers”. The Philadelphia independent record label Siltbreeze, founded in 1989, though initially associated with general underground music, experienced renewed interest through the emergence of shitgaze, and became a central hub for the movement during the mid-to late 2000s. Siltbreeze released many early shitgaze recordings by bands such as Vivian Girls, Psychedelic Horseshit, Eat Skull, Pink Reason and Times New Viking. Spin described the “hub” of the scene as taking place in a Columbus venue known as Cafe Bourbon Street. with the sound later proliferating and intertwining with bands like Best Coast. Though the term was not coined online, music blogs and sites like Vice, Spin, NME helped further popularize shitgaze through various articles and reviews during the late 2000s and early 2010s.

Decline#

Shitgaze has been regarded as falling out of prominence in the mid-2010s, as other blog-related music scenes like bloghouse, blog rock and blog rap declined due to the rise in online streaming algorithms. Mike Lesuer of Flood magazine wrote that of the “subgenres that define the early-’10s, many of them can only be stumbled upon in 2023 by finding a Tumblr account that hasn’t seen activity since the height of seapunk—which, like witch house, likely faded from memory because no one could think of a cooler name for it”.