#bootgaze

The world of shoegaze... exploring Countrygaze: A fusion of country’s twang & folk roots with the atmospheric, distorted textures of shoegaze....

• Playlistcover: Shanny & The East Men from Nashville, TN.

The brand-new playlist kicks off with the following artists:

• a fungus (Amsterdam, NL) • Amelia's Best Friend (Austin, TX) • Bantom Woods (Austrian, TX) • Blue Deputy (Belfast, UK) • Boat Water (Baltimore, MD) • bugcatcher (Rochester, NY) • Chat Pile feat. Hayden Pedigo (Oklahoma City, OK/ Amarillo, TX) • Chatterton (LA/ Oxnard, CA) • Christian Science Reading Room (Chicago, IL) • Cloakroom (Michigan City, IN) • Color Green (Los Angeles, CA) • Country Restroom (Los Angeles, CA) • Creepoid (Philadelphia, PA) • Deadharrie (Florida) • Dustbunny (Portland, OR) • Dutch Interior (Los Angeles, CA) • Elephant (Rotterdam, NL) • Euphoria Again with Dogwood Tales (Philadelphia, PA/ Harrisonburg, VA) • Flatwaves (Philadelphia, PA) • Floating Mansions (Hamilton, ON, Cn) • Gill Weather (Minneapolis, MN) • Green Gardens (Leeds, UK) • Greet Death (Flint, MI) • Hana Eid (Nashville, TN) • Hey Calamity (Limestone Coast, Aus) • Home Is Where (Palm Coast, FL) • Honeydrome (Portland, OR) • Horse Jumper of Love (Boston, MA) • Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter (Seattle, WA) • Jordan Raf (New York) • Katrina (Mexico) • Low Tide (Melbourne, Aus) • mercury (Franklin, TN) • Mergo (Perth, Aus) • Motocrossed (Charlotte, NC) • mourning star & Fox Runs East (Bloomington, IN) • Perfect 50 (Adelaide, Aus) • Roseville (Fort Collins, CO) • Shallowater (Houston, TX) • Shanny & The East Men (Nashville, TN) • Smitty (Nashville, TN) • Soup Dreams (Philadelphia, PA • stagediver (Nashville, TN) • Still Blank (Manchester, UK) • Sunblossom (New Jersey) • Sungaze (Cincinnati, OH) • symmetrical dogs (Perth, Aus) • Teethe (Texas, US) • Telexer (Chicago, IL) • The Reds, Pinks and Purples (San Francisco, CA) • Tiberius (Boston, MA) • Tombstone Poetry (Ashville, NC) • Toy Berkell (Los Angeles, CA) • Twine (Melbourne, Aus) • Wednesday (Ashville, NC) • Westside Cowboy (Manchester, UK) • Zach Romeo (Ashville, NC)

Hello world, it is once again blogging time — I'm Andrew and this is CREEK ROCK.

I've realized that I listen to too much music, think too much about music, and FEEL too much about music to not document at least a portion of those thoughts and feelings. I think my brain needs this, so if no one else in the world reads this, so be it, who cares. Reverting to Tumblr to start because I miss the old internet (wound up here by holdin' on, etc.) and don't feel the need to email blast every post out to the world. I've written three-sentence blurbs about my favorite albums annually over at Medium, but hope this will be more fluid and frequent.

If you Google "creek rock," you will be presented with a whole bunch of literal rocks that reside in creeks. As much as I do appreciate both creeks and rocks — where would we be without them — this name is taken from @wednesdaygurl band leader Karly Hartzman's recent description of the band's sound and their upcoming album, Bleeds. The phrase immediately lodged itself in my brain as a fun and apt label for a certain strain of modern alt-country (Wednesday and their peers are also prime candidates for the "bootgaze" subgenre).

It's not the most SEO-friendly term, so I searched on Bandcamp to see if anyone else was using this to characterize their music. The only non-Wednesday affiliated results were Bottom Shelf (another North Carolina band and a new favorite of mine) and Kudzu Mountain (2 songs streaming & 1 monthly listener on Spotify...IMO they don't really qualify as creek rockers, but there's something there). So we're really on the ground floor here; thank you Karly for being good with words and creation.

You can probably guess what's coming next, that's right, it's a playlist.

Whether or not this exactly aligns with the original intent of the term is up for interpretation, but this feels spiritually aligned with what creek rock means to me. I've spent a stupid amount of my recent life building alt-country playlists that are maybe 15% different than the one before it, because I can't help myself, but feeling out a nascent quasi-genre in real time was fun. No grand unifying theory here, just vibes, but the vibes feel right.

There's so much (soooooooo much) good shit out there these days, especially the twangy shit — anyone who thinks there's not good new music to be found ain't trying hard at all.

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3007OXu2dNc)

(Mike Burnlab)  *New mix is up!

This month, Mike of Burnlab, Dorkwave, Dethlab, Darkly Euphoric, The Satanic Temple, et al. brings a special hour of music to make terrorists, conservatives and all enemies of culture - from Kentucky to Syria - feel stupid and sexually confused. (And hopefully enjoyable and cleverly sequenced tunes for the rest of us.)