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Read other letters about this article
as Prong would say. I liked the perspective offered by Simon Reynolds here, and it's very articulate and well written (I remember his reviews being some of the highlights of the Spin's Guide to Alternative way back in 1995--its sounds dumb to say, but that book really was pretty great).
But for me personally, what made shoegaze interesting was that very air of abstract, inhuman ghostly gauze that Reynolds' equates with political apathy and ersatz fakery here. Chapterhouse (and Ride and all the rest) was interesting because they were a pop band that deliberately numbed what normally would be the sonic foreground into the blurry backdrop--My Bloody Valentine was wilder and more innovative, and Swervedriver definitely rocked harder, but Chapterhouse had their own take on the fuzzed out inert drone that was pretty damn compelling.
And Slowdive is pretty much recognized as a canonical band at this point--one of the highlights of Eno's production work in the 90's. Souvlaki sounded like it was recorded at the bottom of the ocean, mysterious as a giant squid gliding around in a deep chasm.
If you want dance music, you can simply listen to the greats of the era--but to castigate some of these bands for what they simply weren't trying to do seems a little off the mark to me. To disagree with Reynolds, I've listened to a lot of the shoegazer bands recently, and felt that they were underrated at the time, mostly because the bias was weighted towards the more "streetwise" and abrasive American indies like Big Black and Husker Du.
