Throwing on my obnoxious music critic hat for a bit, I have to say that dream pop is a really dubious genre for bands to aspire to. The masses tend to throw dream pop bands like Asobi Seksu and The Radio Dept. into the larger collective dishpit known as shoegaze without wit or whimsy. And for somewhat good reason. At their core, both genres are centered around creating deep musical atmospheres centered around layers of sound rather than sharp individual melodies. It is quite the challenge to determine a definitive line between the two or if one even exists, as it is largely centered around the mood and style of the music, which are incredibly subjective fields of navigation. However, with all the trials and tribulations of the differences between dream pop and shoegaze, A Sunny Day in Glasgow and the other bands playing this particular night at Great Scott pulled off an impressive feat and managed to give the crowd a wide display of the spectrum between the two.
If you gazed upon the bill for the night at some places, you might have come across the false impression that Fang Island’s Jason Bartell was the lead opening act. While Jason did play and most certainly impressed by ghosting two separate and intricate layers of guitar riffs on his double-necked EDS-1275 and providing a deeper aural space than you’d expect from a three-piece group, vocalist/bassist Cassandra Jenkins in fact carried the point of Jason’s side project Wins through with her delicate yet mesmerizing singing. It was with great care that Wins definitely landed on the dream pop end of the spectrum, showcasing the familiar exquisite and spectral characteristics of that style.
And almost to provide the perfect juxtaposition of Wins, Creepoid landed hard and heavy with their own personal grungy take on the loud fuzz and delay you normally expect from shoegaze. Where Wins took their time and carefully laid drops of beauty in the minds of the crowd, Creepoid aggressively made their presence known, jumping around and getting into people’s faces. It was a wildly different approach, but a welcome one for the members of the audience who might have felt Wins a little too sleepy for their tastes. These were the people who most definitely moved to the front and were trying their best to match the high energy Creepoid was putting out. You know who you are, you have no shame in that, and you are in fact proud of it.
Where do we go from these two vastly different sounds? Why, somewhere in the middle of course! And A Sunny Day in Glasgow certainly provided that middle ground that felt greatly supported by the framework of the bill itself. The healthy dose of energy from the band coupled with the entrancing quality of Annie Fredrickson and Jen Goma’s vocals hit the air of Great Scott right off the bat with “In Love With Useless”. The sheer number of people on stage and the way they were utilized reminded me a lot of the energy that Canadian ensemble indie rock groups like Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene tend to craft on stage. With so many moving parts and different threads being weaved together, you tend to get that patchwork quality to the sound. Yet, as with those bands, it most certainly doesn’t take away from the possibility of beauty in the combined pieces. By the time the end of the set arrived with “Sigh, Inhibitionist”, A Sunny Day in Glasgow (and/or whoever put together this particular bill) created something worthy of celebrated accomplishment.
(tl;dr: Dream pop and shoegaze are weird terms that aren’t to be trusted. Everyone who played this night were awesome. Now for a slideshow of equally awesome photos!)
