Shoegaze, the fuzzy, ethereal rock genre typified by U.K. pioneers My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive, has a new home base: the Keystone State.
Nothing, Blue Smiley, and They Are Gutting a Body of Water are three of the 21st century’s most influential shoegaze acts, and all of them emerged from Philly’s fertile DIY landscape. When feeble little horse, the biggest shoegaze band in Pittsburgh history, broke out nationally in late 2022, their whimsically scuzzy sound was frequently compared to the lo-fi shoegaze idiom percolating across Pennsylvania. For a while, feeble little horse were the only Pittsburgh band tapping into that contemporary shoegaze vein — this is no longer the case.
Going into the decade’s second half, Pittsburgh now has its own impressive roster of up-and-coming bands operating within this distinctly modern framework of Americanized shoegaze. Gina Gory, James Castle, and Forty Winks are three young groups with a mutual love for fuzz-loaded guitar texture, oppressive volume, and vocals that favor atmosphere over articulation. Their millennial scene elders, Gaadge and Ex-Pilots, have released equally worthwhile, albeit more traditional, shoegaze products in the 2020s.
The music those aforementioned Gen-Z ’gazers are making, however, feels like a homegrown response to feeble little horse, specifically. A breed of shoegaze that’s brittle and jittery, hooky and shrill, and visually expressed through a post-ironic pastiche of 2000s internet iconography (digital point-and-shoot camera photos, crude photoshop collages, ostentatious hip-hop fonts).
“It’s a real blessing to be playing in the same scene as those two bands,” Gina Gory, guitarist-vocalist Veronika Cloutier says of Forty Winks and James Castle. “They are incredible noise machines in their own right.”
And a scene it is. Gina Gory opened for feeble little horse at their Girl With Fish release show in 2023. “That entire experience was incredibly affirming,” Cloutier enthuses. Last year, Forty Winks’ first-ever gig was with Gina Gory, and James Castle shared the stage with both groups in 2024, including tapping Forty Winks to open their EP release show last November.
“We love seeing them and playing alongside them,” James Castle singer-guitarist, Joel Warchol, says of their peer bands. “They help strengthen the idea that there’s a formidable noise rock-slash-pop scene that has been brewing in Pittsburgh for a little while now.”
Notice how he didn’t say “shoegaze.” The definition of the genre has evolved dramatically since it was first used in the early 1990s to half-jokingly tag an emerging English noise-pop scene of downward pedalboard viewers who were coming up in the wake of My Bloody Valentine, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and the Cocteau Twins. Shoegaze outposts soon popped up throughout the world (especially in America), and in the decades that followed, the initial meaning of shoegaze has been stretched and molded to accommodate new sonic developments that still feel congruent with shoegaze’s archetypal philosophy: guitars bathed in distortion and reverb, buried vocals, and mosaic songwriting that conveys feelings instead of telling stories.
James Castle isn’t opposed to being lumped under the shoegaze umbrella because the term, in its current, liberally-applied incarnation, doesn’t feel “constrictive.” “There are so many great bands today that are labeled as ‘shoegaze’ that vary so widely in sound and influence,” Warchol says. “It’s hard to be mad about the distinction if it does come our way.”
Gina Gory and Forty Winks, however, don’t feel like they fit as snugly into that taxonomy.
“Well, we aren’t ever gazing at our shoes. We wouldn’t be a very good shoegaze band,” quips Forty Winks bassist-vocalist Conner McGee. “But seriously, it’s just a popular term right now. We aren’t contrarian, but we really don’t make true shoegaze music. We have our influences, but it isn’t a label we identify with.”
After forming in early 2024 under the name Whatever, the quartet remodeled as Forty Winks last fall and dropped their debut song, aptly titled “noise,” onto YouTube in September. The track erupts with sandblasted chords, chipper drums, and a vocal performance from guitarist-singer Cilia Catello that alternately recalls the twangy melodies of Wednesday’s Karly Hartzman and the sassy talk-sings of Feeble Little Horse’s Lydia Slocum.
Their second single, “spurs,” their first for Pittsburgh DIY powerhouse Crafted Sounds (feeble little horse, Merce Lemon, Gaadge), features clangy riffs that squeal mournfully in the style of They Are Gutting a Body of Water, and bruised-heart vocals that brood beneath the scrum. McGee avoids claiming influence from any particular shoegaze band, but it’s evident in the way “noise” and “spurs” assemble their individual parts into gushing waterfalls of abrasive pop-rock that Forty Winks are fluent in shoegaze’s sonic lexicon.
If anything, it’s Forty Winks’ lead guitar work that provides the biggest challenge to their shoegaze membership. Chief shredder Kyuhwan “Q” Hwang has a virtuosic playstyle that’s reminiscent of 2010s lo-fi prog-pop group Crying. With Forty Winks, Hwang’s funneling guitar solos and hammer-on riffs into a genre where that degree of quickfire technicality is historically absent.
James Castle also shred, but more in the way J. Mascis did on Dinosaur Jr.’s proto-shoegaze masterpiece, You’re Living All Over Me. Their debut EP, spenser, released in November 2024, tries on several noisy hats for size (Dino J. rippers, Deftones-y headbangers, Blue Smiley-ish churners) without cohering into a singular identity. Live, James Castle is one of Pittsburgh’s most ferociously engrossing acts, as drummer Ed Haberle bangs his kit like the city’s power grid depends on it, and his bandmates emit enough distorted racket to drown out a fire engine.
“I think now we’re narrowing down that pool and fine-tuning the style we want for our current state,” Warchol says of James Castle’s next phase. “Experimenting with more electronic noise like on the spenser EP, but with even gentler moments and equally harsher ones. Aiming to become more stylistically consistent, but dynamically varied.”
For Gina Gory, it’s a lack of dynamic variation that makes their sound so enamoring. The trio — guitarist Cloutier, bassist Connaely Martin, and synthesist Dylan Henricksen, all of whom sing and are kept in time by a drum machine — are the most established of the three groups, having been steadily releasing music since the summer of 2023. Their debut LP, October 2024’s Died Laughing, is a slow-drip of sticky, syrupy noise-pop that wearily pulses like a poisoned insect twitching its legs during its final hours.
Cloutier checks everyone from Duster to Sonic Youth as being musical reference points, and also emphasizes Gina Gory’s particular affinity for 1990s American shoegazers Swirlies, Lilys, and Astrobrite, groups who are noisier and more gnarled than the dulcet ambience of Slowdive, and who are having an acute influence on the modern milieu Feeble Little Horse has been spearheading
“There is an overall reverence for a sonically agitated hook when it comes to the impact feeble little horse has had on us,” Cloutier says of their hometown heroes. As for a musical dialogue between Gina Gory, Forty Winks and James Castle, Cloutier recognizes it’s fomenting, even if it’s still in a sapling stage. “The infusion of influence exists, absolutely,” Cloutier says. “But to pinpoint exactly where that exists is hard to say considering how fetal we all are.”
That’s the greatest part about Pittsburgh’s nascent shoegaze wave: the best is still in front of us. All three bands confirm that new music is in the works, and they expect to gig frequently in the coming year. Stock up on earplugs now while you still have time.
This article appears in Feb 5-11, 2025.
