Hey, everyone. Anthony Fantano here, the Internet's busiest music nerd. And it would seem the discourse is discoursing.

I went on the internet the other day to see some people really having a strong, impassioned back and forth about one of the most beloved albums on the internet that would be Have A Nice Life's deathconscious, which, interestingly enough, despite no promo, despite it being really just a strange Connecticut home-recorded obscurity, really, even to this day, as there have been tracks on this album that, strangely enough, have gone viral on TikTok, of all places, it seems, no matter what decade or paradigm that we are in, some dark, depressed, terminally online demographic of young teenagers and college kids stumble across this record, and they essentially make it their life, which is totally and completely fine because it's a great album. Maybe one that I think people obsess over a bit too hard at times, but look, it's incredibly creative and its staying power is undeniable.

Part of what makes this record so interesting and creative is that it encompasses so many different influences and aesthetics and genres. This album is most definitely not one singular thing. If you to give it a listen for yourself, you are going to be in for a wild and varied ride. Let me guarantee you that. But this tweet over here about the album grabbed my attention as it also did with thousands of other people. And here it goes in response to somebody making some stupid silly ratio post saying it's one of the greatest shoegaze albums of all time.

literally was never considered shoegaze until the zoomers discovered rym. doomgaze also isn't a real genre either btw. this is a post-punk album

This is a very funny post. Could potentially be bait. I'm not entirely sure of the poster's intentions. But what does seem to be clear is that this post generated some actual, real, genuine discourse and debate about what the hell this album even really truly is. And it's funny that even to this day, it still confuses people.

Now, off the bat, before I throw my own opinion into this, I will explain why this tweet here is factually incorrect, because regardless of what this album arguably is, genre-wise, for quite a long time, it has been considered in at least some respects to be shoegaze or shoegaze-adjacent. And this is before the zoomers or whatever the hell you're talking about. Because honestly, I remember a time where the bulk of discourse around this record was happening on 4chan, of all places, on the goddamn music board, which, believe me, was not as insane a place to be as it sounds prior to most inclusive and frankly, superior music discourse, moved on over to places like social media and Reddit and so on and so forth.

While I know that saying superior music discourse and Reddit in the same sentence sounds like an oxymoron, but I stand by it. But still, even during that time, this album was still very much considered to be in the shoegaze lane. I mean, we're also talking about a board here that was just unapologetically obsessed with fucking albums like Loveless as well. But also on top of it, saying this album couldn't possibly be shoegaze in any way whatsoever, I feel like is just a profound misunderstanding of the genre or just maybe as a result of a very narrow view of it. Believe it or not, shoegaze is not basically any album that came out of the '90s and sounds exactly like My Bloody Valentine or Slowdive. In fact, Shoegaze's main characteristics are actually broad and abstract, which can't be surprising, considering it's a genre that, for the most part, sounds like...

I mean, if you will allow me to quote from the book of Wikipedia, the genre roughly combines ethereal, swirling vocals with layers of distorted, bent or flange guitars, creating a wash of sound where no instrument is distinguishable from another. By that metric, I think there are multiple tracks off of deathconsciousness that you could argue fit the bill, be that the opening track or the progressive builds of songs like "Bloodhale". Let's not also forget to mention the giant blaring feedback-laced guitar riffs on "There is No Food". You can't tell me that that is absolutely not shoegaze-related at all. And while it is true, you could say that songs such as "I Don't Love" is a post-punk song, but just simply calling it that, I think, is a lie by omission, which is why when you go on the Rate Your Music page for this album there are so many goddamn genre tags under it because the fact of the matter is there are albums that are inspired by lots of different genres.

Some records are inspired by maybe just a few or operate very narrowly within one or two genres max. Other albums just bring in a whole lot. But still, with that being said, I understand why somebody would maybe look at some shoegaze classics from the '90s and then have a hard time putting deathconsciousness in the same lane as those records because musically, aesthetically, and even emotionally, they are such different experiences.

I mean, while our poster here is most definitely correct in assessing that this is a post-punk album, even post-punk, which is a genre that, personally, I love, a genre tag that I have enjoyed many an album in. Even post-punk is a very weird and ill-defined genre term that mostly represents more of an era of music or a movement within music than it does a super specific sound. We're talking about a genre here that includes bands not only like Pere Ubu and Sonic Youth and tons of no-wave acts, but also Devo and Talking Heads. So many gothic rock bands as well. If you are going to try to get super specific genre-wise, is with deathconsciousness, I think gothic rock is actually maybe the most accurate descriptor. But even simply labeling it that doesn't tell you the whole story of the album's sound and context, as the record is, yes, most definitely a culmination of its influences.

But the reason it appears at the time that it does and sounds the way it does is most definitely due to a lot of prevailing trends and recording techniques in the mid and late 2000s that saw artists being able to create music at home with a lot more ease due to more widely available digital audio workstations that allowed them to experiment with effects and volume a lot wildly, not to mention tons and tons and tons of multitracks. It's no surprise that an album like this was also coincided by a new era of lofi indie that sounded completely different from the eras of lofi that arose in the past in the late '80s and the '90s, where the DIY recordings of various bands that made a name for themselves in that lane, in that scene, were a lot drier, a lot more distorted, a lot messier.

I mean, one other major esthetic influence on this album that I feel like is often left out of this discourse is black metal. And as long as I'm complaining, the doomgaze comment on this tweet is also annoying, as combinations of shoegaze and doometal do provably exist. Have we not heard a single Jesu album? Give me a break. Anyway, with all that being said, yes, deathconsciousness is most definitely a shoegaze or shoegaze-adjacent album. Your record doesn't need to sound like Loveless in order for the parallels to be there.

At the end of the day, I feel like this conversation just displays how little understanding and agreement there is among music fans as to what many of these genre terms mean and just all of the shortcomings of these genre terms to when it actually comes to describing the concrete elements of various styles of music. Because as I said earlier, some genre terms basically describe very abstract and notional aesthetic elements that are very trippy and surreal and difficult to put into very specific words, while other genre terms have much more concrete descriptions and characteristics in terms of their musical compositional makeup. And then in addition to that, some genre terms don't even describe a sound at all, but more a block of music that was made during a certain era or period in time or took on some specific set of influences. And yeah, while this makes for a very messy web of shit to work through as far as music discourse goes, getting through it isn't an impossible task.

I think we should just approach these conversations understanding that the terms that we're using are flawed inherently, and there's no fucking Bible saying specifically what shoegaze is or isn't or what it has to be or what it can't possibly be. I'm not advocating for these terms to mean nothing, but sometimes they don't mean much or the meanings they do have can evolve into very different things when you're talking about a certain genre or style of music lasting beyond one or two or even three decades. When you've got that lasting power, of course, the records and the artists that are creating within that style by the third decade are not going to sound the fucking same as the ones who are doing it in the first or just at the very start.

So that's my rant. Let me know what you think about all of this. I'm sure you will in the comments. Love you. You're the best.

Anthony Fantano. Shoegaze. Forever.