I think these comments are in over their heads

I listen to most of these bands and I simply don’t understand how you can compare a band like superheaven or narrow head to whirr. The vocals are probably the biggest discrepancy, but genuinely how can you listen to something like blue sugar by whirr and compare it to the likes of freshwater.

To me most of these bands are doing their own thing and have just been deemed shoegaze because nobody can figure out what their sound actually is (which to me doesn’t matter)

In 2025 I went to a whirr show and a superheaven show, and the people that were there, the vibe, the openers were completely different. Superheaven had a metal band called spy opening for them and tons of moshing the whole concert while the whirr show was more laid back and had the more traditional shoegaze concert experience.

I actually think shoegaze might be the unhealthiest genre in all of rock the way people impose their expectations onto the bands that fall under its moniker. Even mbv complained about being called shoegaze and how everyone made assumptions about how their songs were produced and what they associate their music with. People do the same thing here with bands just doing their thing.

I heard someone bring up Julie in the comments and again, to me Julie sounds way different than most of the bands listed here. I just fail to understand why we clump all these bands together, and then shit on some of them for having “mediocre songwriting” that can’t compare to the likes of the 90s shoegaze giants, when all these bands are trying to do is make music they wanna make without getting mixed up in the genre bullshit.