The DUSK Issue: Swirlies
WORDS By Ian Johnson & Photos by Elliot Novak
Shoegaze is a ubiquitous term coined in the late 1980s to loosely describe the rise of deafening neo-psychedelic bands in the UK, a direct observation of the increasing number of downward-facing musicians staring at their new pedalboards. Of course, a musical genre that names itself after its lack of stage presence is not a recipe for success
Eventually, the genre solidified with the release of genre-defining albums Loveless by My Bloody Valentine (MBV) and Souvlaki by Slowdive. But even back then, bands hated the label of shoegaze. Especially the American bands who were inspired by Dinosaur Jr and Galaxie 500 just as much as MBV or Ride but got thrown into the “American Shoegaze” tag.
I had the opportunity to speak to Damon Tutunjian, singer and guitarist of Swirlies, a legendary Boston lofi indie rock band from the 1990s that consistently shows up on critics’ “Best of Shoegaze” lists as America’s answer to MBV. They also have inspired many of today’s current indiegaze artists like Wednesday, Ovlov and TAGABOW. Swirlies formed in the summer of 1990 out of the dissolution of Raspberry Bang, a Go-Go’s cover band which featured Damon, Seana Carmody and a “punk guy.”
After kicking out the aforementioned “punk guy,” Damon enlisted the help of Andy Bernick, an old high school friend who had just begun teaching himself bass and MIT student Ben Drucker on drums. Damon recalled, “In Swirlies, [Andy Bernick] developed his own style. He learned to play bass in the band so his bass playing knows what to do against my guitar which I think is kind of cool”. Driven by the friendship and chemistry between Damon Tutunjian and Andy Bernick, they have been the only consistent members of the band since its formation, with the amount of ex-Swirlies collaborators rivaling collectives like Elephant 6.
Boston has always been a thriving city of music on account of its proximity to New York and the incredible amount of live venues. In the late 1960s, the Bosstown Sound ruled the airwaves with underground bands like Ultimate Spinach and Orpheus competing with the San Francisco scene to create the most mind-altering song. By the early 1970s, The Modern Lovers' biting garage rock had replaced the Bosstown sound and paved the way for chart-topping power pop bands to come in the latter half of the 1970s like The Cars and Boston (the band). Then, in the 1980s, the college rock revolution brought bands like Dinosaur Jr, Mission of Burma, Galaxie 500 and Pixies.
A big reason for Boston’s incredible music scene is the abnormal number of colleges – each having their own college radio stations. “On a clear night, you’d get these weirdo radio stations. Some of the earliest stuff [I’d listen to] I’d just sit there with my tape recorder and just tape the radio. I'd literally tape everything and keep rewinding. If it was a song I liked, I’d keep it, proceed, just taping and rewinding, you know... ERS, MBR, HRB and all the Boston radio stations. I realized I was in the middle of college radio gold.”
By the 1990s, the stage was set for the next wave of amazing Boston bands: Swirlies, The Magnetic Fields, Drop Nineteens, The Breeders, Helium and Lilys, just to name a few. In fact, Damon and Greg Ackell from Drop Nineteens even spent a summer working together in the same ice cream shop on Mass Ave.
The band’s name “Swirlies” came from drummer Ben Drucker early on with the rest of the band unaware of the toilet prank connotations. Other names considered included classics like “Hot Anal Nosepick.” From there, the band recorded early demos in the MIT dorms and caught the attention of small Boston-area indie labels like Slumberland and Pop Narcotic who released these demos to spread like wildfire in the burgeoning underground rock scene.
The success of these early records led to the release of their first official EP What to Do About Them on Taang! Records, a major Boston label with MTV and college radio airplay. Unfortunately, this contract would be massively unfair to Swirlies, and Taang! would cause many issues for them in the future.
Nevertheless, the stage was set for Swirlies to release their most celebrated albums: Blonder Tongue Audio Baton in 1993 and They Spent Their Wild Youthful Days in The Glittering World of Salons in 1996. These sister albums represent Swirlies at the height of their power: harsh and angular at one moment and dreamy and droning the next. These albums are an intensely creative fusion of the soft harmonies and lofi experimentation of twee acts on K Records and the fuzzed-out guitars found on the blistering hardcore of Dischord and SST Records.
Curiously, Swirlies have never disbanded since their inception in the summer of 1990, continually releasing albums (despite their egregious contract with Taang!), changing sounds, and documenting everything on their enigmatic website Richmond County Archives (rcarchives.com). There you can find everything from esoteric analog audio service manuals to hand-drawn schematics of the synthesizer settings used on specific songs.
One highlight of their later discography, the electronic pop of Cats of the Wild, Vol. 2, shows The Swirlies’ continued experimental spirit and sense of humor. “That was our goofy, poppy New York record. It was a little bit of a reaction to what was going on at that time. It was The Strokes and The White Stripes and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs and that was what was hip right then in the early 2000s. We were all living in New York and thought, ‘Well, we're gonna do this. ’”
Reviewers and humans alike have an inherent love for categorizing, meaning terms like shoegaze continue to plague new bands who adopt more experimental pedal driven sounds. “I think of the new shoegaze, or at least one faction of it, as being the new goth. Style conscious, it's got a sound. It's got a thing”. Beat writer William S Burroughs once described language as an alien virus from outer space, with incredible power for social manipulation and changing human understanding. The term shoegaze is a quintessential example of this flawed blueprint spreading from person to person, infecting their vernaculars and continuing the cycle.
Over time, the term went from describing the music to defining the music, limiting the boundaries artists could push. “Back when we started doing this in the early 90s, it wasn’t a genre, we were just doing our own thing. Now, it’s so identity-based, it disturbs me a little bit. I don’t want to categorize these bands. Don’t even call it shoegaze. Do your thing. It should evolve and I’m glad it’s evolving. I don’t think they need the shoegaze thing.” ‘Nuff said.
