Dream Pop

Here's what I woke up distinctly remembering this morning from last night's dreaming:

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I'm walking around in an unknown, dimly lit location (maybe a flea market or some kind of bazaar) that has Christmas music playing ...

It's the sort of Christmas music that features a huge ensemble choir singing.

One song ends and the next tune starts ... it's Neil Young (sounding very youthful and spry) doing a very recognizable original Christmas tune called "(I Wanna Hear) Sleigh Bells In The Snow." At least that's how the chorus went.

It sounds a lot like something he might have done with Crosby, Stills, and Nash except there's also this huge ensemble choir singing.

It's like the best Neil Young thing I've ever heard before.

Anyway, my curiosity is piqued ("how have I never heard Neil Young's awesome version of this Christmas tune before?") and I either must have walked up to the counter and asked to see the CD case, or the CD case just materialized in my hands. Anyway ... I'm holding the case in my hands.

I see that it's an entire album of Christmas tunes by this Native American choir called The _____ Nation Ensemble Choir (or something like that) .... the name of the tribe wasn't recognizable in the dream and in fact it might have even been something grammatically impossible (like ... Gxqwnj). I think each song must have featured a different guest vocalist, but Neil Young is the only one that made it out of the dream intact.

But I know I could read in the dream because I could clearly see that album had been put out on the Windham Hill label. I didn't bother to check what year it'd come out. And instead of the typical all-white design that I associate with Windham releases ... this one was purple. Which makes no sense for a Christmas album, really.

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And then I woke up. With the melody of the tune still clear in my mind. There is no actual tune called "(I Wanna Hear) Sleigh Bells In The Snow." I checked.

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And btw, "dream pop" seems like is an absolutely useless genre description.

You might hate the genre description, but if you like groups like the Cocteau Twins and the birth pangs of shoegaze, check out the Australian band Hatchie. Their music is very pretty and catchy, with both a hazy atmosphere and a strong pop sensibility. They have a few singles out, with an EP, SUGAR & SPICE, compiling all of them to be released on the 25th. Cocteau Twins guitarist Robin Guthrie remixed their song "Sure."

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You might hate the genre description, but . . .

I recently bought Grouper's Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill after reading a review that lumped that hazy, largely acoustic album in with "Heaven Or Las Vegas, "She Hangs Brightly," and "Suburban Light."

It's a meaningless, phony-baloney non-genre if it can accommodate such obviously disparate fare.

Fantastic dream recall there. Would make a wonderful short story or film. And someone should write that song.

Dreampop is an amorphous term for a genre because it's meant to describe the mood that the music evokes, rather than a specific set of musical tropes or compositional style. That's why Pitchfork's list is so incoherent.

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it's meant to describe the mood that the music evokes

The feel. Not the sound?

Nothing better than trying to shoehorn a subjective square peg into an objective round hole.

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So Erik Satie is (by definition) dream pop, yes?

Pretty cool dream. Its just missing the one ingredient that would make it truly great:

[www.trouserpress.com]



Post Edited (05-07-18 16:27)

Oh, nice initial post. I too have heard awesome songs in my dreams, original songs, but only woken up to have them dissolve. The brain is amazing... I've had dreams where I was reading a book...if only I could film that! Were the words logical, never before seen, or remembered from a book I'd read?

As for the genre description... yeah pretty hard to pinpoint. My gut would say something like 'sugar hiccup' by Cocteau twins or "amor fati" by Washed Out..... both worth a YouTube click I promise! Maybe that's just what I want my dreams to sound like.

Despite the futility of trying to define genres, when a song gets described as dream pop, I usually end up liking it upon listening!

I definitely wouldn't lump Grouper in dream pop or shoegaze. It's more ambient/experimental.

My best stuff is written in the liminal phase. Also, many times if I reach over and record my thought, I later realize it's too close to an existing song.
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But on that OP subject, the new Beach House may be their best.