The resurgence of shimmering shining shoegaze is blindingly obvious to anybody with half an ear in the current crop of bands flowing primarily out of the US. Bands like TAGABOW have promoted contempories through Douglas Dulgarian’s label Julia’s War and acts such as Her New Knife and Doused have come to the attention of many by investing their efforts in to a revival of the genre that never dies.
It’s even garnered some ironic online attention with country-influenced shoegazer being dubbed bootgazers and the generation as a whole becoming zoomergazers.
It seems that, with a wry smile on their faces or not, the echoes of Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine are reverberating around the current generation of dreamy rockers.
That brings me to She’s Green, who in three short years of being a band have produced a plethora of tunes in the same vain as those mentioned above albeit with a quality that sets them well apart. In a world where the music that She’s Green make can so easily go viral, their music draws the listener in and hypnotises.
In order to explain this phenomenon, journalists have latched on to the phrase ‘moss music’ first coined by singer Zofia Smith to describe the influence of nature on their sound. The world probably didn’t need another sub-genre label but the use of moss music does describe that sound perfectly and, as far as I’m aware, currently applies solely to them
What do the band have to say about that? Is it linked with their origin story which began in Minneapolis?
Hahaha, we’re glad that term has stuck. Minneapolis will always be in our music. It’s really where most of us realized that we could be in bands. We were always in basements or backyards watching shows and dancing around. It’s also where we formed deep connections with the world. The community in Minneapolis is like no other. It is so diverse and full of people always willing to stand up for each other. And you have this beautiful collection of ecosystems. Prairies and forests, lakes and rivers. All that will always remain in everything we create.
That connection with nature through a close-knit community seems to bring the best out of the band. How important was that local scene?
It was crucial for us. Minneapolis and the greater Twin Cities has a really strong DIY music scene and a really supportive network of local promoters and venues. Before the band existed, most of us first crossed paths attending the same local shows in unofficial backyard/basement venues (shoutout to Cemetery Ridge and the Chop Shop) or in more established places like the 7th Street Entry at First Avenue. So much incredible talent can be found on any given night at any of these spots – the scene here is incredibly diverse and is really supportive of each other. We spent our first couple years as a band playing as many of these kinds of shows as we could, and the energy and ethos from this community is something that’ll always stick with us.
Nowadays, we make an effort to stay in touch with the current scene whenever we’re back from the road, and every once in a while we try to find a time to play a totally DIY show at home with friends. Those are some of our absolute favorite shows to play.
That old acronym DIY, which has a long history in the annals of shoegaze, crops up a lot in conversations with modern US bands.
More on that moss music. Their latest single ‘close your eyes’ is another top-drawer track. How special is that song to the band?
Thank you! And absolutely. Of course it’s our longest song by far, and that alone makes it special, but we knew it would be the closer on the record for a long time. We’ve been working on this song for almost 3 years. It’s always been special to us, but watching it come together with Sonny in the studio was unforgettable. This song feels like a cinematic journey to us, hopefully that came across in the final version.
The EP releases July 10th, Swallowtail. Tell us a bit about that.
Swallowtail is our longest and most involved project to date. We wrote these songs over the course of a few years and recorded them all in LA with Sonny, splitting time between Big Bad and Sonny’s home studio. We wanted every song to feel like its own world, while still having a sense of flow throughout the record. We pushed ourselves in every direction; songs on this record are the most minimalist, maximalist, softest, or hadest we’ve gone
Are they looking forward to returning to the UK to play some more shows, including Reading and Leeds?
Definitely! We love it over there. Everyone is so kind and there’s so much history. We can’t wait to spend more time exploring the countryside. It will also be so fun to see all the other bands at R&L, and share that experience.
Finally – you have a huge list of shows announced and I’m sure your mind is focused on that, plus the release of Swallowtail. Do you have a vision of what’s next for the band?
A headline tour for sure. But when we have more time to settle down we’re itching to write a full-length record.
Moss and roll.
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