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Still in a Dream: Shoegaze, Slackers and the Reinvention of Rock, 1984–1994
The definitive story of the slackers and shoegazers who reinvented rock.
Twenty years after his acclaimed postpunk best-seller, Rip It Up and Start Again, Simon Reynolds tells the tale of what happened the underground explosion of noisepop, shoegaze, slacker rock and grunge that reverberated through the late Eighties into the early Nineties.
Capturing the musical exhilaration of the era along with the alienation of youth during a period of ascendant conservative politics and glitzy mainstream pop, Still in a Dream celebrates a golden age of guitar reinvention, a second psychedelia of mind-blowing sounds pioneered by bands like My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth. In Britain, groups like Cocteau Twins and Slowdive escaped into shimmering dreamworlds while American underground rockers like Dinosaur Jr. and Pavement blended apathy and urgency into thrilling noise.
A propulsive and personal account from a journalist who covered this music in real time from the frontlines, Still in a Dream vividly recreates a period that was the last blast for the analogue culture of vinyl records and music papers, before the Internet changed everything.
Twenty years after his acclaimed postpunk best-seller, Rip It Up and Start Again, Simon Reynolds tells the tale of what happened the underground explosion of noisepop, shoegaze, slacker rock and grunge that reverberated through the late Eighties into the early Nineties.
Capturing the musical exhilaration of the era along with the alienation of youth during a period of ascendant conservative politics and glitzy mainstream pop, Still in a Dream celebrates a golden age of guitar reinvention, a second psychedelia of mind-blowing sounds pioneered by bands like My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth. In Britain, groups like Cocteau Twins and Slowdive escaped into shimmering dreamworlds while American underground rockers like Dinosaur Jr. and Pavement blended apathy and urgency into thrilling noise.
A propulsive and personal account from a journalist who covered this music in real time from the frontlines, Still in a Dream vividly recreates a period that was the last blast for the analogue culture of vinyl records and music papers, before the Internet changed everything.
- GenresMusicNonfictionHistory
Kindle Edition
First published June 18, 2026
About the author
Simon Reynolds
55 books524 followersSimon Reynolds is one of the most respected music journalists working today, and his writing is both influential and polarizing. He draws on an impressive range of knowledge, and writes with a fluid, engaging style. His books Rip it Up and Start Again and Generation Ecstasy are well-regarded works about their respective genres, and RETROMANIA may be his most broadly appealing book yet. It makes an argument about art, nostalgia, and technology that has implications for all readerswhether diehard music fans or not. Its an important and provocative look at the present and future of culture and innovation."
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February 5, 2026good to know that simon reynolds' writing irreversibly changed me as a teenager and will continue to do so as a 25 year old
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
I was very excited when I saw that this was coming out, so I immediately emailed the publisher to say that I wanted to host a launch event for it. They told me that Reynolds lived in the USA and they weren't sure if he was coming over for the publication, but a few weeks later they confirmed he was so we set one up. A few years ago I read and loved Rip It Up and Start Again, on postpunk, and Retromania on the conservatism of backward looking music which was similarly brilliant. I was already a huge postpunk lover, but that book introduced me to several obscure bands that I went on to listen to and love. I am a huge fan of this period of indie rock music (84 - 94), so I was looking forward to repeating my previous experience.
I was born in 1981 so Rip It Up and Start Again explored the musical era I was born in, and so when I started discovering this music when I was about 17 onwards it was all in the distant past. The period that this book covers coincides with me being more aware of the music happening around me, but as a 3 - 13 year old I wasn't paying attention to this kind of stuff, until the book gets to Grunge. I loved Michael Jackson as a kid, but it wasn't until I was 11 and I discovered Nirvana and the Prodigy that I really fell in love with music. After discovering these groups I moved to Harlesden in London, made friends with a big group of black boys my age, and we exclusively listen to Rap, Jungle or Ragga, and it wasn't until after I was 16 that I started paying attention to Rock music again. I gradually began to discover some of the groups in this book. Somehow I discovered the Velvet Underground, which led me down a pathway of discovering all of their inheritors like The Pixies, Sonic Youth, The Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, Pavement etc... I managed to see all of these bands live at some point in the 2000's, though they were all past their glory days and I was there to hear the music from the 80's - early 90's.
This book is very personal for Reynolds, because he was just starting out in music journalism in this period of time. He began a fanzine, and managed to get a staff position at Melody Maker, so he has a symbiotic relationship with this music scene, having interviewed, watched, reviewed and encouraged many of the bands. He suggests that in some ways this was the last gasp of Rock music before it was superseded by the rise of electronic music and hip hop. I tend to agree with him. There are good rock bands after this period, but I don't think that there has been a really exciting or innovative rock scene since then. Grunge and Britpop were the last major rock scenes (both covered in this book), and both of them are kind of backward looking and retro. What do you get after this? Nu-Metal? Shite. Pop Punk/Emo? Shite. Indie Sleaze? Some good stuff but all of it is derivative.
Reynolds' music criticism is intelligent and insightful. He argues that Postpunk became exhausted and the music he writes about here arose as a dialectical response to what came before. Postpunk was about tension, intensity, politics, anti-rockist instrumentation, repudiating the music of the 60s and 70s. The music that follows re-introduces influences from the 60s and 70s, brings the guitar back to the forefront, revels in emotion and feeling and texture, and moves away from overt politics towards individual experience and feelings. It creates a neo-psychedelia. Reagan was elected twice, followed by George HW Bush, and Thatcher was elected three times followed by John Major in this period. Many young people became depressed and apathetic about politics because it seemed that there was no way to overcome this reactionary politics. This helps to explain why so many bands turned inwards and why music became more spiritual, erotic or driven by psychology. Intelligent, meaningful lyrics had been a central part of Postpunk. Groups like Cocteau Twins, REM or My Bloody Valentine sang, murmured or whispered words or nonsense, and were using the voice as part of the music texture rather than putting it front and centre.
When I read Rip it Up and Start Again I was already a fan of groups like Wire, The Fall, Joy Division and the Talking Heads. But I learned about groups like Flipper, Chrome, Swell Maps, This Heat and Young Marble Giants from that book. Reading this, I was familiar with most of the bands but I have been listening to groups like Felt, Loop, Main, Dif Juz and Lush whilst reading this group. I have come away with lots to explore and discover.
I was born in 1981 so Rip It Up and Start Again explored the musical era I was born in, and so when I started discovering this music when I was about 17 onwards it was all in the distant past. The period that this book covers coincides with me being more aware of the music happening around me, but as a 3 - 13 year old I wasn't paying attention to this kind of stuff, until the book gets to Grunge. I loved Michael Jackson as a kid, but it wasn't until I was 11 and I discovered Nirvana and the Prodigy that I really fell in love with music. After discovering these groups I moved to Harlesden in London, made friends with a big group of black boys my age, and we exclusively listen to Rap, Jungle or Ragga, and it wasn't until after I was 16 that I started paying attention to Rock music again. I gradually began to discover some of the groups in this book. Somehow I discovered the Velvet Underground, which led me down a pathway of discovering all of their inheritors like The Pixies, Sonic Youth, The Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, Pavement etc... I managed to see all of these bands live at some point in the 2000's, though they were all past their glory days and I was there to hear the music from the 80's - early 90's.
This book is very personal for Reynolds, because he was just starting out in music journalism in this period of time. He began a fanzine, and managed to get a staff position at Melody Maker, so he has a symbiotic relationship with this music scene, having interviewed, watched, reviewed and encouraged many of the bands. He suggests that in some ways this was the last gasp of Rock music before it was superseded by the rise of electronic music and hip hop. I tend to agree with him. There are good rock bands after this period, but I don't think that there has been a really exciting or innovative rock scene since then. Grunge and Britpop were the last major rock scenes (both covered in this book), and both of them are kind of backward looking and retro. What do you get after this? Nu-Metal? Shite. Pop Punk/Emo? Shite. Indie Sleaze? Some good stuff but all of it is derivative.
Reynolds' music criticism is intelligent and insightful. He argues that Postpunk became exhausted and the music he writes about here arose as a dialectical response to what came before. Postpunk was about tension, intensity, politics, anti-rockist instrumentation, repudiating the music of the 60s and 70s. The music that follows re-introduces influences from the 60s and 70s, brings the guitar back to the forefront, revels in emotion and feeling and texture, and moves away from overt politics towards individual experience and feelings. It creates a neo-psychedelia. Reagan was elected twice, followed by George HW Bush, and Thatcher was elected three times followed by John Major in this period. Many young people became depressed and apathetic about politics because it seemed that there was no way to overcome this reactionary politics. This helps to explain why so many bands turned inwards and why music became more spiritual, erotic or driven by psychology. Intelligent, meaningful lyrics had been a central part of Postpunk. Groups like Cocteau Twins, REM or My Bloody Valentine sang, murmured or whispered words or nonsense, and were using the voice as part of the music texture rather than putting it front and centre.
When I read Rip it Up and Start Again I was already a fan of groups like Wire, The Fall, Joy Division and the Talking Heads. But I learned about groups like Flipper, Chrome, Swell Maps, This Heat and Young Marble Giants from that book. Reading this, I was familiar with most of the bands but I have been listening to groups like Felt, Loop, Main, Dif Juz and Lush whilst reading this group. I have come away with lots to explore and discover.
June 19, 2026
I've never dropped everything so fast to read a book immediately after receiving my pre-order. Rip It Up and Start Again changed my life, but is largely about bands I intellectually admire more than actually listen to. Still in a Dream is about music I put on regularly, or grew up with, or spent hours being pretentious about in student bars. It's about a scene that exhausted itself a decade before I was old enough to personally participate in it, but still suffused all the spaces a historically-minded art scavenger like teenage me explored in search of identity. It's about the music I discovered as a student through excitingly smart friends and Gregg Araki movies and became obnoxiously pseudo-intellectual about. It talks about Murmur and Zen Arcade. It even takes the time to rhapsodize Throwing Muses' Chains Changed EP, which I must have listened to 10,000 times over the last few decades, and might have been genuinely life-saving on some level.
It's a good book. It met my sky-high expectations. It refuses to valorise or mythologise any of the usual suspects. It threatens to talk about Felt as much as Rip It Up and Start Again pushed Scritti Politti. It's a bit autobiographical. If it doesn't contain as much illuminating social context as that latter book, or such a sense of mission, or so many gargantuan personalities, that's a symptom of the subject rather than the book - a period of rock retreating from a sense of social purpose and mission into a kind of womblike interiority. Sometimes the spaces under examination feel monastic. J Mascis wasn't the least verbally articulate person on the scene.
Reading this I was frequently reminded of the rise of the mystery cult movement in the later Roman era. As people lost their political agency and hope for material change under the increasingly sclerotic and authoritarian Empire, the heart of culture moved from the public forums to hidden spaces under domestic dwellings - spaces of mysticism and personal withdrawal. Something similar seems to be happening here, but with more fuzzy guitars. I'm not sure what to do with that thought, except maybe retreat into a dark room and gaze at my shoes.
It's a good book. It met my sky-high expectations. It refuses to valorise or mythologise any of the usual suspects. It threatens to talk about Felt as much as Rip It Up and Start Again pushed Scritti Politti. It's a bit autobiographical. If it doesn't contain as much illuminating social context as that latter book, or such a sense of mission, or so many gargantuan personalities, that's a symptom of the subject rather than the book - a period of rock retreating from a sense of social purpose and mission into a kind of womblike interiority. Sometimes the spaces under examination feel monastic. J Mascis wasn't the least verbally articulate person on the scene.
Reading this I was frequently reminded of the rise of the mystery cult movement in the later Roman era. As people lost their political agency and hope for material change under the increasingly sclerotic and authoritarian Empire, the heart of culture moved from the public forums to hidden spaces under domestic dwellings - spaces of mysticism and personal withdrawal. Something similar seems to be happening here, but with more fuzzy guitars. I'm not sure what to do with that thought, except maybe retreat into a dark room and gaze at my shoes.
July 6, 2026
This book covers the underground (indie / rock) music scene of the mid 80s to the mid 90s, I was a regular Melody Maker reader around 1986-91 and Simon Reynolds was my favourite writer - impassioned and with sharp critical sense, which was often in line with my own taste (like me, he has no time for student disco faves like The Wonderstuff). As an older man looking back at the period, Reynolds maintains enthusiasm for this music and reflects on the circumstances of that period - high youth unemployment, the frustration with Thatcherism / Reaganism, the moribund mainstream chart music scene and his own life as a young music journalist in London. The music papers of the time (along with John Peel's late night show on Radio 1) were the only way to learn about new underground music in those pre-internet days and we relied on journalists like Reynolds to keep us up to date and find out what was worth looking out for in the record shop.
The style of this book is rather more measured than his late 80s writing, but his critical judgement is largely spot on (rightly, AR Kane are covered in a fair bit of detail), and though I don't share the enthusiasm for the "arsequake" bands, Spacemen 3 or Sonic Youth to quite the same extent, I appreciate where he is coming from. And Reynolds hints occasionally at the contemporaneous underground electronic music scene (acid house, techno etc) that emerged to largely eclipse "indie rock" as a creative arena
There are a few bands mentioned here who passed me by at the time (Hugo Largo!) - so the book is a useful resource from that point of view too. If I had a criticism, it's that it covers a huge amount of ground, so even though the book is over 400 pages long, it could have been longer - I'd have liked to see things like House of Love / Levitation or Thin White Rope covered.
The style of this book is rather more measured than his late 80s writing, but his critical judgement is largely spot on (rightly, AR Kane are covered in a fair bit of detail), and though I don't share the enthusiasm for the "arsequake" bands, Spacemen 3 or Sonic Youth to quite the same extent, I appreciate where he is coming from. And Reynolds hints occasionally at the contemporaneous underground electronic music scene (acid house, techno etc) that emerged to largely eclipse "indie rock" as a creative arena
There are a few bands mentioned here who passed me by at the time (Hugo Largo!) - so the book is a useful resource from that point of view too. If I had a criticism, it's that it covers a huge amount of ground, so even though the book is over 400 pages long, it could have been longer - I'd have liked to see things like House of Love / Levitation or Thin White Rope covered.
July 12, 2026
Reynolds' memoir of an era that saw dramatic progress in underground rock.
To start, some expectations need to set as to what exactly this book is. Those hoping for a Rip It Up-like take on individual genres or artists are going to be disappointed. But considering how much ink has been spilled over grunge and shoegaze, you should know the general beats of these genres by now.
What the book does is contextualize the rise of various artists and styles, how they fit with one another. The idea of the slacker is one that's all-encompassing, even if the term often pertains to specific bands: a consistent strain of extended adolescence and/or rejected adulthood runs through pretty much all the artists involved, whether it's Morrissey or the Butthole Surfers. Music as escapism from dreary reality and accepted notions of fame, along with how various styles interacted with one another.Grunge's dissolution and Britpop largely rejecting this notion brought this era to an end, even if some of the spirit lives on in other underground genres.
That said, while I think Reynolds largely does a great job at tying all this together, I can't help but feel like some parts would really benefit from a bit more. Sometimes it's a matter of giving a smaller artists more space than a bigger one (I knew going in that AR Kane was going to be written about more than Ride, but geez most of the latter is single sentence dismissals), other times it's a matter of not quite expanding on why certain bands matter (i.e., Royal Trux). Almost like the author is talking to those who are already in the know (and in agreement).
Overall, a very good look at the general attitude of the era.
To start, some expectations need to set as to what exactly this book is. Those hoping for a Rip It Up-like take on individual genres or artists are going to be disappointed. But considering how much ink has been spilled over grunge and shoegaze, you should know the general beats of these genres by now.
What the book does is contextualize the rise of various artists and styles, how they fit with one another. The idea of the slacker is one that's all-encompassing, even if the term often pertains to specific bands: a consistent strain of extended adolescence and/or rejected adulthood runs through pretty much all the artists involved, whether it's Morrissey or the Butthole Surfers. Music as escapism from dreary reality and accepted notions of fame, along with how various styles interacted with one another.Grunge's dissolution and Britpop largely rejecting this notion brought this era to an end, even if some of the spirit lives on in other underground genres.
That said, while I think Reynolds largely does a great job at tying all this together, I can't help but feel like some parts would really benefit from a bit more. Sometimes it's a matter of giving a smaller artists more space than a bigger one (I knew going in that AR Kane was going to be written about more than Ride, but geez most of the latter is single sentence dismissals), other times it's a matter of not quite expanding on why certain bands matter (i.e., Royal Trux). Almost like the author is talking to those who are already in the know (and in agreement).
Overall, a very good look at the general attitude of the era.
July 14, 2026
Bit of a disappointing read so far, said as someone who's a really big fan of Reynold's writing.
The intro - describing the zeal of a young music writer - is great, and poignant given that whole landscape has completely changed, never to be returned to.
However Simon casts a really wide net here while simultaneously often breezing past bands who should be a focal point of a book with this title (i feel like Dinosaur Jr are dispensed with in 3/4 pages, plus it's kind of stuff he's written about them before)
In a way this might be unserstandable. J Mascis famously doesn't give music journalists a lot of context for his work. AR Kane, by comparison, know how to talk the talk (we learn that one of the band is an advertising copywriter) and get a whole chapter to themselves.
What seems like an interminable amount of time is spent talking up bands who seem to see 'reversion to childhood' as their driving aesthetic, who sound kind of obnoxious (no i'm not going to listen to them to confirm) and who Simon himself doesn't seem entirely convinced by.
As above, it all feels a bit random and scattershot, so don't go in expecting a defining tome in the style of his earlier books about postpunk etc. Shoegaze is but one strand among many here.
The intro - describing the zeal of a young music writer - is great, and poignant given that whole landscape has completely changed, never to be returned to.
However Simon casts a really wide net here while simultaneously often breezing past bands who should be a focal point of a book with this title (i feel like Dinosaur Jr are dispensed with in 3/4 pages, plus it's kind of stuff he's written about them before)
In a way this might be unserstandable. J Mascis famously doesn't give music journalists a lot of context for his work. AR Kane, by comparison, know how to talk the talk (we learn that one of the band is an advertising copywriter) and get a whole chapter to themselves.
What seems like an interminable amount of time is spent talking up bands who seem to see 'reversion to childhood' as their driving aesthetic, who sound kind of obnoxious (no i'm not going to listen to them to confirm) and who Simon himself doesn't seem entirely convinced by.
As above, it all feels a bit random and scattershot, so don't go in expecting a defining tome in the style of his earlier books about postpunk etc. Shoegaze is but one strand among many here.
July 6, 2026
Reynolds is a great writer. Many visceral, haptic descriptions of music that made me immediately put the book down and look up whatever song he was waxing lyrical about. This gets a bit cluttered toward the end; too many bands, too few pages. I loved hearing Reynolds discuss the critical 'battles' which took place within the independent music zine world (who did Melody Maker think was the future of music, and how did this show that NME's position was retrograde, old hat, soporific?). A lot of this reads like an impassioned plea for the value of criticism. It reminded me of how much I owe my aesthetic taste to those who write about art, who helped me see its value – it's beauty.
June 28, 2026
Rip it Up and Start Again is easily one of my favorite rock criticism books, so I was very excited for Reynolds’ exploration of the 80s-00’s. While Rip it Up felt like a feverish dive into Reynolds’ mixtapes, this one is much more reflective and personal. So many of the artists and albums are connected to the author’s experiences as a Melody Maker critic, which makes it feel more like reading his journals than listening to a mixtape. The range of bands covered here is wide and idiosyncratic: shoegaze, British indie, noise, grunge, post-rock…but this one doesn’t hit the same heights as Rip It up.
*my version included a bonus ‘zine with additional recommendations not included in the book!
*my version included a bonus ‘zine with additional recommendations not included in the book!
July 1, 2026
Reynolds is one of the sharpest minds in music journalism, and like his other excellent books, this one is no disappointment. Taking a HUGE area of music to cover, he depicts his time writing for Melody Maker in the 80s / 90s and the emerging explosion in indie rock.
July 12, 2026
Enjoyed this more than Reynolds’ “Rip It Up and Start Again” (haven’t read energy flash yet but I definitely will now). Much more personal and sensational than his recounting of Post Punk history. These years clearly have much fondness attached to them from him which makes this a joy to read.
July 7, 2026
reckon the lost mbv jungle album will sound pretty amazing when it comes out in 2075
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