I Think David Lynch Would Like Shoegaze: Slowdive at the Bronson Centre

Words and photos by Edie Olender

In 2024, my boyfriend and I coined it the year of love because everyone we knew had started coupling up. I forget who asked who, but somehow it was jokingly decided that 2025 would be the year of death. 

I think it was because I’m taking a university course about the psychology of death and dying, which has primed me to think about mortality a lot right now. Every week I read a textbook about death, an assigned research article about death theories and then a chapter of Talking About Death Won’t Kill You by Dr. Kathy Kortes-Miller. While I drink my coffee in the mornings, I read my own book of choice. I decided to start my Christmas gift, The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, completely forgetting what the subject matter was. It’s about coping with her husband’s death. 

Until this point, no real death had occurred so far in 2025, only theoretical frameworks and creations of my imagination. Then, my friend’s cat died. It was earth-shattering for her; she loved this cat so much. This sent me off on a bit of a spiral because my cat is fairly old, but coincidence does not imply causation, so all the talk about this being the year of death doesn’t mean anything. I was doing some really good terror management defenses there. 

Then, two Wednesdays ago, David Lynch died. My boyfriend and I went to bed Tuesday night watching a video of Lynch discussing transcendental meditation. How is he dead, just like that? 

Then, the founder of one of my favorite hometown coffee shops died of ALS. 

I couldn’t stop crying yesterday because I don’t want to die. No, I don’t have cancer or some other terminal illness. No, I wasn’t in a near-death experience. It’s just that being so confronted by the death of others finally pushed me past my own denial and compartmentalization. North America is a death-denying society. When faced with awareness of our own mortality, we are more likely to immerse ourselves in other forms of media as a distraction and to cling to our cultural values of wealth and power, which permit everlasting life in a way. But, I keep having this recurrent image of sitting beside a death bed, and while the person dying alternates between my boyfriend, my dad and my best friend. I imagine them gasping their last breath and there’s nothing I can do to stop them from leaving me.

Quannnic

So now I’m waiting at the Bronson Centre for the Slowdive concert. Like most of my thoughts over the last few weeks, I am still thinking about death. I suppose it’s fitting since I’ve seen some articles suggesting that their latest album, everything is alive, is a product of the pandemic and the death of Rachel Goswell’s mother and Simon Scott’s father. 

Before Slowdive, Quannnic is set to open for them. I had never heard of this band before the show, but I heard a woman nearby mention that they come up on Spotify autoplay if you’ve been listening to enough shoegaze. Since Slowdive is so significant for its contribution to foundationally defining the genre, my assumption was that the opener would also be an older, established band. I was shocked when some kid about my age walked out on stage in really baggy jeans and a zip-up hoodie falling off the shoulder. This is in no way a dig at Quannnic either, I did enjoy their music. Someone next to me thought Quannnic was too grungy-dad-garage-rock; this person wanted ethereal dream pop. I think Quannnic is still dreamy. Maybe it’s not as soft, but not all dreams are soft.

Quannnic

When Slowdive came out, it was what I was expecting some fifty-something-year-olds tinged with 90s alternative nostalgia. The way Goswell held herself really had an effect on me. I’m scared of death, so along with that follows a fear of aging. I’m twenty-one years old. On my dad’s side of the family, my grandfather and great-grandfather died in their early 60s. My dad is worried he will die at this age. I am worried I will die at this age. I could be a third of the way done my life, and since the last four years of university have passed so quickly, I know that the next decades will pass just as quickly. Watching Goswell snapped me out of this spiral; I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a performer smile so genuinely and with such gratitude (other than maybe Adrianne Lenker this past fall in Montreal). She would sway and clasp her hands together in front of her, reminding me of a giddy kid waiting for something exciting to happen. North America is an ageist society. My mom often talks about how once women reach their 40s, they undergo a social death and lose value in the eyes of society. Seeing Goswell performing, it felt like life was brimming out of her. Thinking of all the other women in rock who I love, like Patti Smith and Kim Gordon, maybe everything really is fine.

Perhaps it’s because David Lynch died so I’m especially thinking about him, but I feel like I almost hear Angelo Badalamenti echoing behind Slowdive’s hazy guitars. There’s this similarity between the overlayed, haunting piano notes and shimmering cymbal in the background of the Twin Peaks theme song and Slowdive’s layers of reverbed guitars and keys. Especially when Goswell comes onto the track with her dreamy vocals, it reminds me of Julee Cruise’s “The Nightingale” and “Into the Night” off the Twin Peaks soundtrack.

Slowdive

I don’t know if David Lynch listened to Slowdive or shoegaze, but I feel like it would have been a genre he enjoyed. His art is so similar in the way that you can’t understand it superficially because it’s so layered. It’s similar in the way that it borders onto this expansive space that can be airy and dark at the same time. Goswell and Neil Halstead harmonize and take turns alternating between who has the dominant voice throughout each line, yet the vocals still become semi-obscured by the droning instrumentals. It creates an oneness that I’m sure Lynch would love because he believed in a greater connective energy within the universe. 

I was watching the front row of the crowd, and almost all of them had their eyes closed and were nodding along in beautiful swaying unison. Shoegaze lives up to its name since what was important was not occurring on stage. It wouldn’t matter if you were gazing at the ground or closing your eyes. It’s about where it takes your brain. 

Slowdive

Over the last few weeks of mortality salience, I’ve been really wondering what happens after. Sometimes, I boil it down to the fact that we are just chemicals and there isn’t anything except for recycling of matter. Other times, I think ego death must be pretty close to actual death since this recycling of matter would release my consciousness into wholeness with the universe. If there was a genre that played over the loudspeaker system in Heaven, I don’t think it would be gospel music. It would be shoegaze because it offers the opportunity for your mind to expand and for you to become something bigger.