Despite being MIA for three decades, the influence of shoegazers Drop Nineteens is all over the latest wave of bands within (and sometimes even outside of) the genre. You can hear it in the buzzy recording style of groups like Horse Jumper of Love, or the attempts by any number of their peers to recreate the lush guitars decorating Drop Nineteens’ cult-classic 1992 debut Delaware. Their legacy has transfixed a whole generation of musicians, elevating the recently reformed Boston group to an almost mythical status. It seems like everyone has a story about the strange magic they felt the first time they listened to “Winona,” or the sheer rush of the spectral soliloquy closing out “Kick the Tragedy.”
There’s no real way to overstate the importance of Drop Nineteens, so when they announced that after 30 years they were getting back together to release their third LP Hard Light, it was sort of like the second coming. To celebrate that album’s release tomorrow via Wharf Cat Records, we caught up with some of the bands that Drop Nineteens paved the way for who discuss where they first heard the group, how they’ve felt inspired by them, what the band means to them now and at the beginning of their musical career, and how D19s ultimately altered their approach to music.
Kevin Krauter (Wishy)
As a true child of the internet, I first found out about Drop Nineteens through the trusty YouTube algorithm several years ago. I immediately fell in love with Delaware. When writing songs for the Mana EP, I was heavily influenced by this album—especially the song “Kick the Tragedy.” At the time, I was also obsessed with the song “Love Is Everywhere” by Pharaoh Sanders. One day the idea hit me to do a cover of this song in the style of Drop Nineteens. This ended up being the last song on the EP and my personal favorite.
Nina Pitchkites (Wishy)
I found out about Drop Nineteens from Spotify, I believe. The algorithm typically succeeds in showing me albums I’d sincerely enjoy, and Delaware is one of them. I’ll sometimes do deep dives into various bands of the same niche genre, so when it came to shoegaze, Drop Nineteens was a no-brainer for a seminal early shoegaze band from the ’90s. I’m drawn to any type of sound that borders on ethereal/twee/droney type vibes. I get inspiration for my vocals from airy shoegaze vocalists such as Bilinda Butcher from MBV or Miki Berenyi from Lush. The same can be said as it pertains to the Drop Nineteens—I’m addicted to that breathy, somewhat snuffed-out vocal style.
“Delaware helped me realize that music can be a snapshot of a moment, of an age or a period of someone’s life, and while one’s influences can be channeled to help convey the feelings of a certain time, the specifics don’t have to matter as much.” — Dylan Vaisey of Full Body 2
Dylan Vaisey (Full Body 2)
I was 18 and in New York City by myself for the first time, the reason being that I was to play a dead body in a friend’s short film about the mafia. Due to my terrible sense of direction, I got a bit lost on the subway and spent some extra time riding, which at the time was annoying (and nerve wracking). In retrospect, it gave me the opportunity to have a main-character moment and listen to music while silently observing the motion of the train. I browsed Last.fm before I left home and had downloaded a couple albums onto my phone for the trip. One of those albums was Delaware. I remember being comforted by the album’s adolescent nature—both because I felt very out of my element, lost on the train in the city, but also as someone who desperately wanted to make my own music but couldn’t quite figure out how to start. The album felt very raw to me at the time, in a cool way, and it conveyed a kind of slick and scrappy earnestness that not a lot of music I’d listened to thus far had.
The album doesn’t sound unpolished or super lo-fi or anything, more so the variety of songs and the energy of the arrangements appealed to me at the time, and still do. It helped me realize that music can be a snapshot of a moment, of an age or a period of someone’s life, and while one’s influences can be channeled to help convey the feelings of a certain time, the specifics don’t have to matter as much. You can have beautiful, tender guitar songs and songs with screaming over dissonant noise on the same tracklist—which, at the time, I didn’t have the confidence to do myself. Delaware helped me realize that discrepancy can actually help contextualize each track within a broader emotional scope.
Addie Warncke (Computerwife)
I found out about Drop Nineteens in late 2018. I think they appeared in some Spotify algorithms for bands like Blue Smiley and Happy Diving, and I also had friends who got into them around the same time. I remember I was getting really into cassette collecting, and one day I found the special advance cassette [of Delaware] at Limited to One [Record Shop] for four bucks. I listened to that cassette so much that now I associate Drop Nineteens with 2019—listening to that tape with my best friend in my dorm room and discovering music at the same time as my brother, which made us become close friends. Drop Nineteens helped open another world of music that I was drawn to because of the way it combines dreaminess with heaviness, which feels a bit spiritual and feminine to me. They’re one of the tip-of-the-iceberg bands for people discovering ’90s shoegaze, which is basically a coming-of-age experience at this point.
Joseph Trainor (Dummy)
Most people who become obsessed with shoegaze will likely blow past the obvious big ones pretty quickly and then really dive into the trenches of the genre where the true hidden gems are—Astrobrite, Medicine, Swirlies, Aspidistra, Telescopes, and Drop Nineteens. Also, like most people, the first song I heard was “Winona,” with its hooky melody, crispy guitars, and an iconic music video. But Drop Nineteens definitely have a stranger sense of production on Delaware compared to a lot of their peers. The song that’s had a profound influence on us is actually the second track, “Ease It Halen.” The way it cleverly cuts the guitar ring-outs and each one plays in different spots in the sound field oscillating from left to center to right. It’s simple, but has a very psychedelic effect and was a direct inspiration on our song “Pepsi Vacuum.” It also makes for a dynamic shift when “Winona” flows—it feels like you’re blasting on a rocket. I wish more shoegaze bands understood that things don’t need to be on 10 all the time. Drop Nineteens most certainly did.
“They’re one of the tip-of-the-iceberg bands for people discovering ’90s shoegaze, which is basically a coming-of-age experience at this point.” — Addie Warncke/Computerwife
Dmitri Giannopoulos (Horse Jumper of Love)
In high school, Drop Nineteens and shoegaze music in general saved me from the indie-pop onslaught of the early 2010s. First it was MBV, then Slowdive, that got me hooked. It was easy to find CDs of their discography at Newbury Comics, and as I got more comfortable with finding music on the internet I wanted to dig deeper, and I discovered bands like Drop Nineteens and Swirlies. On top of that, finding out they were from Boston was huge for me as a native Bostonian. The further I dove, the more I learned there was a huge history of this particular music being made in Boston. It was really inspiring to me at the time right before we started Horse Jumper. I actually considered naming the band “Winona.”
The song “Kick the Tragedy” was particularly influential on me. I think I found it on YouTube in 2012 and was immediately captivated by the cover art. It wasn’t like most album art I’d seen prior—no band name, just a dramatic image of a girl holding a gun outside a barbershop. I felt like I’d never heard a song structure like that before. It made me realize there were no rules in songwriting. Just a long instrumental with a monologue at the end. I remember some of the first HJOL shows when we were working out our sound we tried a lot of embarrassing versions of stuff like that. It’s truly an honor to share a bill with Drop Nineteens and support a band that influenced the way I perceived songwriting and music as a whole.
Samira Winter (Winter)
I first discovered Drop Nineteens when I was in school living in Boston. It was before I even started Winter. I would be in my dorm room that faced the Boston Commons, and with my two best friends, Lorena and Tyler, we would blast “Kick the Tragedy” really loud and gaze out. There’s something so enchanting and liberating about that sea of oscillating guitars and sounds—it’s so experiential. It was just so inspiring to me that music could make you feel that way, as if you were circling through a spiral. I’m obsessed with Paula [Kelley]’s spoken word moment at the end, it’s so brilliant.
For school I studied radio and TV journalism, and through that I ended up interviewing a lot of bands and going to a lot of shows. As I stood in the audience looking at the stage, I’d feel this burning desire of starting my own band. There’s something about that indie-rock ethos that really resonated with me, and watching videos like the one for “Winona” just passed on that attitude of “Why not? I’m gonna start a band.” They looked like kids just like me, goofing around with their friends, driving around during the summer listening to music.
“The music just makes me feel so expansive, almost like it screams, ‘Hey! You’re allowed to be creative as hell! Find that feeling and float in it!’” — Shawn Marom of Cryogeyser
Shawn Marom (Cryogeyser)
I remember it like the first time you get crushed by a wave when you’re little—it washes over you, almost like you didn’t know what you were getting into…huge, wet, and for a moment you aren’t sure if you’ll ever come back from it. Trying to keep up on the street with my then-partner who walked way ahead of me, he always had something in his headphones, and even though it annoyed me it was totally part of his allure—huge, fleeting, also like a wave. I was afraid, but I wanted to know how it felt. We endlessly fought about this—leaving me out in the cold, in the silence—so he bought a headphone splitter and cracked my world open.
It was during this time I became familiar with bands like His Name Is Alive, Serena Maneesh, and Curve, but it was different with Drop Nineteens. I was stunned. The long drawl of the intro that starts Delaware into its steady true beat felt like it was almost pumping in my blood; the softness of “Baby Wonder's Gone,” the rigidity of “Ease It Halen,” the anthemic quality of “Angel”—Delaware had officially landed for me. That lover of mine had opened many doors for me, but none more important than expanding my knowledge of music. I couldn’t really place it…because it was shoegaze and it was not, yet it was alt but pop and shamelessly twee at moments.
And beyond Delaware was [1993’s] National Coma, the album that has probably influenced my music more than anything, with its freedom, its unphased forwardness. The arrangements that Drop Nineteens have employed on these albums—pushes forward and prizes vocals, melody, and lyrics—to me, it’s totally rock where you can see yourself in it, hear yourself in it. Like a world. Or like a movie. The music just makes me feel so expansive, almost like it screams, “Hey! You’re allowed to be creative as hell! Find that feeling and float in it!” Thanks to the band for making music that’s always made me feel closer to something in a world that at times feels determined to make us all feel so very far away.
Ryan Smith (bdrmm)
I recall hearing the “Kick the Tragedy” no doubt at one of my many musical educational sessions (drinking ’til the early hours of the morning with my good friend Ashley) and I remember being absolutely intoxicated immediately. The whole aesthetic of the record is just so inspiring, it has everything. Even the artwork on the cover of Delaware seemed inspiring and a precursor to the modern shoegazer. The whole record is pretty timeless to me, and “Kick the Tragedy” will always take me back to where we started, to understanding and discovering a new world of music.
