Alternative
Cherry Red Records (CRCD4BOX213) · 31 July 2026
Four discs, sixty-seven tracks and a little over five hours to account for twenty years of one way of playing the guitar. We Are The Beautiful takes its title from Chapterhouse, who are here with the song itself, and runs roughly chronologically: disc one is the first wave of British shoegaze, with Ride’s “Vapour Trail” opening, Lush’s “Nothing Natural” and Curve’s “Horror Head”; disc four is mostly American and mostly from the 2000s.
The compiling shows where it ought to, which is among the names nobody knows. Bowery Electric’s “Floating World” and Ashrae Fax’s “Ultravaca” map the branch of the genre that went looking for the synthesiser; Pluramon’s “Hello, Shadow”, sung by Julee Cruise, carries the third disc on its own. And Anilore’s “Movement” turns up in a 2025 mix rather than the period version.
The essay and the band-by-band notes are by Frank Deserto, who presses one point the selection bears out: in this genre the women were on the instruments and not only on the vocals.
And there is a hole you spot straight away. The box starts in 1991 and there is no My Bloody Valentine. Loveless came out that November and is the record everything afterwards gets measured against; there is no Swervedriver either. No explanation is given, and the effect on anyone buying the box to learn the genre is the same: the starting point is missing.
Sixty-seven tracks across four discs, five hours and eight minutes of music, catalogue number CRCD4BOX213. Cherry Red have had it out since 31 July.
Rating: 7/10
Text by Marçal Bonastre