On Sunday, Oct. 20, nineties shoegaze legends Drop Nineteens will be playing the newly reopened Iron Horse in Northampton, Mass., with Olivia O. as their opener.
The setting is fitting: a new-old band in a new-old venue, both re-establishing their magnitude of influence after years of dormancy. With the release of a new album and an impending catalog release of dorm-room demos, Drop Nineteens are as active as they’ve been in 30 years, and they are happy to be back in the saddle.
“I wasn’t sure if I could get up and play, you know? If I could remember chords, if we — all of us — would gel, if it would sound good. That was the first thing we were trying to figure out,” said Greg Ackell, lead vocalist and guitarist. They recently played a small circuit of shows back in April of 2024 to find their footing as a touring band after a decades-long hiatus since 1995. “The second thing we didn’t know was if people would show up. And thankfully, we got both questions answered.”
Known for their 1992 masterpiece “Delaware” and tracks including “Kick the Tragedy” and “Winona,” the band formed during their undergraduate years at Boston University. Ackell met bassist Steve Zimmerman and vocalist Paula Kelley in 1989 having lived in the same dorm building, along with guitarist Moto Yasue and founding drummer Chris Roof who had attended Northfield Mount Hermon School in western Mass. with Ackell.
Only a 30-minute drive away from Northfield, Ackell recalled how The Iron Horse used to be a well-known venue among his peers.
“In 1988 or ‘89, I believe I went to a Jane’s Addiction concert there. If you can imagine that,” Ackell said. He recalled having to stay out well past the dorm curfew. “I can’t remember how we got there or how we got back ’cause we had no cars. It’s all a mystery to me […] But that would be the last time I’ve been there.”
Ackell had never anticipated that his hodge-podge college band would amount to the level of success that the Nineteens reaped in the early 1990s. They weren’t interested in playing live and had no intention of being a gig band without a utilitarian knowledge of Boston venues or agents. Ackell remembered it as a “slog” that seemed pointless at the time, given the unlikelihood of being scouted in the field by a record label.
Instead of traversing clubs in Boston or Brighton, Ackell was writing, packaging and sending cassettes of their demos to his favorite record labels — all of which happened to be in the United Kingdom.
“4AD, Creation Records, Rough Trade Factory […] They were all in London,” Ackell said. “And at those smaller offices, I guess the tapes come in and they actually listen. It’s not like sending something to Columbia or Sony or Atlantic records where it all just goes in a dustbin.”
Thus: the Nineteens got lucky.
“A week after sending in the tapes, we were getting calls,” he said. “It was the proverbial dog catching the car. I was aiming for it to happen, but certainly never expected it.”
After catching fire on English radio waves and earning rave reviews in the religiously-read NME and Melody Maker magazines, Drop Nineteens suddenly found themselves at the center of an unfolding movement known fondly as “shoegaze.” Named after the motionless way performers stand and stare down at their shoes as they perform, shoegaze is accomplished with huge and complex pedalboards, layering effect upon effect upon effect until it all blends into one gauzy nebula of sound.
Other goliaths of the genre include Slowdive — who Drop Nineteens play with at Levitation in Austin, TX at the end of October — as well as Lush, my bloody valentine, Blonde Redhead and Ride. Slowdive and the Nineteens go back a long way; the Nineteens were coined “American Slowdive” at one point in time.
“I think it was just a matter of generational peers coming from the same set of influences and coming to the same conclusion at the same time, an ocean apart,” said Ackell.
Despite their exploding popularity, Boston didn’t take lightly to the new band in their early stages. There was an attitude of ‘paying one’s dues’ to the Boston scene, playing the hard gigs and dumping demo cassettes at any record store that would take them, which the Nineteens got to skip due to their success in England.
Their first ever show at the Paradise Rock club in Boston was an infamous one, though Ackell speaks about it without shame.
“Everybody was there. I mean, Julianna Hatfield, Evan Dando, members from Galaxie 500, members from Throwing Muses. They wanted us to suck, and we did,” he recalled. “We were so nervous about playing in front of these people because we held them in high regard, even though they didn’t think so fondly of us. But we were so nervous that we just got totally drunk before the show to try to beat the nerves. And we just fell apart on stage. It was a mess.”
Back in April, Drop Nineteens played the same venue thirty years later to an audience of longtime, die-hard fans. Whatever illegitimacy they maintained back then has since burnt out, as they now unequivocally maintain the title of one of the core pioneers of early shoegaze.
In the past several years, the cyclical calendar of music has landed back in the 90s and shoegaze has had a resurgence in popularity among listeners and musicians alike. New acts such as Feeble Little Horse, Hotline TNT, Deerhunter, They Are Gutting a Body of Water (TAGABOW), Glixen, Ringo Deathstarr and many more have risen the streaming ranks and have developed cult followings of their own.
“Our audience skews very young,” Ackell noted. “It’s astonishing to me.”
Having never planned on returning to the stage, it was a mere blessing of coincidence that allowed the Nineteens to make such a comeback after years of hesitation.
“It occurred to me finally, after so long, that I wanted to hear what a modern Drop Nineteens song would sound like. That’s all that’s all it took — I was never planning to make music again. But that thought occurred to me, and the only way to find out what it sounds like is if I do it, right?”
Fortunately, an audience was there to greet their revival with open arms.
“And what does sounding like this band again mean?” Ackell asked himself. “Well — I know it when I hear it.”
