Aladdin Theater, Portland, OR
5/26/2026
What makes a band “stick� Or, more specifically, what makes a shoegaze band stick? For every Slowdive, My Bloody Valentine or Ride, many others seemed to stay confined to “the scene that celebrates itself,†never ascending to the heights of the Mount Rushmore of Shoegaze. When talking to fans of Chapterhouse before and after their Aladdin Theater performance, our recurring question was, “When you talk to other music fans about Chapterhouse, do they know who you're talking about?†The answer varied slightly, but the gist of it was: plenty of people don't know them, but those who know, really know. “Some people I know try to tell me they're the best one of them all,†said friend of the site Drew, standing in line waiting for merch with a giant smile on his face. He probably couldn't help but smile: whether or not Chapterhouse is truly the best of the scene is debatable, but after the show they'd just put on, it was hard to immediately argue.
Right now, Chapterhouse has embarked on the road partially to take part in Slide Away, the traveling mini shoegaze festival that finds them joining the bill alongside Nothing and headliners Hum. It's a natural fit, and it's easy to imagine that those shows have the highest percentage of concertgoers intimately familiar with the English shoegaze act, especially their debut, Whirlpool, which they'd be playing front to back every night. Those of us blessed with Chapterhouse headline shows were given double-sized sets, with Whirlpool and a spate of other tracks from their short oeuvre (“Our favorite songs,†as guitarist Stephen Patman put it).
It was Chapterhouse's very first time in Portland, making the Whirlpool birthday bash feel even more like a celebration. Shows like this one are a dime a dozen now, with any band that has any kind of longevity eventually succumbing to the temptation. Chapterhouse, though, occupies a space where the number of people turning up based purely on name recognition was probably pretty minimal. The Southeast Portland theater was half-full, but those who did come out cheered like they'd been waiting their whole lifetime to see the band.
The most perplexing part of the crowd was the small group of teens at the edge of the stage, dancing along with them and their openers, the excellent Philly-based American shoegazers Asteroid No.4. The hold that shoegaze and dreampop have over today's youth ought to be studied, because be it oldhead acts like Duster and new ones like Whirr, it seems like you can't create a wall of fuzzy sound anymore without someone born in proximity to the ‘08 financial crisis bumping into you as they pogo around with their friends. These youths weren't anywhere near disrespectful, though; if anything, it was refreshing to see them dipping their feet into a band that hasn't been plundered by TikTok yet.
The double-edged sword of the album-playthrough is that you might get a band who are energized about playing their most seminal work, or one who view it as an opportunity to go through the motions. Whether Chapterhouse was “energized†remains to be seen — shoegaze rarely is an energized genre, after all — it couldn't be said that they were phoning it in. In fact, the shoegaze reunion boom has bestowed far more perfunctory performances by more noteworthy acts on Portland, but Chapterhouse performed like they had something to prove. “They haven't lost an ounce of their power,†said a friend a few songs in, gobsmacked by how powerful “Breather†and “Autosleeper†had sounded. Luckily, we're catching the band more than a dozen dates into this reunion stint, meaning they've shaken off all of the rust that had accumulated since their 2010 reunion jaunt.
All the guitarists in Chapterhouse are worth praise, but the highlight of the show was drummer Ash Bates, who was constantly struggling with his monitor mix and sounded downright superhuman while coping with it. It did nothing to dampen his stage presence, pointing his sticks to the sky like a wizard preparing to cast some spell, before bringing his sticks back down yet again. It was muscular in a way that is often at odds with the more washed-out textures of shoegaze, but here, Bates was the backbone, keeping the rest of the band grounded without clipping their wings.
Things only kicked up a notch when they came back from a brief break following “Something More,†returning with a batch of Whirlpool b-sides and cuts from their second album, Blood Music, and the four-song Mesmerise EP. Freed of the pull of Whirlpool, they seemed extra energized, as though they knew their time was coming to an end, and they needed to make it count. Every single song in the second half of their 90-minute set renewed a sense of “Why aren't these guys as big as Ride?†that cropped up repeatedly through the first half. Blood Music's “Greater Power†and set closer “Love Forever†hit like a truck, the band's triple-guitar attack behaving like an all-out barrage, dazzling the Tuesday evening crowd with how well they manage to keep it all from sounding like guitar-fuzz pea soup.
When the band left the stage for an encore break, the audience cheered in a way that crowds only cheer when they need more of a set. The encore is a perfunctory act at this point in concert history, but Chapterhouse earned it, and the audience was keen to make sure they fought hard for the lights to stay off and the amps to stay on. They returned for a pair of deeper cuts, specifically “Mesmerise†and Whirlpool B-side “Need (Somebody).†Even after 18 songs, these two tracks kept the audience on the hook, desperate for more time with the shoegaze deities, wishing they'd just keep going deep into the night in defiance of any stage curfew.
