I often find myself consumed by life’s “what if” moments. The chance of it all. The little things that never happened. There are different levels of “what if”—missing a train, leaving a party early, deciding to move across the country—but the sentiment remains true: in some other reality out there, there’s a version of you that is living with the repercussions of catching the train, staying at the party, or not moving. You have no idea what their life is like, and you just have to be okay with that. Most of the time, I’m not.

Some people like to think the things that are supposed to happen will happen, one way or another. Like meeting your partner on a dating app in your twenties, then learning you overlapped a few years at summer camp as kids, or finally landing the dream job you were rejected from at the start of your career. They’ll say it’s all about ‘timing’ and ‘alignment’ and ‘what the universe has in store.’ That’s too much relying on external forces for me, but I’ll admit it’s nice to relinquish control of your life for a second.

Is it obvious I was just emotionally wrecked by Past Lives? Anyway…

A lot of the time, life isn’t that simple. It’s sprawling, multifaceted, and confusing, with no direct answers or guaranteed results. Even when good things happen to us, it’s easy to nitpick what’s wrong with any given situation. But you’re still allowed to feel joy when a dream you had is finally coming to fruition.

This back-and-forth about fate versus control mirrors Majesty Crush’s journey over the last three decades. Back with a career-spanning double LP thanks to Numero Group, Butterflies Don’t Go Away combines a repress of their 1993 record Love 15 with a second disc of singles, rarities, and previously unavailable tracks. I’d argue it’s one of the most important reissues, at least in the last five years, but to understand that, we need to take a look back.

Majesty Crush is often referred to as one of the ‘forgotten’ bands of the early ‘90s shoegaze boom. The Detroit-based four-piece differentiated themselves with an innate ability to mutate from shoegaze to dream-pop to punk to grunge and back again. David Stroughter led the band as a reluctant, Syd Barrett-type frontman whose piercing vocals glided over the instrumentals, with Hobey Echlin on bass, Mike Segal on guitar, and Odell Nails III on drums. Together, they created a sweeping and all-consuming sound that made them stand out, mostly because people really couldn’t pin them down. The group quickly gained notoriety within their Midwest community, earning significant airplay on college and alternative rock radio stations. Opening for everyone from Mazzy Star and Sonic Youth to Royal Trux and The Verve, Majesty Crush seemed to be able to win over audiences in just about any scene. Yet no one could figure them out.

Majesty Crush’s mixed-race lineup made them something of an anomaly in the predominantly British shoegaze scene. It was hard to get a read of the band’s sound just by their appearance, something bassist Hobey Echlin says he thinks made the group so special in their local scene: fans had never heard anything like Majesty Crush, let alone from people that look like them.

Immediately following the release of Love 15 in 1993, Majesty Crush’s label Dali, an Elektra subsidiary, shuttered, making it their first and only full-length LP. Here were these local legends, ready to spread their sound way outside the confines of their city, who suddenly had no backing or promotion to hold them up. Because of this, Love 15 fell through the cracks. As grunge quickly swept up the remains of a shoegaze/dream-pop scene in the US, Majesty Crush remained under the radar. The group went on to release one final EP, Sans Muscles, on their own Vulva Records before disbanding in 1995.

Over the next 30 years, the band members split off into a disparate web of careers, including but not limited to yoga instructing, graphic design, law, and journalism. But the music remained, especially for Stroughter, who continued to record and release as P.S. I Love You, even recruiting Crush bassist Echlin to play drums on some tracks.

Eventually, the group settled in different parts of the country. In 2017, years after his last communication with anyone from Majesty Crush, David Stroughter was killed by police in El Segundo. Stroughter’s mental health continued to decline throughout the aughts, and his nomadic lifestyle made it difficult for him to regularly have access to his medications. While the LA County District Attorney deemed the police’s use of their guns lawful, the need for such force remains heavily debated, making this another case of unnecessarily escalated police violence against people of color.

And now, in 2024, Numero Group is offering listeners the most comprehensive collection of Majesty Crush music ever. In 2019, it was revealed that Stroughter had left Majesty Crush master tapes in an old roommate’s closet and had asked his sister to be the custodian of his music. Without realizing it, Stroughter left the rest of Majesty Crush (and the world) a gift he never could have anticipated.

With this reissue, Majesty Crush’s discography is newly available to day-one fans who remember seeing them live in Detroit all those years ago, as well as newfound shoegazers hungry for more sounds. This is especially true as the shoegaze genre is enjoying a renaissance, thanks in part to TikTok, opening the door for Majesty Crush to finally get their long-deserved recognition. Some would argue that a shoegaze resurgence and social media virality was exactly what Majesty Crush desperately needed back in the ‘90s (I can see the ‘Our label closed right after our debut album dropped’ multi-part TikTok series so clearly), but it came at the price of Stroughter losing his life, prompting the discovery of these masters. Now, Stroughter isn’t here to see how many new ears have found his music and are moved by his gutturally passionate vocals and ultra-specific storytelling. It’s heartbreaking to think that Majesty Crush’s “time” came after they lost the man who tied them all together and became the beacon of their sound.

Butterflies Don’t Go Away takes listeners on Majesty Crush’s tumultuous journey through early versions of Love 15 tracks (“No. 1 Fan - EP Version,” “Horse - EP Version,” “Purr 7” Version”), their first-ever release (“Sunny Pie”), and songs from the post-label shuttering EP Sans Muscles. Through these tracks, we see a band finding, then possibly attempting to change, their sound. The humble basement beginnings are clear on the noisiest tracks like the 7” version of “Purr” and the EP rendition of “No. 1 Fan,” but the stars align on Love 15 tracks like “Boyfriend” and “Grow.” The group’s post-label loss anguish clearly rips through Sans Muscles songs like “Seine” and “Ghost of Fun.”

On Love 15, “Purr” is a minute-long cascade akin to Pink Floyd’s “Breathe (In the Air),” however, on the 7” rendition, we hear the song as it was originally released: as a four-minute single, complete with expansive, brain-scratching guitar textures. While the single version of “Cicciolina,” a song Stroughter wrote about an Italian porn star, is sauntering, moody, and slowed, the album version more fully encapsulates the rage-meets-desire feeling Stroughter felt for this woman, with Mike Segal’s crunchy and grating guitar, Hobey Echlin’s hypnotic bass lines, and Odell Nails’ pulsing backing rhythms propelling the track forward.

Stroughter escalates the idea of female obsession throughout these songs, with most lyrics toeing the line of a twisted psycho-sexual fantasy. These songs are often the darkest yet poppiest tracks, which was at the heart of Majesty Crush’s approach to songwriting: take these pop sensibilities, blow them out, and then share your deepest, darkest secrets on top of them.

While researching this piece, I found myself so consumed by everything about Majesty Crush’s music and story that I eventually came into contact with bassist Hobey Echlin. I got to speak with him in March and hear his perspective on the group’s writing processes and how it feels to reenter the musical conversation. On Stroughter’s lyricism, Echlin told me, “No one could write about having a crush in such a multidimensional way.”

“Boyfriend” starts Love 15 off with a thesis statement about torturing and killing a girl’s partner so she would fall for Stroughter instead. The scene-setting in this song alone highlights the rapid escalation of Stroughter’s internal monologue, with the opening lines explaining that he sees this beautiful girl on the train and immediately spirals into an internal dialogue of ‘Why is she with that guy when she can be with me?’ He uses his wit to prove he is superior (her boyfriend apparently can’t even get her soup order right: “He’ll bring you minestrone when you want egg drop”—Stroughter would never do that). But it doesn’t stop there: the next two songs are also about crazed feminine obsession. There’s “Uma,” presumably about actress Uma Thurman, then “No. 1 Fan,” the band’s most popular song that takes inspiration from John Hinkcley Jr.’s obsession with Jodie Foster, leading to his attempt at assassinating Ronald Reagan (depicted in on-the-nose lyrics “I’ll kill the president (For your love)”). Both tracks are all-consuming and massive; on “Uma,” Segal breaks into psychedelic guitar passes that sound like so much more than just the distortion, tremolo, and delay effects he stuck with. Meanwhile, “No. 1 Fan” completely immerses the listener into its crazed, modern-day stan POV through Stroughter’s desperate wails, Nails’ deep drum textures, and Echlin’s melodic bass tying the whole thing together. Other tracks hit on this theme, including “Seles,” “Grow,” and “Horse.” Even “Sunny Pie,” the first song Majesty Crush ever released, was about an experience with a girl working at an adult book store.

The truest peek inside Stroughter’s mind listeners ever get in the Majesty Crush discography is “Brand,” a middle-of-the-A-side track that Echlin recently called “a step away from album filler” in an interview with Stained Glass Stories. In speaking with him, he clarified that he was mainly talking about the repetition in the instrumentation, saying, “Musically, it’s not the one with the fireworks, but lyrically, it's the most down-to-earth and personable, and it's Dave turning his lens on himself.” This track is one of my personal highlights, featuring Stroughter delivering a confessional of his everyday existence rather than spinning the narrative onto his latest craze. “I’m always so fucking drunk / I wake up with a bottle in my hands / I go to bed with a bottle touching my lips” paints the perfect picture of a man clinging to his vices to get through the day-to-day. The repetition, both lyrically and instrumentally, is overtaking, with Stroughter’s echoing vocals sweeping around listeners. These crisp deliveries also set Majesty Crush apart from the other shoegaze groups at the time: where many were mumbling through fragmented lines, Stroughter was telling a whole story, creating an entire atmosphere, and you could actually understand what he was saying. The emotions in his voice cut through your ears and go straight to your heart. “Brand,” specifically, is even more profound now as we look back, as it’s one of the most authentic looks into Stroughter’s mind that we will ever receive.

Fundamentally, Majesty Crush wrote pop songs. The group approached songwriting in three elements: Part, Break, and Window, each time taking little liberties and twisting the structure in unique ways. Echlin compared their process to riffing off of an idea, continuing to make it better and take it farther. The most important part of a Majesty Crush song, in my opinion, is the Window: the chance for the cathartic and anthemic release that often comes at the end of their tracks. The perfect example of this songwriting approach is “Penny For Love,” a song that gives the same feeling as The Smiths doing a rendition of The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven.” One of the most straightforward tracks on the record, the up-tempo melodies and catchy guitar riffs mask the story of prostitution hidden in the lyrics. But you can hear the release in Stroughter’s vocals, the overflow and sighs he adds to lines like “Cause honey tastes so good.” Penultimate track, “Feigned Sleep,” is at the other end of this spectrum: it’s one of the most expansive tracks on the record that still utilizes the Part/Break/Window song structure. It sends the same shiver down my spine that I get when listening to something like “Jesus Christ” by Brand New, with the rhythm section acting as the song’s heartbeat. The repetitive drawl of the guitar and vocals builds a gripping intensity to the end of the song. The catharsis eventually overflows as backing vocals, drilling drum patterns, intricate bass runs, and circling guitar riffs layer on top of each other, emphasizing how Majesty Crush can take anything standardly pop and make it their own.

The tracks off of Sans Muscles see the repercussions of the post-shoegaze musical landscape Majesty Crush found themselves in by 1994. Grunge was taking over, and you can hear the pressure to be heavier on songs like “Seine,” which sounds like an alternate rendition of Nirvana’s “Scentless Apprentice.” Then there’s “Ghost of Fun,” which utilizes electronic patterns, hinting at a possible future direction the band could have taken. Left with nothing after Dali folded, Majesty Crush took out their frustrations through brooding backbeats, heavy guitars, and Dave’s aggression tying it all together. The group got meta with it, too. Take “If JFA Were Still Together,” a track that combines Deftones-esque blown-out drums juxtaposed with a melodic bass and glittering poppy guitars. Echlin says the track was their ‘what if’ moment after losing it all at the end of ‘93: “It’s kind of like, what happens when your favorite band breaks up? You lose your sense, you lose your bearings.”

“Space Between Your Moles” sounds the most like a Love 15 b-side, with lyrics even calling back to the debut as Stroughter delicately intones, “15 for you and love for the space between your moles.” The track has a Mazzy Star-type of relaxation, sounding like the closest thing Majesty Crush would ever get to a shoegaze ballad. Another instance of Majesty Crush simultaneously fitting into these rock niches and defying the category completely. Echlin says the Sans Muscles tracks were “the logical progression of Majesty Crush,” the emotionally charged next step that propelled them into this angrier sound while still keeping their shoegaze mastery close.

Butterflies Don’t Go Away perfectly encapsulates the Majesty Crush story: from noisy basement beginnings to the moments it all came together, and what happens in the aftermath of having the rug pulled out from under you. In speaking with Echlin, he told me he loves the Numero repress because it “gives just as much emphasis to the footnotes of our career as our big stuff,” offering listeners a chance to hear their trajectory in real-time. Stroughter had said, “If anything happens to me, I just want my music to be heard.” While he’s not here to see it, it’s nice to know that his music is finally reaching more ears and finding its audience. There’s now a whole new generation of shoegazers finding their solace in David Stroughter’s immersive storytelling and the sonic journey of Majesty Crush.

Cassidy is a music writer and cultural researcher currently based in Brooklyn. She loves many things, including but not limited to rabbit holes, Caroline Polachek, blueberry pancakes, her cat Seamus, and adding to her record collection. She is on Twitter @cassidynicolee_, and you can check out more of her writing on Medium.

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Butterflies Don’t Go Away: Majesty Crush’s Long-awaited Moment