The Slowdive appreciation thread (Read 9,710 times)

[matt]

I've only heard a few songs from Slowdive but Star Roving is one heck of a tune.

[Lennon2217]

Slowdive delivered a better comeback single than The Stone Roses that is for sure.

[Deleted]

Kept seeing this thread for a while, listened to a couple of Slowdive tracks mentioned here for the first time on Wednesday, thought they were good (ta people who keep bumping this thread    ), found their 3 albums for a tenner on Friday, just finished listening to them now

- First listens, all of the albums sound great, like the varied atmospheres of each song as it evolves.
- Just For A Day// Flows well, not too memorable though imo.
- Souvlaki// Souvlaki Space Station, from the moment I heard that track, worth the tenner on its own and then some Most of the rest of the album doesn't do much for me though except Sing and Melon Yellow.
- Pygmalion// My favourite of the three by a mile on first listens, doesn't feel like a collection of self contained structured songs, more like a beautiful free flowing mood thingy.   (Rutti in particular)

[Deleted]

This new single is so fucking good. I have to admit I still haven't heard most of their older songs but this new one is really something else in today's world. I rarely hear modern songs I like immediately as much as this one.

I'm a huge Stone Roses fan but Star Roving is better than their comeback singles.

[glider]

Slowdive Announce North American Tour: Beginning May 2nd.



pitchfork.com/news/70966-slowdive-announce-tour/

[carlober]

Just the weight of the water drags me down. Again.

[mimmihopps]

Just heard "Star Roving" for the first time and I absolute love it.

[glider]

Jan 23, 2017 16:38:59 GMT -5 carlober said:

Just the weight of the water drags me down. Again.

Listening to this as I write the post. If I could fall in love with a song, it would be this one. Rachel's vocals along with Neil's harmonics, the atmospheric droning and acoustic guitar echoing throughout is lovely. 

[carlober]

Jan 27, 2017 18:53:29 GMT -5 glider said:

Jan 23, 2017 16:38:59 GMT -5 carlober said:

Just the weight of the water drags me down. Again.

Listening to this as I write the post. If I could fall in love with a song, it would be this one. Rachel's vocals along with Neil's harmonics, the atmospheric droning and acoustic guitar echoing throughout is lovely. 

I feel you. It's one of the most hauntingly beautiful songs ever created.

[mimmihopps]

Jan 23, 2017 16:38:59 GMT -5 carlober said:

Just the weight of the water drags me down. Again.

True beauty.

[carlober]

Slowdive are filming a music video, by the looks of it.
I hope that another new track is coming, it's been nearly two months since Star Roving and they're playing some shows this month.

http://instagram.com/p/BRG-9BHlMfa

[Deleted]

I think I have decided what my absolute favorite tune by Slowdive is. It's...



Can listen to it endlessly.

[carlober]

Slowdive teasing again...

Rachel said that they're doing a Facebook live thing next Wednesday... album announcement?

[carlober]

ALBUM ANNOUNCEMENT!

Slowdive's new album is out May 5th (little more than a month to wait, yay!), and it's apparently called 'Slowdive'.

Tracklist:
1. Slomo
2. Star Roving
3. Don't Know Why
4. Sugar for the Pill
5. Everyone Knows
6. No Longer Making Time
7. Go Get It
8. Falling Ashes

“It felt like we were in a movie that had a totally implausible ending...”

Slowdive’s second act as a live blockbuster has already been rapturously received around the world. Highlights thus far include a festival-conquering, sea-of-devotees Primavera Sound performance, of which Pitchfork noted: “The beauty of their crystalline sound is almost hard to believe, every note in its perfect place.”

“It was just nice to realise that there was a decent amount of interest in it,” says principal songwriter Neil Halstead. The UK shoegaze pioneers have now channelled such seemingly impossible belief into a fourth studio opus which belies his characteristic modesty. Self-titled with quiet confidence, Slowdive’s stargazing alchemy is set to further entrance the faithful while beguiling a legion of fresh ears.

Deftly swerving what co-vocalist/guitarist Rachel Goswell terms “a trip down memory lane”, these eight new tracks are simultaneously expansive and the sonic pathfinders’ most direct material to date. Birthed at the band’s talismanic Oxfordshire haunt The Courtyard – “It felt like home,” enthuses guitarist Christian Savill – their diamantine melodies were mixed to a suitably hypnotic sheen at Los Angeles’ famed Sunset Sound facility by Chris Coady (perhaps best known for his work with Beach House, one of countless contemporary acts to have followed in Slowdive’s wake).

“It’s poppier than I thought it was going to be,” notes Halstead, who was the primary architect of 1995‘s previous full-length transmission Pygmalion. This time out the group dynamic was all-important. “When you’re in a band and you do three records, there’s a continuous flow and a development. For us, that flow re-started with us playing live again and that has continued into the record.”

Drummer and loop conductor Simon Scott enhanced the likes of ‘Slomo’ and ‘Falling Ashes’ with abstract textures conjured via his laptop’s signal processing software. A fecund period of experimentation with “40-minute iPhone jams” allowed the unit to then amplify the core of their chemistry. “Neil is such a gifted songwriter, so the songs won. He has these sparks of melodies, like ‘Sugar For The Pill’ and ‘Star Roving’, which are really special. But the new record still has a toe in that Pygmalion sound. In the future, things could get very interesting indeed.”

This open-channel approach to creativity is reflected by Slowdive’s impressively wide field of influence, from indie-rock avatars to ambient voyagers – see the tribute album of cover versions released by Berlin electronic label Morr Music. As befits such evocative visionaries, you can also hear Slowdive through the silver screen: New Queer Cinema trailblazer Gregg Araki has featured them on the soundtracks to no less than four of his films.

“When I moved to America in 2008 I was working in an organic grocery store,” recalls Christian. “Kids started coming in and asking if it was true I had played in Slowdive. That’s when I started thinking, ‘OK, this is weird!’”

Neil Halstead: “We were always ambitious. Not in terms of trying to sell records, but in terms of making interesting records. Maybe, if you try and make interesting records, they’re still interesting in a few years time. I don’t know where we’d have gone if we had carried straight on. Now we’ve picked up a different momentum. It’s intriguing to see where it goes next.”

The world has finally caught up with Slowdive. This movie could run and run...

pre-order (official store): kontraband.store/slowdive/

[carlober]

And the new single 'Sugar for the Pill' is simply gorgeous...

[Lennon2217]

Not gonna lie. Didn't think much of these reunion news or speculation but the two tracks I've heard have been excellent. A big surprise for sure. No pressure Stone Roses.

[glider]

Only six other new tracks?   Hopefully they do a TKOL and release a remix album or extra material afterwards. 

'Sugar for the Pill' is great - sounds like Pygmalion with a modern touch - in a good way! 

EDIT: Reminded myself that Slowdive records are usually 9-10 tracks, still wish we had another 2 at least! 

[carlober]

I'm totally in love with 'Sugar for the Pill'.

I don't usually like listening to songs on repeat, but when it ends I just want to give it another spin.

It's almost flawless (I say almost because I still can't hear Rachel enough).
Little moments that get me every time:
1) when the bass kicks in around 20 seconds in;
2) those synths at 1:00;
3) Nick Halstead's delay-dense riff after each line in the verses throughout the song (e.g. 1:05);
4) the dreamy instrumental break starting at 1:38 (wow!).

It sounds very fresh and modern overall, it may sound a bit different but it still feels like Slowdive. Totally.

[carlober]

Tonight's intimate London gig is live on Facebook NOW! glider

It sounds amazing.

www.facebook.com/Slowdive/videos/10155203295007754/


EDIT: reading the comments by some casual facebook users is hilarious: "guitars are too loud" and "I can't make out lyrics" are my favorite ones so far

[glider]

Mar 29, 2017 15:19:44 GMT -5 carlober said:

Tonight's intimate London gig is live on Facebook NOW! glider

It sounds amazing.

www.facebook.com/Slowdive/videos/10155203295007754/


EDIT: reading the comments by some casual facebook users is hilarious: "guitars are too loud" and "I can't make out lyrics" are my favorite ones so far

Facebook link seems dead but someone uploaded to YouTube (not the best quality):

[carlober]

Nice article on The Guardian:

The unlikely renaissance of Slowdive: ‘Shoegaze became the genre of ridicule’
Twenty years after a Britpop-obsessed music press drove them out of town, the re-formed band’s sound can be heard in the music of everyone from Tame Impala to the 1975. Not that their kids are impressed.

Rachel Goswell can’t pinpoint the exact moment the music press turned on Slowdive. But she knows it was sometime between 1991, when Melody Maker described an early EP as “impossible, immaculate and serene”, and 1993, when a writer from the same publication said he would “rather drown choking in a bath full of porridge” than listen to their music again.

“It was the first album, wasn’t it?” she asks her bandmates. This is the first time the five of them have done an interview together since the mid-90s, when their career, at first so bristling with potential, fizzled to an end. “It was definitely a really quick turnaround,” nods guitarist Neil Halstead. It was a vicious one, too.

Both Goswell and Halstead were barely out of school when they formed Slowdive in 1989, recruiting drummer Adrian Sell (who left six months later, and was replaced by Simon Scott) and his friend Nick Chaplin on guitar. Christian Savill was the only person to respond to an advert for a female guitarist, so they hired him to complete the lineup.

The band’s woozy, immersive early EPs were met with widespread acclaim. Theirs was a wall of noise you could sink into; a soundscape where no one instrument – not even the voice – was given special billing. There were melodies in there, but they were elusive and unshowy, much like the band’s members. Slowdive were shy, self-effacing teenagers who were, Halstead says, “semi-embarrassed” by the pedestal they were put on. And then, without much warning, they were booted off it.

Almost as soon as it was given a name, shoegaze – so called because of the bands’ tendency to look down at the floor during live shows – became what Goswell describes with a tone of faux self-pity, “the genre of ridicule”. Slowdive’s introspective stage presence was rebranded as self-indulgent and superior, and they were dismissed as middle-class musicians with nothing to say. Manic Street Preachers’ Richey Edwards declared, “I hate Slowdive more than Hitler,” and the band became an easy target for derision. In a world in which NME and Melody Maker were the major tastemakers for anyone who cared about guitar music, it was no longer cool to be a Slowdive fan.

“It almost overtook the music,” says Chaplin, “in that you’re trying to put out records, you’re doing it seriously, and then every week you’ve got this constant mocking in the press.” The final death knell came during a show in Coventry, when Savill looked out into the audience, “and there was a woman just mopping the floor.” Chaplin remembers it, too. “That’s when I thought: ‘I’d better get a job.’”

Although Goswell seems largely unfazed by the ordeal – “People had just moved on, hadn’t they?” she says with a shrug – there was one aspect to the backlash that still infuriates her: the assumption that “we were all really, really rich”. It was, she insists, “a load of bollocks. I don’t know why they thought we were so posh. None of us are from rich backgrounds, none of us went to private schools. That side of it was really frustrating. It wasn’t helped by the fact that you two both had classic cars,” she says, gesturing towards Halstead and Chaplin, “and we posed for a photo with those.”

It wasn’t helped either by the arrival of Britpop. Bands such as Oasis, Blur and Suede brought a punchy directness that made shoegaze seem, well, a little bit fey. There was a machismo in their music, too. “It was very laddy,” says Goswell of the Britpop scene. Shoegaze, adds Halstead, “wasn’t necessarily about rock posturing. It wasn’t foot-on-the-monitor stuff, it wasn’t macho stuff.”

By the mid-90s, macho stuff was what was selling records. Labelmates Oasis, as leaders of the erupting Britpop scene, became one of Creation Records’ most lucrative acts, while Slowdive were increasingly a source of frustration. Creation’s founder, Alan McGee, hauled the band into a meeting and told them that their next record must be a pop record. Did they take his orders on board? “No, not at all,” Halstead says, bluntly. “We weren’t capable of making a pop record at that point.” Instead, they made Pygmalion, an ambient, experimental step towards electronic music, and about as far from pop as it’s possible to get. A week after its release in February 1995, Creation dropped Slowdive, and they broke up.

Still, Halstead is adamant the band had run its course. “We had a pretty good time for six years. I don’t think we ever felt that we were short-changed in terms of getting the audience that we deserved. When we got dropped by Creation, we’d all, in a personal way, reached the end of our time.” Goswell splutters out a somewhat loaded laugh. She and Halstead were in a relationship when Slowdive formed, and their break-up was, by all accounts, a tricky obstacle for the band to navigate. “We certainly had,” she says.

The group’s hesitancy to reunite, though, wasn’t because of fractured relationships – those had long since been repaired by the time 2014 rolled around – but a refusal to believe how immensely popular they had become in the meantime. “People were telling us: ‘There’ll be tons of people who want to see you, it’s gonna be really successful, your appeal’s grown,’” Chaplin says. “And we were like, ‘Really?’ I think we still have a bit of a hangover from the 90s. Even though the evidence is there in front of us, we don’t necessarily believe it.” Eventually, though, an offer to perform at the Primavera Sound festival in Spain – and the discovery that “we didn’t all hate each other when we were in the same room together” – led to the reunion fans had been hoping for. When they walked out onstage, says Scott, it was “to 25,000 people, and we all had a little cry”.

“I think it was double that, Simon,” Goswell says.

“Really? Well, let’s underplay it. 25,000’s not bad.”

“But all we see,” says Halstead, “is that woman with the mop cleaning, wherever we go.”

It might have taken Slowdive a little while to see it, but in 2017, shoegaze’s influence is greater than ever. It lurks in the crunch of every distortion pedal, the drone of every fuzzy guitar riff, the hues of every mumbled melody. It’s in the music of DIIV, Deerhunter, Tame Impala, Grizzly Bear, Unknown Mortal Orchestra and countless others, even the 1975 on their ambient interludes. The years have eroded the snark, and today, shoegaze is looked upon with a sense of reverie, even by those who missed it the first time around.

But when Slowdive re-formed three years ago, it was never with the intention of being a nostalgia act. “Right from the start,” Chaplin says, “we didn’t just want to be playing a load of [old] songs to people our age. We talked about doing new music even before we’d rehearsed.” The question was, Scott says, “whether we could get that vibe together, and have something that we feel is fresh and worthy of releasing”.

With their fourth album, Slowdive, they have done just that. With hazy melodies enveloped in layers of guitar-drenched noise, it is closer in sound to 1994’s Souvlaki than it is to Pygmalion. But it is resolutely its own beast – faster and with a more crystallised potency than anything they have released before. With this album, Slowdive have managed that trickiest of feats – to take a genre rooted in time and place, and make something vibrant and new from it.

Where, then, do Slowdive go from here? Have they set goals for themselves – future albums, perhaps, or bigger tours? “I don’t particularly have a goal,” says Goswell, after a moment’s pause. “I think we’re incredibly lucky to be able to do this, actually. I think we all appreciate it a lot more now than we did back then. That just comes with age and, I don’t know, not taking drugs any more.”

Chaplin agrees, although his goal is for his children to understand Slowdive’s place in the world of music. “They’re not remotely interested,” he says. “They just see their dad going away again. They try and explain to their friends at school: ‘Oh, he plays guitar in a band.’ And it’s like: ‘Is he gonna play in the pub where we live?’ Because people just assume that if you’re in a band, you’re just gonna be playing in a pub.”

“We probably will be,” says Halstead. That mop obviously left a scar.

link: www.theguardian.com/music/2017/mar/30/the-unlikely-renaissance-of-slowdive-shoegaze-became-the-genre-of-ridicule

[carlober]

Another interesting article from Crack Magazine (link: crackmagazine.net/article/music/features/slowdive-teenage-dreams-recovered/) which includes some details about the new album:

The album ranges from the shimmering dream-pop of Slomo to the haunting piano loops of the Erased Tapes-esque Falling Ashes, which picks up where the Steve Reich and New York minimalism-inspired Pygmalion left off. While not stylistically representative of the entire record, lead single Star Roving serves as an effective introduction to a richly melodic, intricately textured album, which also happens to be one of 2017’s finest.
While it’s wise to approach comeback albums with caution, the new Slowdive record feels like a fresh and vital addition to their discography, rather than a routine exercise in nostalgia.

[carlober]

New song 'No Longer Making Time' from yesterday's gig in Den Haag:

[carlober]

Live session and interview on BBC Radio 6:
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04z7dcv

[carlober]

Mar 28, 2017 16:24:46 GMT -5 glider said:

Only six other new tracks?   Hopefully they do a TKOL and release a remix album or extra material afterwards. 

'Sugar for the Pill' is great - sounds like Pygmalion with a modern touch - in a good way! 

EDIT: Reminded myself that Slowdive records are usually 9-10 tracks, still wish we had another 2 at least! 

I've just noticed that the Japanese edition has a bonus track, called '30th June'
link: www.indienative.com/2017/03/slowdive-22

Also, track lengths are up on iTunes:

1 Slomo 6:53
2 Star Roving 5:38
3 Don't Know Why 4:36
4 Sugar for the Pill 4:30
5 Everyone Knows 4:22
6 No Longer Making Time 5:48
7 Go Get It 6:09
8 Falling Ashes 8:00