Slowdive - Pop dreams in slow motion

Slowdive represented the most romantic wing of the “shoegazer” movement. In many ways, they were perhaps the single most significant band of this particular style, which characterized a large part of British pop-rock between the Eighties and the Nineties. Even more than My Bloody Valentine - too ingenious and original to be fully pigeonholed into any single movement - Slowdive were the band that best married the dense guitar interplay that defined the "shoegazer" sound (the name referred to the introverted attitude of those bands - think of Ride, Swervedriver, Pale Saints, Lush, Curve, Sundial, alongside the masters My Bloody Valentine) with a simple pop-rock of crystalline beauty and melodic preciousness.

It's 1989 when three kids from Reading - barely out of their teens - form Slowdive; Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell on vocals and guitars, Nick Chaplin on bass (the band's name was in fact inspired by a dream the bassist had, not, as one might assume, by the famous Siouxsie song). Drummer Adrian Sell and third guitarist Christian Savill soon join the fold. Their first demo, containing two tracks (“Beach Song” and “Take Me Down”), immediately aligns them with the shoegazer-rooted rock that was living its golden age in those years: the two leaders' enchanted whispers are regularly submerged beneath the exhausting feedback of the guitars and the punk drive of the rhythm section.

In 1990, Slowdive sign to Alan McGee's Creation label - the same label that released My Bloody Valentine - and put out their first, self-titled EP. More than the title track, alluring but still immature, it's the b-side “Avalyn” that makes an impression: with this rarefied, extremely slow track, Slowdive inaugurate a far more personal style, one whose majesty carries the marks of harrowing solitude and total defeat. The music advances as if in a trance, wrapped in a milky fog, the voices barely standing out, yet possessing an exceptional evocative power. Distant and enveloping, Slowdive's rock begins to soar to unheard-of heights, marking the ideal meeting point between dark moods, the “shoegazer” attitude and the dream-pop of Cocteau Twins.

The second EP, Morningrise (1991), perfects the formula and is the first in a long series of extraordinary masterpieces produced within the span of a single year by the band. Neil Carter is now on drums, since Adrian Sell preferred to leave the project to finish university. The three tracks on this EP immediately mark a formal and emotional milestone. “Morningrise” is simply disarming, a celestial, disconsolate ballad of rare beauty; but it's the remaining two tracks that push their sound to its furthest extremes: “Losing Today” is lost in a deeply gloomy stasis, in suffocating, motionless darkness, sung in barely a whisper, the words becoming almost incomprehensible, carried along by a breath of wind. But alongside this long, slow nightmare there's also the dazzling fairy tale of “She Calls”: the three guitars weave their distortions until they become pure ambient sound, as do the crystalline voices of the two leaders, wonderful in their naivety and spontaneity. It's also the first track to feature their trademark instrumental “tails”, swirling, magical rides of sound that move from rock into the purely abstract.

A few months later, and after another drummer change (now it's Simon Scott), the band releases their third EP, Holding Our Breath, which features their classic “Shine”: amid angelic voices, sugary harmonies and chiming guitars, it's the zenith of their naive, dreamy romanticism. But what truly stands out is rather the lofty suggestiveness offered by the ambient prayer “Albatross” (Halstead sings while the music seems to mimic waves breaking against a cliff) and by their absolute masterpiece “Catch The Breeze”. The icing on the cake is their personal version of “Golden Hair”, a James Joyce poem already set to music by Syd Barrett on his “Madcap Laughs”.

Everything is thus ready for the debut album, eagerly awaited by critics and audiences alike (the indie charts rewarded the singles “Morningrise” and “Shine” more than satisfactorily), which duly arrives in September 1991. Just For A Day proves to be even better than expected, a work of incredible maturity and cohesion for a band of inexperienced kids barely in their twenties. But Halstead's talent - one of the “purest” songwriters to emerge in the Nineties - is innate, and here finds its best possible expression: hence the long march of “Spanish Air”, punctuated by near-progressive tones and carried by a majestic, indescribably beautiful arrangement; and again the dreamy vignettes of “Celia's Dream” and “Brighter”, two nearly perfect melodies; the sweet ambient interlude of “Erik's Song” and the pure abstraction of “The Sadman” and the already-mentioned “Catch the Breeze”, the solemn prayer of “Waves” and the deeply sad “Ballad of Sister Sue”, right up to the devastating closer entrusted to “Primal”, whose elegant, subdued melancholy first half gives way to a tragic, fiery instrumental coda.

An absolutely stunning record, the fullest and most accomplished expression of their “impressionist” rock, Just For A Day stands, alongside the contemporaneous “Loveless” by My Bloody Valentine, as the absolute masterpiece of “shoegazing”. Compared to Kevin Shields's band, Slowdive sound far less inventive, but also much deeper and more “existential”. Slowdive draw on the most evocative styles of their era to offer listeners something of pure, immense beauty. A sublime fusion of ethereal sweetness, inconsolable sadness and naive romanticism, Slowdive's art goes well beyond the merely musical. It's an art of atmospheres and distant suggestions, a “pictorial” art more than a musical one. And, no small matter, their melodies are among the most splendid offered by English pop in the Nineties.

Meanwhile, Creation capitalizes on the buzz generated by the album and in 1992 releases Blue Day, which collects tracks from the three EPs. In the meantime, the group hires a new drummer - yet another one - Ian McCutcheon, replacing the departed Simon Scott.

The following year the band arrives at its second album, Souvlaki, for which even his majesty Brian Eno goes out of his way, taking part as keyboardist on two tracks on his own initiative, after having repeatedly voiced his unconditional admiration for the group (“these kids are geniuses,” Eno said on more than one occasion). The record marks a clear evolution toward more “traditional”, less abstract territory compared to the past. “Alison” marries their style to a traditional pop imprint reminiscent of the Byrds, while the heavenly vocals of “Machine Gun” harken back - uniquely on this record - to the dense, rarefied dreamlike flights of their previous albums. Serving as the turning point toward more experimental sounds is “Sing”, branded by Brian Eno's electronic machines, which nonetheless showcases one of their most alluring, hypnotic chants. Halstead also begins exploring his “future” as a folk-country-leaning singer-songwriter, with “Dagger” (entirely acoustic) and “Here She Comes” (built around slide guitars blended with Eno's keyboards). Rounding out the record are the lengthy “Souvlaki Space Station”, a powerful groove and disoriented guitars providing the backdrop to Rachel Goswell's rapturous vocals, and the song that probably represents the band's zenith, “When The Sun Hits”.

Souvlaki's only flaw is that it explores too many paths without settling on a precise identity. The compactness and uniqueness of the sound of their earlier work and debut album seem to have been sacrificed for the sake of a fascinating, but at times uninspired, search. The album, moreover, faces distribution troubles that considerably hamper its reach in the US.

Meanwhile, with the EP In Mind (1994), Halstead toys with ambient music, but his attempt to emulate their standout fan Brian Eno proves a bit half-baked. Standing out, however, is the gorgeous exotic detour of "Country Rain". Three tracks from this EP would be tacked on as bonus tracks to the American edition of Souvlaki, which finally comes out in 1994.

Things, however, no longer seem to be going the band's way: Creation is giving them less and less support (and the same goes for all the other "shoegazers") in order to focus instead on promoting the far more marketable Oasis. And the Gallagher brothers' rise was the unmistakable sign that time was up for the shy, intimate dream of the shoegazers.

Halstead then stubbornly chooses the path of ever bolder experimentation, a move that doesn't sit well with either boss Alan McGee or bandmates Nick Chaplin and Chris Savill, who end up leaving the group in the middle of recording the third album, Pygmalion, released in 1995 at the height of Oasis-mania, and consequently all but ignored by critics and public alike. Wrongly so, because the record turns out to be a goldmine of ideas: sounds and voices are manipulated in a way not so far removed from what Radiohead would do, with far greater fortune and media attention, a few years later. The "ambient" pop Halstead dreamed of comes to fruition on tracks like "Crazy For You", which loops the same chord and the same phrase, repeated by Halstead like a mantra, for six minutes: the effect is disorienting, hypnotic, gorgeous. A brief spell of just a few chords and a few words, endlessly repeated in a thoroughly "alien" atmosphere: it's around this idea that this difficult record is built, admirable for its courage, for its almost suicidally anti-commercial stubbornness. "Blue Skied and Clear" is yet another Halstead masterpiece, in which, amid the riot of loops and electronic treatments, he still finds time to flirt again with folk, a genre he's increasingly drawn to, first through the acoustic minimalism of the spectral "Miranda" and "J's Heaven", then through the understated "All of Us", a fitting swan song for the Slowdive adventure. Because, naturally, with Britpop raging loudly out there, what use could Alan McGee possibly have for a record and a band like this? So, right on cue, Creation drops Slowdive, who, reduced to a trio (Halstead, Goswell, McCutcheon), rightly choose to turn the page completely.

Signed by the ever-visionary Ivo Watts-Russell, legendary "patron" of 4AD (the label synonymous with Eighties dream-pop), what remains of Slowdive changes its name to Mojave 3 and sheds its skin in favour of a delicate folk-rock, only faintly tainted by the faintest echoes of the past. But that's an entirely different story, one that has no wish - and no way - to erase the indelible memory of Slowdive, one of the most influential and luminous shooting stars ever to appear in the firmament of British pop.

2017 marks the much-anticipated return of the English band after two decades. Slowdive, released on Dead Oceans, picks up the thread of "Pygmalion", chasing the melodic allure of ambient pop, but this time with a more circular, less foggy structure. The album roots its character in somewhat shaky dream-pop territory, worn down by the test of time. We've heard plenty of tracks like "Star Roving" in recent years. Just think of the indie-rock trends that found, along the road of post-punk and shoegaze, a harbour from which to launch fleets of ideas that often drift, not infrequently, into one giant question mark. "Sugar For The Pill", the band's second single, fares better, putting Nick Chaplin's bass on full display as it wraps around a hazy melody indebted to a certain strain of Eighties pop-rock.

"Slomo" is a solemn track, with drums creating spatial echoes and a heavy use of guitars generating a constant distortion that shapes the space, lending it a primal atmosphere in which Rachel's voice only dominates in the final section, fluttering among chords as seductive as Liz Fraser's. "Everyone Knows" initially seems tempted by some of the indie-pop melodies typical of Blueboy, but then veers into a breath-catching shoegaze whirlwind.

The last three tracks, marked by a noticeable fatigue, offer up post-rock passages and fairly superfluous psychedelic digressions.

The second album since the reunion, and the fifth overall in their career excluding EPs, Everything Is Alive (Dead Oceans, 2023) is the record you'd never have expected from Slowdive, yet it's not at all surprising that they made it. If anything, it astonishes more with every listen. That's the first impression left by the opener "Shanty", which recovers the more electronic sounds from the "Souvlaki" and "Pygmalion" demos and turns them into near-EDM flights that open the door for the whole band to come in.

The record brings together a series of electronic sketches, drafted by Neil Halstead and developed with the other members of the group and sound engineer Ian Davenport at Courtyard Studios in Abingdon, where Slowdive had recorded every album since their debut - an environment so familiar that even the same old sofa was still there. Then it was a matter of revisiting the recordings, going back into the control room, doing a stint at Church Studios in Leicestershire, and mixing in Los Angeles with Shawn Everett (War On Drugs, Beck, Killers).

While the band was saying they had a whole album ready, the public's appetite grew with the release of the single/video "Kisses" (shot in Naples!), an electro-pop track that gives off a grown-up lightness reminiscent of the more recent songs of Everything But The Girl.

Then there are the ballads, very Slowdive in character but full of echoes of the early, gentle guitar architectures of Mogwai ("Prayer Remembered") or of the rarefied rhythms of Cure's "Faith" (1981, Fiction/Polydor), marking time for the acoustic guitar's strumming, as well as sweeping sonic surges tempered by pop rather than rock ("Alife", "The Slab"). The tracks thus trace a dynamic, surprising and intense path, working both in sequence and as standalone pieces.

Drawing on the parallel musical experiences of, above all, Mojave 3 and Minor Victories, the album takes risks ("Chained To A Cloud") and offers comfort ("Skin In The Game"), wrapping everything in a warm sound made of electronics, electric guitars, bass and drums, all naturally "soaked" in reverb and ambient effects. It retains the ability to renew itself while knowing exactly who it is and what its emotional bond with the music it makes is, turning it into a craft - the experience built up over the years is palpable - while still sharing "my innermost thoughts", as Martin Gore sang in a famous Depeche Mode ballad.

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