Mojave 3

Rightly regarded as one of the emblematic bands of the shoegaze movement, alongside the likes of My Bloody Valentine, Ride and Catherine Wheel, Slowdive, led by Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell, have always pushed their melancholy dream in multiple directions. Even on the magical debut “Just For A Day” (Creation, 1991), it was clear that clouds of reverb and fleeting storms of noise were only one of the tools the Reading band used to build dreams painted in music the way William Turner might have painted them. Though more conventionally shoegaze, the follow-up masterpiece, “Souvlaki” (Creation, 1993), opened the door to neo-psychedelia and space-rock on tracks like “Souvlaki Space Station” and “When The Sun Hits”. The band's range of inspirations and possibilities then became even clearer on “Pygmalion” (Creation, 1995), the album that would bring the group's story to a close for a full 22 years, amid ambient-pop repetitions and electronic fade-outs.

That Halstead and Goswell, with the ethereal interplay of their voices and their unmatched ability to set dreams to music, could pull off other kinds of magic was obvious. Less clear was that these two English kids would end up going so far afield, all the way to the Californian desert that titles their second incarnation. Even less predictable was that, in these territories so far removed from their original principles, they would manage to create new masterpieces. But then, if there's one thing that knows no limits, it's the dreamer.

After the release of “Pygmalion”, Halstead saw in the abstractions of the newly released album a point of no return, and felt that the band's journey had come to an end. Almost as a way of detoxing from that kind of sound, he began listening to something completely different, soon immersing himself full-time in rediscovering essential songwriters like Nick Drake and Leonard Cohen, and before long finding his way into the dusty saloons of Townes Van Zandt and Gram Parsons. A return to the roots of songwriting that led him to pick up an acoustic guitar and write dozens upon dozens of songs, stripped of the electric armor of the shoegaze adventure.

Meanwhile Slowdive, not helped by the fact that they'd been dropped by Creation after the release of “Pygmalion”, were by now shelved. Still, Halstead kept in close touch with Rachel Goswell, practically his musical other half, and with Ian McCutcheon, the gentle-touch drummer who had replaced Simon Scott for Slowdive's last album (of that first era). Before long the two joined Neil at his home studio in West London and started working on the songs he had written. When the newborn outfit realized that what had begun as a kind of detox process for Halstead was in fact giving birth to a brand new band, they decided to record something more fully realized at Emi's studios, where they were joined by the talented session keyboardist Christopher Andrews.

When Ivo Watts-Russell found the first demo from Goswell and Halstead's new band on his desk, it still had no name. The tape was in fact credited to Slowdive, which is why the 4AD boss initially had no interest in listening to it, knowing the project had been dropped by Creation. Luckily, Russell eventually was persuaded to give it a listen. And he was immediately captivated. What carried him elsewhere were limpid guitar textures, country at heart but slow, achingly slow, like the most languid slowcore, ravishing vocal interplay as sweet as cream, and that unmistakable dreamlike atmosphere. A British route to the enchantments of Mazzy Star and the country transfigurations of Cowboy Junkies.

Russell was so taken with what he'd heard that he wanted to release it exactly as it was. It was Goswell who convinced him to wait a few months, so they could record a few more songs and put together a full LP. Having overcome his initial reluctance, the producer agreed to the singer's request. To record the final songs that would make up “Ask Me Tomorrow”, Chapterhouse guitarist Simon Rowe was brought into the studio, and he would go on to join the band as a permanent member. With an album essentially ready just 8 months after the release of “Pygmalion”, it was the autumn of 1995, and all the group needed now was a name. They settled on Mojave, a moniker suggested by a friend of the band and inspired by the wide-open, “desert-like” sound of its songs, while the 3 was added because of a naming clash with a German band.

Long, languid guitar notes, McCutcheon's brushed drumming, an unhurried tempo: it takes “Love Songs On The Radio” barely ten seconds to conjure a unique, striking atmosphere. It's one of those openers capable of building an entire universe, one in which the rest of the songs will move and other stories will come to life. Into this bright, open scene, where every sound spreads softly through unbounded space, comes the voice of Rachel Goswell, as bare as we'd never heard it (not even in the Slowdive days). Her words of unrequited love, as sweet as those of a radio love song, radiate a sugary, insinuating melancholy that you simply have to surrender to.

The following track, “Sarah”, is sung by Neil Halstead, but heartbreak, in the form of walls to hide behind and cry, and of piercing longing, remains the main ingredient of an alt-country ballad built on a crystalline interplay of guitar and piano. The emotional landscape doesn't shift, if anything it grows even more dramatic, under the moonlight of “Tomorrow's Taken”: Goswell has lost faith in tomorrow, with nothing left to do but think of love that once was, clinging to a bottle of wine (“I'll take another shot and think about you/ 'Cause a bottle of wine is all I have to hold”). Around the halfway point of the song, just as it seems ready to fade out, the piano and guitar step back and let Audrey Riley's cello dance to the sketched-out rhythm of the drums.

It’s Christmas again so we lit all the candles

And we tried to pretend that your room was a palace

But we can’t seem to shake off the fear

That nothing is different, that no-one has changed

Nothing has changed

Ever so slight, adorned as it is with high, barely-plucked acoustic guitar notes, the intro of “Candle Song 3” has an evocative power and an overwhelming ability to conjure vivid images in the listener's mind. We're in the warmth of Christmas candles, held close to someone whose fate is bound to ours, just as the guitar is bound to the piano, and Neil's prayer to Rachel's enchanted harmonies.

The theme of love running through the notes of the first four tracks on “Ask Me Tomorrow” also permeates the album's B-side, both in the delicate arpeggios of “You're Beautiful” and in the melancholy alt-country ballad “Pictures”; the dreamy sweetness conjured by the arrangements clashes with a deep, incurable yearning and with the intangible certainty that love, once spent, has gone out for good. “Where is the life that we had/ Where is the love”, ask the voices of Halstead and Goswell on “Where Is The Love”.

In this scenario, “After All” becomes a powerful manifesto of emotional resistance. Wrapped in a cloak of loneliness, the song lays bare, with disarming simplicity, a universal desire: the search for human warmth as a remedy to the darkness surrounding us:

After all we’re only looking for a light

Just someone to hold us close

After all we’re only looking for a love

Just something to make it right

The true rite of purification, however, takes place towards the end of the record. Thanks to the martial tread of the percussion, the solemn vocal lines and the searing roar of the electric guitar, “Mercy” rises into the firmament like a majestic secular prayer, the final testimony to that profound social and relational disconnection underlying the poetic discourse of the whole collection.

“Ask Me Tomorrow” is, ultimately, about as different as it could possibly be from Slowdive's last great album. Where “Pygmalion” was dominated by strong experimentalism and an attempt at extreme abstraction from traditional song form, the debut by Mojave 3 instead redirects itself toward the roots of folk and pop songwriting, immersing itself in the desert landscapes of North America. Under the biting blaze of the Mojave Desert sun, languidly stirred by a deeply sentimental streak, the band brought to life a heartfelt fusion of dream-pop dreaminess, the open spaces of Americana and the ache of slowcore. A few years later, having refined their sonic dynamics, the band hit the mark again with that emotional masterpiece, “Excuses For Travellers”. Neil Halstead then launched a solo career in 2002, one that would lead him even further into folk heritage - not only American, but above all English.

With the reunion of the original Slowdive line-up materializing in 2017, it became unlikely that Halstead, Goswell and company would ever again find themselves embracing the slow sound of burning sands that inspired the five albums released by Mojave 3. And yet, precisely in light of the second life of the English musician's first creation, the discographic break he made with “Ask Me Tomorrow” should now be reread with a broader, long-term perspective. Because, despite the methodological fractures between the walls of shoegaze sound, ambient landscapes and mournful acoustic expressionism, one single lyrical and melodic core can be glimpsed throughout Halstead's songbook: that of a song that sublimates the loneliness, nostalgia and disorientation inherent to existence into sonic dreams. So it was in 1990 with “Slowdive”; so it still was in '95 with “Ask Me Tomorrow”; and so it happens now, in 2023, with “Kisses”, where shoegaze and dream-pop finally meet the dazzling desert sun in a magnificent display of luminous refractions.

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03/09/2023