Like Twin Peaks‘ Man From Another Place, it sounds almost as though they are singing backward when in fact they are not. Simultaneously watery and elliptical, it is one of the stranger takes we’ve heard from either singer over the course of their career. The question remained open, then, as to what approach the band would be most interested in taking with their return, the eponymous Slowdive.Īs opener “Slomo” demonstrates, Slowdive have lost none of their love for pillowy, soaring guitars, punctuated here by Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell’s lilting, gently acrobatic vocals. 1995’s Pygmalion was more a wall of Spartan silence than a blanket of sound, while the 1993 masterpiece Souvlaki contained everything from the spacey psychedelia of “Souvlaki Space Station” to the bare, angsty drama of “Dagger”. It is also perhaps more eclectic than they are sometimes given credit for. Their sound is both more celestial and more liquid, like stars reflected and distorted in a lake at night. In contrast to fellow shoegazers My Bloody Valentine, who returned from their own lengthy absence a few years back, Slowdive have always eschewed the more aggressive and noisy dimensions of the genre. It is the perfect landscape, then, for their return. Ethereal dream pop is everywhere these days, championed by acts like Beach House and Wild Nothing who channel the same kinds of dark yet gentle romance. The 2010s, in turn, have been far kinder to the band and the genre, thus completing everybody’s favorite triumphant narrative. The band’s trajectory has been a somewhat unique one: if every good story fits into some pattern of rise and fall, Slowdive have traversed the “Cinderella” arc, rising to prominence and fame in the early ’90s only to be chewed up by the British press as taste for shoegaze declined. Nonetheless, anticipation for their long-awaited follow-up has been steadily building since their 2014 reunion and accompanying tour. Twenty-two years have passed since Slowdive released their third LP and were swiftly dropped from their label.
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