Slowdive are more than the sum of their parts
The career of the Slow Dive is divided into two: the first part goes from 1989, when they formed in Reading, Great Britain, until their dissolution in 1995 after having released three albums, and a second part that goes from 2014 to the present day. The British band released the album on September 1st of last year “Everything is alive”the following is our review of their latest effort.
There are influences that bring to mind the sound of the Cure or the one closer to John Cale’s own feeling, others that push to Scotland, knocking on the door of Mogwai, others still that recall the deepest history of the Reading formation. “Everything is alive” arrives six years after the eponymous “Slowdive” of 2017, an album that marked the discographic return of the English shoegaze band after more than twenty years of waiting. A second life. The group is still composed of the singer Rachel Goswell and the guitarist Neil Halstead, the second guitarist Christian Savill, the bassist Nick Chaplin and the drummer Simon Scott.
Slowdive are giants of shoegaze and they confirm it with this project, anchored in the past, but also directed towards a second beginning.
From the eight songs on the album, for a total of just over forty minutes of music, electronic textures emerge, intense vocal parts, real ballads, more dreamlike moments, others more marked by the sound of the guitars and, sometimes, it even borders on an almost pop dimension: “Everything is alive” is the work of a classic band that has not, however, sat down. It is a very pleasant listen that has its most successful part in the first half: “Andalucia Plays” and “Kisses”, in their diversity, are two symbolic tracks of the work. The new album is dedicated to Rachel Goswell’s mother and Simon Scott’s father, both of whom passed away in 2020. The production sessions began with Neil Halstead in the role of main composer and producer, with the idea of making it a more minimal and electronic album than in the past.
But then with the band members reunited in the studio something changed and the album became more powerful, because as Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell say: “Slowdive is the sum of its parts and something difficult to explain happens when the five of us find ourselves in the studio”. The album was recorded between the winter of 2020 and the beginning of 2022 with Shawn Everett (already working with The War On Drugs, Alvvays, SZA) mixing six of the eight tracks on the album. You can feel that the sound is manipulated by veterans, but at the same time there is the strength of a new start and of a contemporary rock, not at all old-fashioned. “Everything is alive” is exactly in focus with what the title suggests: a living exploration. A leap between psychedelic soundscapes, pulsating electronic elements of the 80s and also unexpected turns: it is worked music, vivid, balanced, never exaggerated and out of the ordinary, always full of emotions.
