Slowdive’s fifth exhalation sees the classic band pitch its voice to the future of life.
OVERVIEW
With a career spanning 34 years met with pure euphoria with Just For A Day in early ’91, it’s little wonder why Slowdive are seen as the glimmery moguls that they are. With the sweet and sour fuzz that has warmed the most metallic of hearts spanning over five studio albums, they are building the articulated blueprint of shoegaze’s revival. From the undertow of ’90s classics, comes Slowdive effervescent as ever, proving to all that age is simply a number – and does not have any heedy impact on your musicality nor your time in the spotlight in the industry. Six years after the monumental Sugar for the Pill pilfered into our ears from their self-titled in ’17, comes everything is alive, searching for evermore colour and dexterity in their element chambers of sound.
Like the name suggests, a fastdive into their discography is not recommended. With a sound a lot more subtely textured than 94’s Souvlaki, they’ve managed to progress into a new year with a happier sound, lit from a catalogue deep in the lonesome ’90s.
Like the cut-classics of Siamese Dream along with the modernity of Alvvays suave shoegaze, comes the giants showing us how to do it.
TRACK-BY-TRACK
Led by ethereal kissing and skin in the game, the new work sees slowdive pick up a shift with a glowing contour of colour; all in all exploring the shimmering nature of life. The echoic guitar timbres – unmatched with delay – are still ever-present supported by angelic vocals by Rachel and Neil himself, giving off a warm undertow of whiskey at sunset. While the album’s lead-up singles gave off an impression of more subdued textures. The first taster on the album will give off different ideas entirely. The opener plays into the pulsating ’80s electronics as that deep, gnarly fuzz on Shanty is a need to hear from them after all these years. It offers up something new, a figurative journey, if you like, of the band bending and experimenting in a freeform like shoegaze. alife is very much an introspective soundtrack fitting to any city skyline throughout our universe, met with a playful synth line almost as if we’re weaving in and out of rush-hour traffic. Slowdive wavers in and out from relatively upbeat to the sedated seamstress of andalucia plays – an enchanting piece unmoved and kept in one place: “You are my angel / Wearing your favourite shirt / French cloth and polka-dot / Andalucia plays on the stereo / I dream like a butterfly / Perfect and temporary.” chained to a cloud is met with more electro-pulses before the slab entices us to a cliff edge, the slab of rock beckoning us to jump.
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