By Luna Dong
Let’s take a deep dive into Slowdive.
When thinking of music that feels like a deep, immersive experience, Slowdive should immediately come to mind. Formed in the ‘90s, this shoegaze band makes music that has just the right kick: by layering reverb-drenched guitars and synths, Slowdive creates a heavily textured “wall of sound” that encloses the listener in an intimate, almost hypnotic state. Rather than relying on conventional song structures, they explore sounds that evoke mood and atmosphere. This willingness to experiment with unconventional arrangements and sounds – as seen through their ambitious use of delay, reverb, and noise – helps them stand apart from other bands in the genre. Furthermore, the band’s vocals, often led by Rachel Goswell and Neil Halstead, are soft, ethereal, and intertwined with the instrumental layers. The lyrics are sometimes difficult to make out, but they act as another instrument, adding emotional weight rather than focusing on clarity. Some would even argue that the muffled nature of the lyrics entices the listeners to want to find out what they say and analyse their meaning even more, enhancing the instrumental-lyrical experience.
This sounds way too good to be the whole story, right?
Indeed, Slowdive does not only dedicate their time and effort to their music; they also like to focus on their interpersonal skills through the form of drama. Only a week after the release of their third album Pygmalion in 1995, they woke up and decided that it would be fun to break up for the next 20 years. Pygmalion, which was more on the experimental side, alienated a large portion of their fanbase at the time and caused their record label, Creation, to drop them and focus instead on its more popular band at the time, Oasis. Slowdive’s drummer Simon Scott also left a year before the release due to his disconnection with the heavy use of electronic drums, computers, and loops that the band was starting to prefer s. The band had 3 different drummers after his leave before Scott rejoined the band in 2014. The public at the time was also more drawn to the upcoming Britpop genre, which had a relatively more upbeat and poppy sound. The British music press picked up on this mess, with a critic saying they would “rather drown choking in a bath full of porridge” than listen to Slowdive’s music, and another saying they’d “always hate Slowdive more than Hitler” (a little overdramatic, but that’s just my opinion). Finally, to top it all off, the two main singer-songwriters of the five-person band dated and broke up.
A lot of recording and re-recording happened during the band’s extensive break, which explains why they now haveso many demos. If you’re a Slowdive fan like me, you know that there is at least an album worth of demos out there. Some of it can be explained by the fact that their record label, which was more pop-focused, rejected a lot of their musical propositions, which were more shoegaze than pop. They were also obviously unable to release any music during their break, and their label remained the owner of all demos even after their breakup, so the band couldn’t do anything official about it. That’s why they did the next best thing they could: Christian Savill, the guitarist, sent out cassette tapes for a small number of people who emailed him about unreleased Slowdive songs after the disbanding, and since then these tapes have circulated everywhere on the internet. “Sleep,” “I Saw the Sun,” and “I Believe,” all unreleased demos, are some of my favourite Slowdive songs.
Many of the band members released individual projects during the breakup, which arguably made them more experienced for their comeback album in 2017. Rachel Goswell (singer-songwriter) formed Soft Cavalry with her friend Steve Clarke, while Simon Scott (drummer) had his own solo arc, and Neil Halstead (singer-songwriter) released a few projects as well. Rachel, Neil, and Ian McCutcheon (drummer who replaced Simon Scott after he left) also formed their own band on the side called Mojave 3, where they experimented with different music genres and expanded their knowledge.
You can hear a lot of this musical evolution in their post-breakup albums, Slowdive (2017) and everything is alive (2023). The guitars are still gritty and the vocals are still dreamy, but the band polished their songs to create a cleaner, more modern sound. Tracks like “Slomo” and “Sugar for the Pill” are incredibly lush, with a more refined production that still feels unmistakably Slowdive, but more mature, with a subtle pop sensibility. If you love their old albums, you’re undoubtedly going to love their new ones, too. You can even live the full experience by attending their concert in Montreal on January 28.