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– Slowdive – in concert at Best Kept Secret 2014 – June 21, 2014 – VPRO/3VOOR12 –
This morning it’s back to the Best Kept Secret Festival from 2014 for a set by Slowdive.
Slowdive were one of the bands at the vanguard of the Shoegaze Movement in the late 1980s. Along with Ride, Lush and many others, they were responsible for introducing a dreamy, hypnotic tapestry of sound that became synonymous with the end of the 80s and beginning of the 90s.
Sadly, Slowdive called it quits in 1995 – going off in other directions and forming other bands. But they reunited in 2014 to play the Primavera Sound festival and released a self-titled studio album in 2017, their first in 22 years. The band’s fifth studio album, Everything Is Alive, was released in 2023 and became Slowdive’s first top ten album in any country, doing so in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
Slowdive were initially dismissed by the British independent music press. While reviews of the band’s early extended plays were favorable, Slowdive’s reputation took a downturn with the release of their debut album, Just for a Day, which received middling reviews from publications such as Melody Maker and Select. In 1991, Richey Edwards, guitarist and lyricist of Manic Street Preachers, proclaimed “We will always hate Slowdive more than Hitler.” Upon its release, Souvlaki was received similarly negatively; Melody Maker’s Dave Simpson infamously wrote, “I would rather drown choking in a bath full of porridge than ever listen to it again”, three years after the publication praised the band’s EPs for being “impossible, immaculate and serene.” The band theorized that they came across as too soft and feminine, and were overshadowed by the emergence of Britpop at the same time. Said Goswell of Britpop: “It was very laddy.” About the band’s initial poor reviews, Goswell said: “Within about a year of being in the industry, I became very disenchanted, because of the treatment that we got from this small amount of UK journalists. Obviously, they held a lot of power in this country at that point.” In 2004, The Independent referred to Slowdive as a “long-forgotten indie band.”
The band’s reputation was mended by critics throughout the 2010s, who acclaimed Slowdive as one of the best shoegaze bands. Upon Slowdive’s re-formation in 2014, the band began playing to larger crowds than they did during their initial run, and members realized that they were more famous and recognizable than ever before. Music writers noted Slowdive’s modern popularity as part of shoegaze’s revival in popularity with Generation Z.
If you missed them, here is their appearance at Best Kept Secret from June of 2014 – a little short, but more than welcome.
