– Slowdive – In Session April 21, 1991 –
Getting ready for the weekend, here is a dose of vintage ethereal by way of Slowdive, one of the seminal bands of the Shoegaze movement in the early 1990’s.
Slowdive formed in Reading, Berkshire, in 1989. The band consists of Rachel Goswell (vocals, guitars, keyboards), Neil Halstead (vocals, guitars), Christian Savill (guitars), Nick Chaplin (bass), and Simon Scott (drums, guitars, electronics), all of whom played on the band’s early records. Halstead is the band’s primary songwriter.
Their debut album Just for a Day (1991) and Souvlaki (1993) made Slowdive one of the leading figures of the shoegaze scene, in the UK in the early 1990s. The group broke up soon after the release of their third studio album, Pygmalion, in 1995, having seen Scott, Savill and Chaplin depart the band prior. The remaining members continued under a more folk and country-influenced direction as Mojave 3.
After a Slowdive Twitter account and website were launched in January 2014, it was announced that Slowdive had re-formed to play the 2014 Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona and Porto. A 20-date summer world tour was announced, including performances at the Electric Picnic festival in Stradbally, County Laois; the FYF Fest in Los Angeles; the Fortress Festival in Fort Worth, Texas; the Wave-Gotik-Treffen festival in Leipzig; the Roskilde Festival in Denmark; the Radar Festival in Italy and the Off Festival in Katowice, Poland. A North American tour, also 20 dates, was announced for October and November 2014. Former drummer Simon Scott returned to the band for the reunion. Ian McCutcheon, the band’s final drummer prior to their break-up, who had later joined Halstead and Goswell in Mojave 3, did not return.
In September 2020, Slowdive announced they had begun work on their fifth studio album. In April 2023, the band confirmed on a podcast that they had finished their new album. The lead single, “Kisses”, was released on 20 June 2023, and later that month the band played the Glastonbury Festival for the first time. The album’s second single, “Skin in the Game”, was released on 18 July 2023, followed by “The Slab” and “Alife” in August, and the album Everything Is Alive was released on 1 September 2023. It became the band’s first top ten album in any country, doing so in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
Slowdive 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.
Tonight it’s from a session the band cut for the BBC John Peel on April 21, 1991.
Here’s what’s on the player:
Slowdive In Session – April 21, 1991
1. Catch The Breeze
2. Shine
3. Golden Hair
Golden Hair, incidentally, is the Syd Barrett song, done in inimitable Slowdive fashion (thought you’d like to know).
Ending up the week in a decidedly Experimental direction.
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