12/29/2023 0 Comments Slomo slowdive lyricsScott also helped create the vocal and piano loops that comprise “Falling Ashes,” the album’s closer the repetition transforms Halstead and Goswell’s refrain of “Thinkin’ about love” from soggy sentiment into something that actually forces you to think about love as you listen. On “Slomo,” “No Longer Making Time,” and “Go Get It,” he provides not so much a backbeat as a frontbeat, a sound to be reckoned with, not taken for granted. “Sugar” avoids the go-for-the-throat, quiet-loud-quiet format which “No Longer” embraces, opting instead for a subdued sophistipop chorus that matches the resignation of its central lyric: “You know it’s just the way things are.” The latter song may lack the former’s restraint, but it makes up for it with the tightest, loveliest vocal harmonies on the album from singer-guitarists Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell, plus a fake-out finale that reintroduces the opening riff so deftly you’ll wonder if you hit repeat by accident.ĭrummer Simon Scott, returning to the fold for the first time on record since 1993’s shoegaze opus Souvlaki, emerges as a key element not just for the songs’ drive, but of their texture. But the differences that emerge within that framework are fascinating. Knockout single “ Sugar for the Pill” and “No Longer Making Time” share a similar structure, matching a loping alt-rock bassline with high arpeggiated guitar. You can hear the attention to detail even in the album’s most conventionally pop songs. If there’s a story to Slowdive-the band’s return to active recording together after decades of slowly mounting critical and audience acclaim-beyond the human-interest angle of the return itself, the swerves in the songcraft tell it: This is an album as thoughtful as it is beautiful. In a genre beloved for its comfortable reliability, all it takes are these small but striking detours to remind us that this glorious noise is the work of human hands and the skill that move them. At the end of “Go Get It,” Halstead sings two different lyrics laid on top of one another simultaneously, like his conversation with Goswell is over and now he's talking to himself. Or at the end of “Slomo,” when Rachel Goswell’s voice pulls off a similar trick, first when she takes over lead vocals from Neil Halstead, then when she starts singing them at the very top of her register. Just seven notes, the sixth of which leaps unexpectedly up an octave instead of continuing the bassline’s descent. There’s nothing elaborate in the bassline for “Slomo,” the opening track of their first album in 22 years, given the thick bed of guitars it bounces on. But song by song, moment by moment, sometimes even note by note, Slowdive do it better. For some bands that may well be all there is to it.
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