This album’s singlehandedly making me revise my opinions about what’s possible for bands after a long hiatus.



I got into shoegaze long after it hit, but long ago now as well. I’d heard good things about Slowdive and picked up “Souvlaki”; I loved it enough to get a few friends into it, and to keep it on semi-regular rotation over the last ten years or so. Roger Ebert once defined a classic as something he couldn’t bear the thought of never experiencing again, and that album’s basically on that level for me. BUT I also heard it was their best, and as is the case with a few bands, I figured I’d be a one-and-done fan, snatching up the album everyone said was essential and avoiding the disappointment of lesser works in their discography.



Then I saw this one on a couple 2017 year-end lists and got curious. Slowdive had apparently gone on a quarter-century hiatus, working on other projects and doing whatever bands do to pay the bills when fame proves fleeting and fortune doesn’t materialize. (At least in their case, fame had turned to infamy, too—when Britpop hit, shoegaze became passe; they became the subject of ridicule, with one contemporary saying “I hate Slowdive more than Hitler.”) But it turns out their powers only increased in their absence.



From the amiable narcotic sleepiness of “Slomo,” through the charging chiming energy of “Star Roving” and the shimmering beauty of “Sugar for the Pill,” and on to the poignant “Falling Ashes,” the tracks are uniformly excellent. As with “Souvlaki,” it’s all echo and reverb, with hushed vocals that blend into the soundscape, like hunters camouflaged to the point that you can just barely pick out where they end and everything else begins. Here and there you’ll catch the outlines of human forms—phrases like “Cathy don’t wait too long” or “I wanna see it” or “Finger to my love”—but large sections of vocals are beautifully unintelligible. Does it matter what they’re saying? Possibly not—like Morgan Freeman says in his famous Shawshank Redemption soliloquy, I’d like to think they’re singing about something so beautiful it can’t be put into words.



Indeed, there’s a scope and a grandeur and a space that are downright movie-like. It’s one of those albums that’s so cinematic and compelling that when you throw on headphones and listen to it during, say, a morning commute, it’s an instant soundtrack, turning banal routine into something beautiful and unique.



Many bands’ later works feel like uninspired cash grabs, quick half-hearted efforts to put out something that will sell based on nostalgia until word-of-mouth catches up. This somehow feels like the exact opposite—a band that is giving us an album we didn’t know we needed, one so good the word-of-mouth should be more along the lines of “Hey, put down their earlier stuff and listen to THIS.” Artfully executed and impeccably produced, this might be the best album of Slowdive’s career.