Blue Skied an' Clear: The magic of Slowdive

Shoegaze was a brief, ephemeral and fascinating period in British rock that in my opinion has never been equalled. Born in the aftermath of post-punk, it melded super-saturated guitar noise with ghostly vocals and soaring melody lines, inspired by the punkish noise-pop of The Jesus and Mary Chain and the dreamy, ethereal sound of Cocteau Twins. Those two bands pioneered the use of noisy guitar in gentle (though not always), elegiac pop-rock, on monumental albums such as Psychocandy (by the former, 1985) and Head over Heels (by the Twins, 1983). By 1988, Irish band My Bloody Valentine had taken things to a new level, with their seminal Isn't Anything album. It was an artistic and critical triumph, as the screaming guitars and barely audible vocals of Bilinda Butcher and Kevin Shields, allied to heavy metal rythm patterns launched a new, totally original sound. And the critics quickly picked up on MBV's (and others') stage presence (or lack thereof), dubbing this new genre "shoegaze" in reference to the bands' tendency to stare fixedly at their effects pedals.

My Bloody Valentine went on to seal the genre's place in Rock history thanks to their 1991 masterpiece Loveless, but that opus took up so much time, energy and money that they have yet to follow it up. In their "absence", Slowdive became the main poster boys (and girl) of shoegaze, just in time to get the flack.


Slowdive are the perfect epitomy of shoegaze: nerdy, awkward, floppy-haired, middle-class Englishmen (and one woman), with a love of The Smiths and Cocteau Twins, who played delicate pop-rock graced with soaring, loud guitars and occasional melancholic keyboard effects. Their voices were often buried deep in the mix, obscured by their instruments, and on-stage they hid reolutely behind their long fringes, eyes glued to their feet. Their first album, Just for a Day, came out in 1991, just in time for the Loveless-inspired euphoria, when any band that sounded remotely like MBV was guaranteed a rave-up in the press and a place on Alan McGee's Creation label roster. was an excellent slab of powerful shoegaze, closer perhaps, however, to the more energetic style of Ride or Pale Saints than to MBV's almost cosmic lumber. As such, it doesn't really stand out among the more impressive shoegaze albums out there (Ride's Nowhere, Lush's Split, Chapterhouse's Whirlpool, and of course, Loveless).

It wasn't until 1993's magnificent Souvlaki that Slowdive would really find their voice and identity, and in some style. Put simply, it's the definitve shoegaze album, featuring all that made the genre so distinctive (and so magical), and the band's most immediate, arresting songs. It kicks off splendidly, with the single 'Alison'. A burst of guitar, insistent drums and bass, and soaring noise effects kick out of the speakers and launch the listener into the track, a weird tale of a woozy relationship centred around drugs, drinking and wearing ladies' clothes. 'Alison' is the perfect shoegaze anthem.
Shoegaze was the weird, awkward cousin of electronica: it was druggy, woozy and hedonistic, the music of middle-class nineties Britain, disinterested in politics or social issues (unlike their predecessors of the hippy, folk or punk ages, or their American grunge cousins). But where Depeche Mode and New Order and other dance kings had Britain's disaffected, spoiled youth dancing their way through the ecstasy years, the music of Slowdive and their noisy contemporaries seemed to be about the come-down. The chiming, sad guitars and shimmering effects seemed to evoke the first rays of sunshine pushing through the curtains at the end of a long, sleepless and drug-fueled night. You can imagine lonely highways, deserted streets, bleary eyes and the shuffling gait of people who've been out all night and are feeling down, lost and strangely melancholic. It's often some of the saddest music around, and it's no wonder Sofia Coppola and Gregg Araki decided to turn to shoegaze when compiling the soundtracks to their movies depicting lost souls in tired, indifferent modern landscapes. 'Alison', despite its (relatively) pacy tempo, holds all of this: the sadness, the wooziness, the casual indifference and the subtle layers of hope underneath. And that's just the first track.

The rest of the albim is of a similar quality. 'Machine Gun' goes a step further, with singer Rachel Goswell's voice drowned and inaudible underneath the majestic guitars and driving effects. 'Souvlaki Space Stations' takes a darker turn, whilst 'Sings' features the quiet atmospherics of ambient overlord Brian Eno himself, surely an indication of the album's quality. Meanwhile, on 'As the Sun Hits', the album's cornerstone, songwriter Neil Halstead delivers his greatest lyrics, with images of desolation, death and glaring morning sunlight (what did I tell you?). The songs creeps along slowly, almost mutely as Halstead intones numbly "Sweet thing I watch you/Burn so fast it scares me", before bursting into life, and screaming guitar noise, with the line "It matters where you are". Every time, this never fails to give me the shivers, as the locked guitars of Goswell, Halstead and Christian Savill reach for the heavens, their ghostly voices washed underneath, yet united in a strange, subdued and druggy version of Crosby, Stills and Nash's famed cristalline harmonies.

The album closed* with the delicate, heart-breaking ballad 'Dagger', played solo by Halstead, his voice crystal-clear and beautiful, accompanied by some of the saddest acoustic guitar chords ever laid to disk. The lyrics of loss and destructive love are a fittingly bleak conclusion to a dark, wistful and depressingly beautiful album, where gentle melancholy and quiet vocals are thrown up against the band's raging guitar noise and use of saturation to staggering effect. Souvlaki is unforgettable, and should have gone down in history as one of the great pop-rock albums of the nineties.

Unfortunately, by the time Souvlaki came out, the British press had decided it was time to move on. Shoegaze was given a similar short shrift as prog rock had been in the late seventies: it was "pretentious", "self-indulgent", "nombrilistic" and "boring". Brit pop was all the rage: out went the misery and darkness of the past decade (after all, shoegaze's doomy vibe owed a lot to the goth and post-punk waves of the 80s), and in came catchy, Beatles-inspired (stolen?) melodies, crystal-clear voices, pretty-boy singers with short hair and bags of ego, and a celebration of all things British, like football, beer and festivals. Druggy party aftermaths and ecstasy comedowns were not in keeping with this all-joyous vibe, and Slowdive could not compete with Blur's chirpy songs about houses in the "countr-aaaaaaaayyy" or boys that love boys that love girls that love girls that love boys; or with Oasis' arrogant sneer; or Suede's sexual ambiguity. Here were five Reading-ites wearing heavy sweaters and floppy hairdos, drwning out their voices in waves of moody guitar saturation. They were declared obsolete, Souvlaki was savaged by the British press, and pretty soon they were losing the backing of their label, Creation.

But Slowdive still had one great card up it's sleeve, one of the best, most beautiful "fuck-yous" addressed by a band to its record label. As two successive tours failed to re-ignite the shoegaze euphoria of '91, and with the band about to be dropped by Creation (rumour has it under the influence, nay, demands, of Oasis, as if I needed another reason to hate those James Blunts), Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell immersed themselves in dance and ambient music, and delivered their greatest album, and one of the most triumphant artistic statements of the nineties, Pygmalion, an album so un-commercial it beggars belief, and yet one which today sounds more modern, vital and immediate than 99% of most music produced since, in any genre. But more of that later. Pygmalion had the desired effect: the press hated it, the public ignored it and Creation told the band where to get off. Halsted, Goswell and drummer Ian McCutcheon founded Mojave 3 and became the darlings of the rock underground, sort of like modern-day David Sylvians.

In recent years, the music of Slowdive has slowly been rehabilitated, with heavy metal bands like Isis, Jesu and Nadja happily citing the band's influence on their own noise-scapes, and pop artists such as The Delays, Guillemots and Death In Vegas also taking their cue to deliver ghostly vocals behind walls of elegiac guitar saturation. Meanwhile, songs like 'Alison', 'Dagger' and 'Blue Skied an'Clear' (off Pygmalion) are gracing film soundtracks and all of Slowdive's albums have been re-released on CD. Rediscovering them now is like being let into a world you automatically feel you belong to, and they open your heart to deep and meaningful emotions, with a grace, yet also an edge, few other bands, even other shoegaze ones, can match. With shoegaze suddenly back into fashion, Slowdive will soon, I hope, be given the place deserve, that of producers of some of the most enduring, heart-warming and affecting music of the nineties. Sure, you can dance to 'Girls & Boys', but you can cry, laugh, dance, kiss, fuck and sleep to just about any Slowdive song, and it will always have some meaning for you. Or you can just put 'Dagger' on at 6am on a Saturday morning after a long night out, and watch the sun rise. I guarantee you will never hear a more beautiful sound.