With just eight songs, Slowdive has proven that they have not lost their ability to make compelling, gorgeous music. Slowdive is an aural delight, and not a single one of its eight tracks feels weak or out of place.
Slowdive represents an awareness of legacy, and the importance of not pissing all over it; to that extent, it’s an essential addition to canon.
Slowdive delivers nearly everything their fans desire in a return: familiarity, innovation, and vast atmospheres to get lost in.
A majestic return that doesn't just fill in the gaps, but points unflinchingly towards future horizons.
Slowdive’s fourth LP contains a vitality that, in places, leaves you breathless.
Released in an era laced with shoegaze imitators, ‘Slowdive’ finds reinvigoration by simply ignoring them.
An album that sounds both expectantly familiar and not exactly like any of their previous releases. The songwriting on Slowdive is strong, as if the best ideas they’ve had over the last 22 years were held back for this release ... condensing some of the most compelling aspects of their catalog into a cohesive whole.
Slowdive are a hungry band, and this album is the work of a band with something to prove. Not content to rest on any laurels, Slowdive is an album that makes its creators’ presence known and points listeners to what may come further down the road instead of patting them on the back for going along for the ride.
Slowdive is a triumphant return for the shoegaze veterans, being a victorious blueprint for how a band should return after a long hiatus. It introduces new possibilities for their sound while still sounding familiar enough to fit in comfortably with the rest of their discography.
While traces from each of their previous efforts show up throughout the album, Slowdive is resolutely its own animal. It is more gentle and peaceful than anything since their debut, but carries a subtle bitterness that belies its airy palette.
Slowdive ... now sound powerful, confident, the band they always wanted to be.
Like most of the best reunion albums, this one plays like the band not just wanted to make it, but needed to, and took its time doing it. The resulting album is fantastic and, despite being so deliberate, feels fresh and immediate throughout.
Slowdive is a surprisingly joyously return to the fray.
Shoegaze is rarely affiliated with overwrought emotion, and yet it’s difficult not to feel moved by the expanse of the group’s oceanic comeback.
Rather than relying on what they knew to be “shoegaze”, a genre very firmly rooted in time and place, they’ve applied this newly transformed sound to their existing skillset.
The band’s new, self-titled album sees them ageing gracefully, but not without tweaks, even if reinvention is too strong a word.
On Slowdive there are moments when they create this inter-galactic grace as well as they ever have, but sometimes their desire to reinstate their ethereal prowess can seem a little prescriptive.
Slowdive, the band’s first album in 22 years, is here, and it’s good in that pleasingly familiar way. The record does not pick up where Pygmalion left off. If anything, it sounds as though it could have been recorded in 1993.
Slowdive is not a quantum-leap record, nor does it slavishly replicate past successes. Rather it’s another collection of thoughtfully written songs, filled with evident joy for the band’s reformation.
It will comfort fans of the band, both those who loved them at the time and those who have discovered them in the intervening years, by being very much a Slowdive album. One that feels modern enough, but also very classic at the same time.
The laconically titled Slowdive adapts to what Slowdive are capable of sounding in 2017: there’s no need to reinvent because doing that once is enough, so why not apply what they know best and try to adapt to a different, more current environment.
The morning sun rises on a cold misty morning, highlighting the mildew in waves as the beams peer through the dense forest of willow coating the sky above. A faint birdsong breaks the silence as the wildlife of the night takes cover, letting the ecosystem of the day take shape once again. A pathway marked with the faded footprints of a being long gone line the worn down grass, leading the way towards an unknown with an insatiable allure.
As I make my way down the withered road, the echoes of ... read more
I am a certified Shoegaze Slut
God I wish I checked this out sooner. Slowdive have become one of my fav bands ever after discovering them a couple years ago and Souvlaki completely changed the way I heard music. It's now my 2nd fav album ever, and the shoegaze genre as a whole might just be my fav genre period. I get this sort of melancholic bliss from the genre that I almost never get from anything else, and I've almost never disliked a shoegaze project I've checked out. Now I love ... read more
This album really does sound like a slow dive into space
With this being Slowdive’s most recent album to date, I feel like a lot has changed in their sound. On Souvlaki their sound was a bit more unique and experimental with sound, where here it is a lot more dream pop focused, and less harsh in some areas. And honestly, this is great for a dream pop focused record. Hearing their take on some music like this really is interesting, considering their roots, and they pulled it off well. My ... read more
Yeah, I know... I'm biased.
Yes, I know I shouldn't like this as much as I do, but come on... It's fucking Slowdive! And while it's not as good as Souvlaki, It still is pretty fucking stellar in both it's production and sound. I mean, those guitar melodies tell a story of their own. Enchanting and overwhelming beautiful, that it will leave you in a state of pure and utter bliss! Also, while this album isn't ground breaking or anything, and is probably one of the few reasons that this isn't a ... read more
With Souvlaki being one of my favourite albums ever made, expectations were beyond high for this record to deliver something decent. Safe to say that this record did deliver.
Whilst it does not really come close to Souvlaki, it is still an incredible record front to back. It is simplistic Shoegaze with this record just being so incredibly easy to listen to. The record does fall off a bit towards the end (last two tracks), with those tracks being really drawn out and a bit boring to be honest. ... read more
1 | Slomo 6:53 | 90 |
2 | Star Roving 5:38 | 94 |
3 | Don't Know Why 4:36 | 88 |
4 | Sugar for the Pill 4:30 | 90 |
5 | Everyone Knows 4:22 | 88 |
6 | No Longer Making Time 5:48 | 90 |
7 | Go Get It 6:09 | 83 |
8 | Falling Ashes 8:00 | 81 |
#2 | / | Louder Than War |
#2 | / | Vulture |
#3 | / | Piccadilly Records |
#3 | / | Time Out New York |
#3 | / | Yahoo Music |
#4 | / | BrooklynVegan |
#4 | / | Gigwise |
#4 | / | musicOMH |
#4 | / | Under the Radar |
#5 | / | Consequence of Sound |