Review: Sensational rock act continues to prove detractors wrong
Slowdive continues to rise like a phoenix.
The British indie-rock outfit — which got caught up in the U.K. press’ backlash against shoegaze music at the start of its career — has outlasted all detractors and is now pretty much beloved everywhere it goes.
That was certainly the case on Sunday night as a big crowd turned out to witness the Reading-born quintet — consisting of vocalist-guitarist Neil Halstead, vocalist-keyboardist Rachel Goswell, guitarist Christian Savill, bassist Nick Chaplin and drummer Simon Scott — deliver an absolutely bewitching 90-minute set at the Fox Theater in Oakland.
The crowd roared in approval at each and every one of the 16 songs performed, marveling at just how great the Slowdive sound — a hazy, hypnotic mix of shoegaze, dream pop and ambient styles — comes across more than 35 years after it first formed.
Yet, it sure took the band a long time to get to this place.
Slowdive was basically run out of town early in its career by venomous critics — with one media member famously saying “I would rather drown choking in a bath full of porridge than ever listen to (Slowdive’s ‘Souvlaki’ album from 1993) again” — and called it quits after releasing just three albums, the last of which was “Pygmalion” in 1995. The members went to pursue other interests, with Halstead, Goswell and McCutcheon forming Mojave 3.
But time would prove that the critics had Slowdive all wrong, as a whole new batch of ears latched onto the shoegaze genre — which is characterized by the conflict between hushed, ethereal vocals and crashing, distorted guitar work — and young fans (and quite a few revisionist critics) started singing the praises of the band’s early albums.
People were ready when Slowdive regrouped in 2014. The group’s 2017 self-titled outing — it’s first in 22 years — wound up making it onto several publications’ best-of-the-year lists. The follow-up, 2023’s “Everything Is Alive,” charted in the Top 10 in the group’s native U.K. and other countries — the first Slowdive album to do so.
Listening to the band perform on Sunday night at the Fox, it’s hard to imagine that anyone could have ever not recognized the shimmering beauty and unbridled creativity that exists in Slowdive’s music. Indeed, it’s so evident — it’s almost blinding.
And I’m not just talking about the amazing light show, which might be the most thoroughly entertaining and captivating one I’ve ever seen performed at the Fox. It almost felt like its own entity — a living, breathing one — that reacted to and underscored the music in such pulsating, dazzling and surprising ways. It might be the best live show this side of Phish.
Taking the stage at right around 8:45 p.m., Slowdive started off, well, at the very start — performing the genre-defining shoegaze anthem “Avalyn” from its 1990 self-titled debut EP. That set the table, and the mood, perfectly for all that would follow, as Savill and Halstead twisted their guitars lines like snakes in a basket, Scott crashed the cymbals, Goswell took centerstage with both her voice and keys, and Chaplin played bass like his life depended on it.
From “Avalyn,” Slowdive — which also performed the very best set we saw at the 2024 Outside Lands music festival in San Francisco — raced ahead more than 30 years for a memorable “Shanty,” one of three numbers drawn from the band’s most recent release, 2023’s “Everything Is Alive.”
The next move simply floored the crowd, as Slowdive launched the sonic experience into interstellar overdrive with “Star Roving.”
People just toss accolade after accolade at this number, from the 2017 comeback album (also called “Slowdive”), with one small (but insightful) media site ranking it as the best song of the entire 2010s. And, indeed, it’s brilliant, distilling everything that is good about the band — from the winding musical tension to the push and pull between sonic beauty and brute force — into one 5 1/2-minute song. Then the group adds in the best pop hooks to be found on any Slowdive album — and possibly any shoegaze album, period — and the result is staggering to behold.
In other words, if you are only going to listen to one Slowdive song then make it “Star Roving.”
After that dramatic peak, the group just turned around and went right back to scaling the mountain again and again, delighting fans with such highlights as “Sugar for the Pill” and “Slomo,” both of which — like “Star Roving” — hail from 2017’s “Slowdive.”
The quintet closed the 75-minute main set with the showstopper “When the Sun Hits” from the 1993 sophomore set “Souvlaki” — yes, the same album one critic once compared unfavorably to “choking in a bath full of porridge” — but this crowd simply couldn’t get enough Slowdive.
Thankfully, the band returned and closed out this stellar night of music with a three-song encore consisting of “Machine Gun,” “She Calls” and “40 Days.”
Slowdive Setlist:1. “Avalyn”2. “Shanty”3. “Star Roving”4. “Catch the Breeze”5. “No Longer Making Time”6. “Crazy for You”7. “Souvlaki Space Station”8. “Chained to a Cloud”9. “Kisses”10. “Sugar for the Pill”11. “Slomo”12. “Alison”13. “When the Sun Hits”Encore:14. “Machine Gun”15. “She Calls”16. “40 Days”