This is too good.
In this day and age, 90s band reunions are a dime-a-dozen; some are great to see and welcome, some are…not so much—seminal shoegazers Slowdive register for me as the very much former. We caught them at the Ace in downtown Los Angeles in 2014 and the show they put on was beautiful; nostalgic, yes, but, above all else, beautiful.
What’s not a dime-a-dozen, though, are reunions that result in new music; rarer still—reunions that result in good new music that isn’t just an uninventive regurgitation of music made 20+ years back. But last week, Slowdive released their first new song in 22 years and it is both excellent and forward-looking. The trademark swirling wall of noise and soft, melodic vocals are there, but the song sounds of the now as much as it does of our collective youths; there’s innovation and newness there and it all adds up to great new music.
As the band wrote when they release the track:
“When the band decided to get back together in 2014 we really wanted to make new music. It’s taken us a whole load of shows and a few false starts to get to that point, but it’s with pride and a certain trepidation we unleash “Star Roving”. We really hope folks enjoy it, it’s part of a bunch of new tracks we’ve been working on and it feels as fun, and as relevant playing together now as it did when we first started.”
Give it a listen and keep your fingers crossed for more.