Slowdive, from Reading, England, could be forgiven for dropping two near-instant cult classics, if not commercially successful records, as the band did with Souvlaki and Pygmalion, and then calling it a day, like Slowdive did in the late 1990s.
Early on, Slowdive — along with bands like Swervedriver and My Bloody Valentine — played a style of music tagged “shoegaze,” romantic and vaguely psychedelic, with guitars and vocals submerged in the mix, so-called for the bands’ wallflower tendency to gaze at their shoes while performing.
By the time Slowdive emerged from the wilderness, successive generations embraced the style, and along with that, Slowdive were rightfully heralded as visionaries. Now, Slowdive wears “Shoegazer” T-shirts, embracing the style they helped innovate.
And for this reason, music fans with “19” beginning their birth year might recall the term “shoegaze” as a bit pejorative, no comment on the quality of the music, but certainly a micro-genre in the era’s alt-rock heyday.
In their fallow period, Slowdive members Neil Halstead, Rachel Goswell and Ian McCutcheon performed as Mojave 3. But in the meantime, a sort of rock ‘n’ roll fairy tale happened.
After an extended hiatus, Slowdive, who perform in Eugene May 14 at Cuthbert Amphitheater, triumphantly returned in 2017 with a self-titled return to form, followed up with 2023’s everything is alive.
Influenced by the Cure and other British alternative titans from the ’80s and ’90s, Slowdive’s latest full-length album, everything is alive, released the same year Pitchfork declared the shoegaze revival “hit its stride,” is meditative and celebratory, no less impressionistic and moody than Souvlaki, if somewhat tempered by age.
Slowdive’s overall mix remains blissed-out, centered on guitarist Halstead, the band’s primary songwriter, and keyboardist Goswell’s voice against guitar, bass and drums.
Songs fade in and out like dreams, showcasing loud-quiet-loud dynamics in the music, particularly when translated on stage.
But these days, where shoegaze was once interested in finding the beauty in distorted guitar squall and subverting rock music tropes of macho triumphalism, Slowdive has somewhat focused its sound around synthesizers.
An everything is alive track, “chained to a cloud,” begins with a burbling synthesizer melody before guitars howl over the horizon and Goswell’s voice peeks through the gauzy curtain, as if in conversation with Halstead. The listener is merely eavesdropping.
Elsewhere, the song “kisses” evokes late-night driving and a quiet, indiscernible longing. The video features young lovers together on a motorcycle, alive with youthful possibility, feeling everything and too much all at once.
Meanwhile, “alife” is what Slowdive, and the entire shoegaze genre, does best. Driving and melodically coherent, the song has a gentle and free-associative quality, sweetly sad, like falling in love can be when you’re young, whether with a person or a band, like fans did with Slowdive in the ’90s, and musicians continue to do with Slowdive today.
Count Philadelphia’s recently-reunited Creepoid among those newer bands playing shoegaze-influenced music, leaning into the American Galaxie 500 side of the sound rather than Slowdive’s more Eurocentric vision.
Creepoid are on tour celebrating the 10th anniversary of their excellent Cemetery Highrise Slum and behind their first new song in nine years, “Gutter Jeweler.”