timeline

Slowdive

A shoegaze band from Reading, dismissed by the British press in the early 1990s, whose second album Souvlaki was later rated among the genre's defining records and whose return brought bigger crowds than before.

Origin
Reading, Berkshire, England
Years active
1989-1995, 2013-present
Genres
dream pop, shoegaze, ambient pop, post-rock
Labels
Creation, SBK, Dead Oceans, Sonic Cathedral

Reading

Slowdive came from Reading, Berkshire, and grew out of an earlier group, The Pumpkin Fairies. Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell, friends since the age of six, formed the band in October 1989 with bassist Nick Chaplin and guitarist Christian Savill, who joined by answering an advert. The name came from a dream of Chaplin's, helped by Goswell's admiration for Siouxsie and the Banshees. After a show with Five Thirty that was seen by Steve Walters, the head of A&R at EMI, they signed to Creation.

Three EPs followed in 1990 and 1991, the last of them, Holding Our Breath, reaching 52 in Britain. The first album, Just for a Day, came out on 2 September 1991 and reached 32 on the UK chart to mixed reviews. Halstead said they entered the studio for six weeks with no songs and left with an album. The band made their first visit to the United States on tour with Blur and played Europe in February 1992.

Souvlaki

Work on the second album began on tour in early 1992. The band wrote and recorded about forty songs, but Creation's Alan McGee rejected the early material, which Halstead said drew on Joy Division and David Bowie's Berlin Trilogy. Goswell later said he told them they had no songs, and she credited the rejection with pushing them to write When the Sun Hits and Alison. McGee then gave the band full creative control. Brian Eno, whom they had written to, declined to produce the record but spent a few days with the group, and he is credited with keyboards and treatments on two tracks, Sing and Here She Comes.

In the summer of 1992 Halstead went off for about two weeks to rural Wales and came back with more personal songs, among them Dagger. He and Goswell ended their romantic relationship while the album was being made, and for the first time he wrote alone. The band produced the record themselves at three studios, with Ed Buller mixing, and Souvlaki came out on Creation on 1 June 1993. It reached 3 on the UK independent chart. The press was split: Melody Maker was highly critical, and the NME gave it six out of ten, calling it pretty but unfulfilled.

Collapse

The Outside Your Room EP appeared in May 1993 and the 5 EP that November. In 1994 Scott left over the long gap between releases and was replaced on drums by Ian McCutcheon. The American label SBK withdrew its funding midway through a US tour, and the band paid for two small American tours themselves.

Pygmalion, released on 6 February 1995, was a minimalist, ambient record on which Halstead had absorbed electronica and dance music. Creation dropped the band a week after it came out, and Slowdive ended that year. Halstead, Goswell and McCutcheon went on to form Mojave 3, a country-influenced group signed to 4AD. Savill formed Monster Movie, and Scott moved to the band Lowgold and to solo electronic work.

Return

Slowdive launched a website and a Twitter account in November 2013, played Primavera Sound in 2014, and toured North America for twenty dates that October and November. Scott came back. A new album, Slowdive, followed on 5 May 2017 on Dead Oceans and reached 16 in Britain and 50 in the United States. Everything Is Alive, released on 1 September 2023, reached 6 in Britain and 63 in the United States, and was the band's first top-ten album in several countries. They played Glastonbury for the first time in June 2023.

The reputation of the early records recovered during the 2010s, and the reunion crowds were larger than the original run had drawn. Paste's Zach Schonfeld called Souvlaki the definitive shoegaze statement, and Pitchfork ranked it second among the best shoegaze albums in 2016. Simon Reynolds counted the Cure, Siouxsie, Pink Floyd, Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine and the Jesus and Mary Chain among their influences.

Members

Records

Songs

My Bloody Valentine, Cocteau Twins, Mojave 3, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure

Where to go next

Official

  • Slowdive The band's own site, with merchandise and streaming links.

Reference

Discography and data

Writing and criticism

Interviews

Live performance archives

Fan sites and communities

Sources

  1. Slowdive, Wikipedia
  2. Slowdive discography, Wikipedia
  3. Souvlaki (album), Wikipedia
  4. 30 years of Slowdive's Souvlaki, PopMatters
  5. Slowdive cover story, Paste (2023-08-28)
  6. Slowdive on setlist.fm, setlist.fm
  7. Slowdive interviewed, Uncut (2023-08-25)
  8. Just for a Day / Souvlaki / Pygmalion, Pitchfork (2005-11-28)
  9. The unlikely renaissance of Slowdive, The Guardian (2017-03-30)
  10. Blue Skied an' Clear, Wikipedia