Legendary ’90s shoegazers Slowdive released a new album, “everything is alive”, on Dead Oceans. The band shared its fourth single, “‘Alife’ via an animated music video. They also announced some new 2024 UK and European tour dates.
Slowdive’s line-up remains Neil Halstead (vocals, guitar, keyboards), Christian Savill (guitar), Nick Chaplin (bass), Rachel Goswell (vocals), and Simon Scott (drums, electronics).
Halstead had this to say about the new single in a press release: “‘Alife’ is one of the first tunes we finished for the record. Shawn Everett did a really nice job with the mix. We tried so many times to figure out a good mix by ourselves and couldn’t do it…it sort of had us beaten until Shawn stepped in. We decided if he could handle that one he could probably do the whole record. Our friend Jake Nelson did a really nice animation for this song; it takes some of the imagery from the artwork and digs a little deeper into that.”
“Everything is alive” is the band’s first new album in six years. Previously Slowdive shared the album’s first single, “Kisses”. Then they shared its second single, “skin in the game,” and a further song, “the slab.” Halstead had this to say about “Kisses” and the album as a whole in a previous press release: “It wouldn’t feel right to make a really dark record right now. The album is quite eclectic emotionally, but it does feel hopeful.”
The new album is dedicated to Goswell’s mother and Scott’s father, as they both died in 2020. “There were some profound shifts for some of us personally,” Goswell said in the previous press release.
“Everything is Alive” is the band’s fifth album and the follow-up to 2017’s self-titled album, which was their first full-length album in 22 years and first since the band reformed.
The record began with Halstead acting as writer and producer, working from home, and he initially saw the album as a “more minimal electronic record,” but once the rest of the band got involved it became more aligned with their signature shoegaze/dream-pop sound.
“As a band, when we’re all happy with it, that tends to be the stronger material. We’ve always come from slightly different directions, and the best bits are where we all meet in the middle,” Halstead said.
Goswell added: “Slowdive is very much the sum of its parts. Something unquantifiable happens when the five of us come together in a room.”
The album was recorded over the course of several years, starting in 2020 at Courtyard Studio, where the band have recorded before.
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