Slowdive: Expanded Sound, Survival and Fury at Primavera Sound Buenos Aires 2023

Just a few blocks from there later treatment He was going to give a selection show to his countrymen Slow dive It will emit the most powerful tone of act, shoegaze, dreampop, and all those things that surround you in a sonic tide. For a band that emerged in the ’90s heat of decibel explosion My bloody love, Riding And AbundanceSurely the quintet can win a survival medal.

Everything is aliveTheir fifth album, which picks up the path of the 2017 album of the same name, proposes a return to form, with some new concessions that bring them closer to a new audience and bring them back to Buenos Aires after twenty years of inactivity. It is easy to see how Slow dive He became a major symbol of his generation. Groups of recent years that appeal to psychedelic pop music (House overlooking the beach also Deer hunter) owe a tribute to the group of those he leads Rachel Goswell And Neil Halstead.

And on the second evening Primavera sound Buenos Aires presented a short show, but with an expanded sound, which included a review of the latest (“Slomo”, “Star roving”), the obligatory classics (“Catch the breeze” and the usual cover of Mr. Barrett “Golden Hair”) and hymns of the greats Souvlaki (“Alison” and “When the Sun Goes Down”). This last topic, for example, serves mainly to understand the backbone of the sound of nouns from recent history e.g Twenty.

There is a symbolic postcard introduced in “Kisses”. This is one of the key pieces Everything is alive Unleash the killer spot-killer Simon Scott, Halstead’s pure guitar and pedals smash into a symbiosis typical of the genre. The audience knew what was coming and listened in reverence as they tried to survive the pre-epileptic spiral broadcast by the LED screens.

After all, the English are no strangers to the pampas. Halstead came out in 2013 in solo form, and Slowdive played for the first time in Argentina in 2017 at Niceto Club, and some time before he researched South American audiences.

“I always knew the crowd was intense,” the guitarist said. Nick Chaplin In conversation with Rolling Stone In the festival dressing rooms before the show. “I grew up watching the Queen in Rio video (laughs). And when ‘The Treatment’ came out in the 80s, I think that’s when it came out Kiss me, kiss me, kiss meI remember seeing pictures of a quarter of a million people, maybe in Brazil, and relating it to that, to the passion and strength of the crowds here. Well, it arrived in 2017, and it lived up to my expectations.

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A circle closes in front of you with this festival that brought you together in the edition that was held in Barcelona in 2014, and now you come with The Cure, with whom you played in Hyde Park in 2018.

Nick Chaplin: That makes sense, doesn’t it?

Neil Halstead: In some ways we’ve all been waiting for this part of the tour, for these reasons. When we did this festival in 2014, our first show, it was very special. It was our biggest show, in twenty years, and it was so nice of them to invite us and give us their support. We have already done about 3 versions in Spain, so if they contact us we will answer them.

In this version, we also play Blur, who are your contemporaries.

Edited by Halstead: Well, in the US we have the same label as Blur, SBK, and before we parted ways, they put us on tour together there. Obviously both groups had different paths later on (laughs). We love them! The new album is great and we will definitely see them at the festival.

But, in the context of the Britpop explosion of the 1990s, they did a very good job, and you, the press and many colleagues, hated you…

Edited by Halstead:And… Well, yes, we’ve been through very difficult times. In the beginning, we got some good reviews, but towards the end of the band, by 1995, the English press treated us very badly, and some shoegaze bands also had a hard time. I think that’s part of what everything was like in those days, where they built you an altar and then they tore it down.

Over time, things have changed, because today, current bands like Beach House, Tame Impala, Deerhunter and even Deafheaven show that they influenced you. How has this paradigm shift affected you?

Edited by Halstead: We’re really thrilled to have an audience, and to be able to come and play. We don’t reject that, and it’s something we learned at the beginning, not to trust good journalism. Keep moving forward, make good records that interest you and hopefully connect with people.

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Slowdive has been back together for almost ten years, what’s it like playing old songs for older fans while also trying to connect with a new, younger fan base?

Edited by Halstead: It’s interesting because we’ve noticed that our audience is getting younger, especially with the new album. Which is great because I also see them connecting with our early songs, but that doesn’t mean we’ve lost the early era fans.

Chaplin: It should happen to all bands that it’s hard to think about songs that we leave behind, because obviously we want to reflect our heritage, playing the most popular songs, like “When the Sun Hits” or “Alison”. But you are at a festival and you want to show what is new, and this puts you to the test. I was recently listening to a song by Black Francis from the Pixies that refers to those hour-long festival sets that make you want to play the new thing, but no one wants to hear the new thing (laughs). We all want to hear “Debaser” and “That Monkey Gone to Heaven.”

I understand that when putting everything together live, Neil suggested trying more of the electronic side, but it didn’t work out. What was the background and preparation for that and what were the things you did that didn’t make sense on this new album?

Edited by Halstead: Obviously there are only eight final songs on the album and at one point we had about forty songs or ideas to work on. Maybe we’ll work on some stuff in the future, but, yeah, in the beginning we had a lot of electronic stuff when I started doing it on my own. I thought it might be beneficial for Slowdive, to start from a different place, and see where electronics could take us, but it was nice to have it happen that way. We had to preserve our democracy.

Nick, how do you work on an album when Neil comes to you with twenty versions of a song, as was the case with “Life”?

Chaplin: (laughs) Have you heard them all?

Edited by Halstead:And there are many more! (He laughs)

Chaplin: I’m sure any singer-songwriter or creative person goes through the same process. There are a lot of details to take in and immerse yourself in, as there are minimal variations and sometimes it is cloudy. But in the end, what remains is what gives us the most satisfaction, without a doubt.

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Do you think the work you’re doing outside of the band, like Monster Movie or Minor Victories or Simon’s (Scott, drummer) solo material, has brought things to the table that have informed this new record, in some ways?

Edited by Halstead: Without a doubt. Every time one of us works on another project, it feeds us as a group. The interesting thing is that we come from individual places, and we have very different perspectives, and that is the main strength. I couldn’t make a Slowdive album on my own and make it sound like Slowdive. That’s why I need Nick, Simon, Chris and Rachel.

During the three years it took to prepare the album, there were several difficult moments between you on a personal and family level, including the pandemic, how do you feel now that the songs have already been released and played live?

Chaplin: It’s a relief to get it out. As you say, it took a while and a lot of things affected us, but on the other hand, it wasn’t like we had a lot of plans as a band and had to sacrifice them or do tours or commitments at that time. It always takes time to make a record anyway. I mean, not in the My Bloody Valentine days, but we’re not one of those groups that releases an album a year.

Edited by Halstead: Much less at this stage of our lives. When we were young, we released three albums and a handful of EPs in six years, which looking back is crazy (laughs). But we took it at this pace and the good thing about this moment is that the songs have really taken on another life and it’s fun to see which ones resonate best with people. Fortunately they work well with the energy of the old songs.

Chaplin: Yes, we try to replicate the album as best we can, but we also don’t want it to be so sanitized that everything is perfect, and it’s the same every night. We don’t use pre-recorded tracks or stuff. I think the biggest appeal of Slowdive is that the vibe is really different every time you see us.