Slowdive

Slowdive delivers nearly everything their fans desire in a return: familiarity, innovation, and vast atmospheres to get lost in.

The result is an album that can stand easily with Slowdive’s other heights and that manages the extremely tricky feat of sounding like the band that fans love and missed while at the same time marking a new step forward. The

m b v is good, Slowdive is great.

A majestic return that doesn't just fill in the gaps, but points unflinchingly towards future horizons.

The group feel more at home with the methodology of early prog or post-punk, with a sense of the abstract rippling beneath those crystalline waves of perfect sound. Shine on, you diamonds.

It certainly was a long wait, but finally Slowdive have given us the album that we have been dreaming about for the last 22 years.

Slowdive offers maximum-volume shoegaze too, better than the band ever has before.

This long-awaited comeback album stands on its own as a remarkable achievement for a band that had to earn their legacy over time, and the love that this album has received reaffirms that legacy, and proves that Slowdive are still capable of exceeding expectations for a modern, invigorating comeback album that cements their talent and emotional resonance.

If a person asks how to get into Slowdive, the correct answer is still to start with Souvlaki but Slowdive wouldn’t be a bad second choice.

With such a hooky, immediate, and yet complex record, let’s hope it’s not the final fade out.

This new one sounds happily like a distillation of the best of Slowdive. The effects--and the effects pedals--are still dreamy. [No. 143, p.61]

Beneath all the stylish and escapist waves of sound and texture, there is a profoundly human core waiting to be sought out and unearthed.

If you're looking for something that's as moody as it is calming, and as beautiful as it is atmospheric, Slowdive's for you. Just thank the heavens they came back to save us with these eight tracks.

Overall Slowdive is a strong return for this now-much-loved band. They’ve delivered on all the levels that fans would have desired: beauty, atmosphere, emotion and grandiosity.

Sugar for the Pill is desolate in its gorgeousness, and Star Roving sounds anthemic, victorious, as it should.

The band’s new, self-titled album sees them ageing gracefully, but not without tweaks, even if reinvention is too strong a word.

Shoegaze is rarely affiliated with overwrought emotion, and yet it’s difficult not to feel moved by the expanse of the group’s oceanic comeback.

The narrative structure of nighttime reveries can often feel unsettling, but throughout Slowdive, the band use foggy images and slippery transitions as a soothing sort of déjà vu--you feel like you’ve been here before, even though you obviously haven’t.

This is an album comfortably on a par with the work of most of the younger artists they’ve influenced; compelling proof that the original shoegazers have stood the test of time remarkably well.

This is one of the strongest comeback albums in recent memories. [Apr-Jun 2017, p.85]

Slowdive is a surprisingly joyous return to the fray. [May 2017, p.90]

The gauzy, indistinct vocals of Neil Halsted and Rachel Goswell continue to weave their shoey magic. [Jun 2017, p.27]

Like My Bloody Valentine with m b v, they’ve listened and they’ve learnt and they’ve adapted their sound for a new generation without losing what made them names in the first place. It’s a difficult tightrope to walk, sure, but Slowdive have walked it deftly and returned with an album that doesn’t disappoint.

Slowdive, the band’s first album in 22 years, is here, and it’s good in that pleasingly familiar way.

Slowdive is not a quantum-leap record, nor does it slavishly replicate past successes. Rather it’s another collection of thoughtfully written songs, filled with evident joy for the band’s reformation.

It’s conservative enough to satiate longtime fans, yet lovingly crafted to such a degree that it confuses you into thinking that its reached its full potential when it could've been so much more.