SLOWDIVE SPELLBINDS WEBSTER HALL

Shoegaze trailblazers Slowdive have been back out on the road hailing their new album everything is alive. I caught the first of their pair of very packed sold out shows at Webster Hall, and on top of being a truly awe-inspiring show, it was pretty amazing to see so many younger people in the crowd, which helped demonstrate the major resurgence of gazing dream pop in the music world these days. The last time they tour a few years back they were promoting their first album since the mid 90’s, and they played NYC several times in multiple passes, but this time around the band seemed more self-assured and confident in their witchy spellcasting, and the fans could hear their new levels of magical powers in every gorgeously dream-like note. They formed back in the late 80’s, and they became a major player in the shoegaze scene in the early 90’s. However, by 1994, after just three monumental albums, they were done as a band, forming offshoot efforts like Mojave 3, but over time, they gathered a ravenous following of devotees, and they finally reunited at Primavera in 2014 after almost two decades apart. Since then, they’ve been brewing an even larger cauldron of witches brew with steady activity which apparently has been producing an ever-larger fan base of beguiled younger followers.

The dreamy LA duo Drab Majesty opened the show, and they produced an excellently spacey sound that wears it’s influences on its sleeves, as they constantly remind me of other artists to the point that I sometimes think they’re playing covers, but not so much that I can ever quite pin down which song or band they’re paying homage to. Their heavy consumption of 80’s new wave and 90’s shoegazing conjured visions of Lush, Cold Cave, or even The Psychedelic Furs, all of which kept emerging in the hearty soup of their deeply dreamy soundscapes. One of their songs called “Vanity” features guest vocals by Slowdive frontwoman Rachel Goswell, and I kind expected her to come out to lend her pipes to the song, but that didn’t happen this night at least, but they did have an overall sound that felt ideal at pumping up a notoriously chilled out Slowdive crowd.

Drab Majesty

When Slowdive came out I couldn’t help, but feel that this was a seasoned band finally feeling secure in their legacy enough to take a true victory lap. The lineup is still all the original members continuing to cast their mystical enchantments, including keyboardist/vocalist Goswell, vocalist/guitarist Neil Halstead, guitarist Christian Savill, bassist Nick Chaplin, and even drummer Simon Scott, who was technically a newer edition, even though he’s been in the lineup since 1991 and has been on all their studio albums. The stage show was particularly glorious, with graphics, colors, and movements manipulating everybody’s senses just as much as the gorgeously dreamy tunes. They did play a few new songs from the current album, and they played at least three from their epic second album Souvlaki from 1993, and something from everything else as well, with classics like “When the Sun Hits,” “Alison,” “Souvlaki Space Station,” and even “40 Days” as the glorious closer to the night. By far the biggest stunner of the night for me was the crazy closer of the main set where they played a cover of Syd Barrett’s “Golden Hair.” Syd was, of course, the first frontman and main creative of Pink Floyd in the mid 60’s before he infamously went crazy, and he was thusly unceremoniously tossed out of the band he very much created in those early days. This song was a little acapella track from his first solo album called The Madcap Laughs released in 1969, based on a poem by James Joyce, and it told volumes about the loneliness of his madness and the rejection of being left by your band not to mention shunned by your friends. This version had more of the sonically inclined keyboard work which further spaced out this already trippy tune, and Goswell’s more feminine harmonies helped give it an even more tender quality, but just when I thought it was over and they would move on to another song, they commenced right into a lengthy instrumental jam that was apparently a wholly new creation built on to the original. Pink Floyd has long been considered one of their major inspirations, and they had played around with this track live before, but that massive scope this song has formed into feels to me much like it has finally found its room to grow and become itself, which could well be an apt description of Slowdive in general these days.