Slowdive

I think the fourth track, “Sugar For The Pill,” serves as a great analogy for the album as a whole. It starts with nice bass and a steady, building beat. It urges listeners to expect a grand, exciting climax with an explosion of sound and light. However, when Slowdive breaks into the chorus, it becomes clear that that isn’t going to happen. Singer Neil Halstead just keeps lazily droning over underwhelming instruments which stay at the same low intensity throughout the track.

The title of the album,“Slowdive,” is really quite fitting: the songs are slow, dreamy, and atmospheric. Sadly, this often makes them boring and forgettable.

Many tracks are repetitive and too long. Slowdive does a nice job layering together interesting sounds, but they are repeated for so long that by the end of the song, even the most creative and engaging sounds become boring, or even annoying. It seems like Slowdive ran out of ideas halfway through writing this album, so they just stretched each track with unnecessary choruses and unimaginative instrumental passages.

For example, the closing track on the album, “Falling Ashes,” is based on this boring, four-note piano riff that plays constantly throughout the entire 8 minute track. The same four notes for 8 minutes while Halstead emotionlessly drones about “thinking about love”. Other sounds are minimally scattered in, but there’s nowhere near enough thought to this track to justify 8 minutes of music.

Not only are individual tracks repetitive and long, but almost all of the songs on the album sound notably similar to each other. Even after several listens to the album, I have trouble telling the second track, “Star Roving” and the fifth track “Everyone Knows” apart.

Although Slowdive builds anticipation exceedingly well in their songs, they fail to deliver satisfying and exciting endings. None of Slowdive’s passion comes through on this record, which really makes it a bore.

While “Slowdive” is not one of my favorite albums of the month, it does have some redeeming qualities. The vocal harmonies on tracks like “Star Roving” and “Don’t Know Why” are extremely well done. The general sound is spacey and grand. The album has a nice mood, but it’s very clean and lacks raw emotion.

Overall, I think “Slowdive,” is great white noise. If you’re looking for music to put on in the background while you think about other things or fall asleep, the static nature of the album would make it the perfect choice. However, if you’re looking for an engaging and dynamic dream-pop album, I would turn away from Slowdive and check out Perfume Genius’ new record instead.