EVERYTHING IS ALIVE
Slowdive’s newest album ‘everything is alive’ has come out 32 years after their debut, and they are as popular now as ever. In fact after luckily witnessing another of their transcendent live shows I realised the majority of their fans at the moment are probably way younger than those 32 years. While there is a post COVID proliferation of new, young and exciting live talent, Slowdive come around again and again to show us that music is made by real people for real people. While they are constantly attributed as being one of the formative bands of the Shoegaze genre, Slowdive’s defining feature to me is their gentle act of going against what the “normal” narrative of life around them was. Whether it was being the only Goth kid in Reading, or being a parent who takes on an ageist ableist industry, their seemingly gentle music is a product of being people who are solid in their want to be a bit different. No macho, no conflict, just lovely people who after more than three decades in the music industry will still happily sign a picture of a music journalist’s friend’s cat (yes, that actually happened).
So Slowdive originally formed in 1989: I had a look at the top of the UK charts: Texas, Jason Donavan, stone roses, baby Kylie Minogue, Chaka Khan, and in December a song called “Donald Where’s Your Troosers” by Andy Stewart. How the fuck did you manage to look around and go “do you know what we want to do? Layer shit tonnes of guitar over each other.
C: We were all interested in similar bands weren’t we?
R: Yeah, I Neil and I started a band in 1986. Probably when we were at school. We kind of gravitated towards each other because I think we had a mutual appreciation of The Smith's. I was like a total Goth then and Neil was a total Indie kid.
But you became friends anyway.
R: Yeah. We were in a small village. I mean, there wasn’t much else!
C: Definitely at school around that time if you liked anything different you’d stick out like a sore thumb.
Do you think that like being together and being more relaxed and like having had those 30 years of just life and live or do you think that had anything to do with it? Or was it just purely you guys are together again, and you just slip back into your roles?
R: It was kind of just a slip back. There are still those elements of schoolboy humour, there are those certain things that just don’t change. You know, with those changes it doesn't matter how old you are.
C: Maybe that's what keeps us young. Just being totally juvenile.
R: Mentally yes, maybe physically not so much.
C: Ah yes sadly
R: It's kind of funny as you get older. Sometimes I look at like, people my age in life who are ‘normal’, well who's normal anyway, but who have “proper jobs”. And I look at other parents. And I look at them and say; I don’t think I’ve grown up yet. In some ways, it's just that kind of thing that you don't feel. Some people are ageing and they look grown up and really mature. And it's not like we’re idiots, we’re all parents, we have that side of things going on in our lives. But then I wonder for those people that look really kind of adult, whether they're also internally like that. I remember my dad when he turned 80 he said “I still feel like I'm 16 in my head a lot of the time”.
C: Then you look in the mirror and you’re like… Dad?
Now you’re an older, “grown up” band do you get some more autonomy in terms of writing and recording and touring, where you have of a basis to go, “No, this is what we actually can do. This is how much time I can take out.”? Because when you were 19 or 20 you had almost none of that.
R: Yeah. I think so. I mean some things can be a bit more complicated. I think we've kind of settled into a rhythm now of knowing what works for us. In terms of touring, I'd say that we say two and a half, three weeks max away from the kids, in saying that we're going to America in Autumn which is nearly four weeks. You have to learn to prioritise stuff. When you're younger, you just live for touring and then you get back from touring and get the post tour blues.
C: It's a weird kind of come down, isn't it?
R: I don't get that now. When I come home from tour I'm happy to be home. That's also to do with what your home life is like.
Rachel you’re now an advocate for accessible live shows. We are seeing more accessible shows especially in sign language, you can now see some amazing dancing interpreters at music festivals busting out while people are on stage. Why is it important as a person and a parent to provide this fun version of performing rather than something ‘correct’ but dry?
R: You know, until I had my son, I hadn't really thought much about the Deaf community. And obviously having him completely opened me to a completely different world. I'm 13 years in now, and I realised very quickly how marginalised Deaf people are in terms of accessing anything. In the UK you get BSL (British Sign Language) interpreters on popular programs, but then they're only shown at like 2.30 am in the morning. It’s like Deaf people are just living in a different universe and they're already supposed to be up at that time? And there’s only basic shows being selected. We’re really, really just shit about it to be honest.
Like entertainment is always an afterthought?
R: Yeah, that sort of thing. There's a charity in the UK called ‘Attitude Is Everything’. And their aim is to make venues accessible for people that have different abilities and give everyone proper access. I just kind of wish every show could be like that as a standard, but it isn't. I just saw The Cult play in Cardiff a couple of weeks ago. That was an open air gig and actually there was a BSL interpreter. I love watching people that are signing because a lot of it is in the animation of the face. It's not just what your hands are doing. It's your body and facial expressions that go with it that show the emotion and I think it's really beautiful.
Christian I was reading a few old interviews with you and when people ask you about guitar pedals and tech you say you’re not super good with technical details. Then in another one you said that your music teacher in school told you music’s not for you. Is this a bit of self depreciation?
R: Yes he is a bit like that.
C: Well they're not inaccurate statements.
“That was an open air gig and actually there was a BSL interpreter. I love watching people that are signing because a lot of it is in the animation of the face. It's not just what your hands are doing. It's your body and facial expressions that go with it that show the emotion and I think it's really beautiful. “
What about when you guys came back and saw that you have an entirely new generation of fans? Did that make you realize that maybe no one knows what they're doing anyway and so you should just relax on yourself?
C: I'm fine with it. But I'm not a gearhead and or anything like that, because for me it's just fun to just mess around with it. I'm not interested in reading the manual I just play around with it. And that for me is fun. The technical side of it doesn't interest me at all.
I did I have one question to ask from a gearhead fan, which is what pedal has lasted the longest?
Me and Neil both used this ‘Rat’ distortion pedal and they both died simultaneously recently but I think we've had them for years and years.
In recording and live performance do you guys have any funny or weird behavior or tics that you noticed back again when you finally relaxed into each other and started getting into your groove?
R: We just felt very very natural from the get go. That first rehearsal back in 2014 was just like the last 30 years didn’t happen, it all settled back into our kind of roles within the band.
R: Nick likes to move around a lot
C: He prances
R: At one gig he nearly did a full pirouette. It was impressive.
C: Flamboyant.
R: I’m a bit….
C: Flappy
R: Yep, flappy. Neil bounces up and down when he gets excited.
C: Simon does some good drum faces.
Your last album ‘Slowdive’ was 2017, ‘everything is alive’ is being released six years later now in 2023. Very early on in your careers you wrote ‘Just For A Day’ in six weeks under a promised release date pressure. Do you think you could do that now?
R: Oh who knows? I mean we'll never have to have that kind of pressure where we have to write an album that we had to lie to the label about.
C: It would be interesting to test it out.
R: It would be interesting to say we have X amount of time in the studio, and see what comes out.
C: We don’t have to do that again.
The media was really mean to you guys early on, NME once described your music as, “anemic home counties mothering made for bed wetter’s, virgins and vegans”. They have since reneged and put you in a Top 10 albums Of All Time”. How little of a shit do you give about what journalists write now compared to back then?
C: Well we can’t control it, but I think it was quite macho the writing back then. Even in the world of indie. They would say it’s slightly feminine music because it wasn’t “RAAAARGH” so they’d just dismiss it.
Do you think it's feminine music?
C: Well it’s not macho music because it’s not posturing or anything.
R: It’s not Oasis.
C: but I think back then it was that energy where I think there were a lot of men writing and I think there was just a thing there was a lot of macho bullshit to be honest.
Your imprint on social media is pretty fun. On Reddit you have people asking things like “As a straight man how do I get to the front of a Slowdive concert?
C: Don’t be a dick?
Your new single ‘Kisses’ has a Tik Tok dance, and on Pinterest you are one of the top images when people put up boards called ‘Rock'n'roll Cool Bands’. Does any of this even remotely worry you? Or is it the same, as in people can write what they want and interpret how they want.
R: Oh no it’s quite entertaining. I want to see the dance that sounds great.
C: It's part of the reason we’re here, because all this stuff is which we've got no say over has been going on since the early 2000’s. We’ve kind of grown without doing anything so…
R: Crack on!
Listen to everything is alive here / See more from Slowdive here / Words by Alex Officer
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