Slowdive

Slowdive DEAD OCEANS. CD/DL/LP Fourth studio album from Berkshire shoegazers, just 22 years after the last one. Surely no band has seen their cultural capital rise as much in the past 20 years as Slowdive: their hazy, lambent sound, dismissed by Britpop Luddites, hated “more than Hitler” by Richey Manic, became an audible influence on every woozy, washed-out act from Beach House and Deerhunter to Grimes and Lana Del Rey. Now, following a 2014 reunion and a rapturously received run of live shows, comes a new album. Recorded in the Courtyard in Oxford, and mixed at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles by Beach House producer Chris Coady, Slowdive is a surprisingly joyous return to the fray. Aside from album closer, Falling Ashes, which holds close to the spectral electronic minimalism of 1995’s ‘farewell’ album, Pygmalion, this is swirling slow-motion pop euphoria, invested with a melancholy and depth accrued from the passing years. Lovely.