Slowdive: Slowdive [DEAD OCEANS]

Why you'll love it

This Dead Oceans LP comes in a gatefold jacket with a download card. The album reached No. 16 in the UK, made Pitchfork's best of 2017 list and won Album of the Year at the 2018 A2IM Libera Awards.

This edition

• Gatefold jacket
• Download card included

About the album

Most bands who vanish for 22 years come back sounding like a tribute act to themselves. Slowdive came back sounding like the best version of Slowdive, which is a far rarer trick. Their first album since Pygmalion in 1995 arrived on Dead Oceans in May 2017, with Neil Halstead producing and the band spreading the sessions across studios in Oxfordshire, Devon, Somerset and Cornwall.

Halstead and Rachel Goswell's voices still blur into one soft glow. "Slomo" opens the record in a slow, shimmering haze, "Star Roving" is the closest thing shoegaze has to a sprint, and "Sugar for the Pill" is a gorgeous, gently melancholy pop song. "No Longer Making Time" builds and swells, and the eight-minute "Falling Ashes" closes things with a hushed piano loop. "Star Roving" and "Sugar for the Pill" came out as singles ahead of the album, and Exclaim! later ranked it third among the year's best pop and rock records.

In the US it reached No. 50 on the Billboard 200, and Metacritic logged a score of 82. Spreading the sessions across four English counties seems a sensible way to make a record sound this roomy.

Also at Kops: more Slowdive on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Dead Oceans (cat# DOC132), a reissue of the 2017 album.