Worst Record of the Year - Slowdive - everything is alive

 

Slowdive are a funny one. I paid them little attention first time round. When they were treading the boards, in their unassuming Home Counties way as part of the Shoegazing Scene that made small, and we assumed insubstantial waves at the start of the Nineties.

A band named after a Siouxsie & the Banshees song but you wouldn't have guessed it from listening to their music. They were so weak, polite and unassuming you rather doubted they had the collective will between them to blow the skin off the custard on their puddings. 

They were generally ignored. And if they were noticed they were generally derided and castigated by the UK music press. At rimes quite cruelly frankly. In a few years they gave up the ghost, tired of swimming against the tide, as Grunge and then Brit Pop came along. And that it had to be assumed, was that. 

But Slowdive's star has slowly risen and risen ever since . Most of all in the American alternative underground scenes generally unaffected by our British class prejudices and hatred. Our venom.  Their 1993 album Souvlaki is currently ranked as the 124th best album ever made, according to the Best Ever Albums site. Ironically that's one place above Never Mind the Bollocks.

And Slowdive themselves have reformed. Genuinely in response to public demand. To tour the boards again to huge acclaim and adoration and to make new records.

everything is alive is their latest. It received Album of the Month status in the latest issue of Uncut Magazine. I have no idea why. I'm listening to it as I write . It's a truly wretched affair. Effects pedals, soppy insubstantial vocals and drawn out guitar fades that seem to have no beginning, middle, end or earthly purpose. One song is virtually indistinguishable from the next. It is a dirge. Of the blandest sort imaginable..

It seems the UK press were right to mock them mercilessly first time round if this is the first case for the defence of Slowdive. everything is alive it seems, except this record.