It Starts With a Birthstone - 200 Albums for 2024 # 120 Ride - Interplay

 

I've always liked Ride a lot even though I've been aware that they haven't always generally been percieved as the hippest merchants on Pop's block. Perhaps excepting their early days when I think it was generally agreed that they were a damined good thing as the Eighties ended and the Nineties began,

I was commencing my last year at university and things very definitely seemed to be on the move. Ride were impossibly young and ptting out one great EP after another. Full of bright and vibrant guitar tunes that appreciated The Velvet Underground but also The Beatles and The Byrds. As well as the time they were in. Things got increasingly nostalgic and reverant and also strangely arrogant as the decade proceeded. Ride were never arrogant.

As they progressed through the Nineties they very visibly seemed to lose their direction and sense of mission. Guitarist and joint songwriter Andy Bell, fell under the spell of Oasis and joined them as a hired hand which I always thought was a shame as his own brand had great appeal to me and others.More to me at least long term certainly. 

Ride's reformation and reignition as a going concern has been that rare thing. A band reforming that's welcome because there's a sense of unfinished business. I saw them play in Newcastle about ten years back and it was one of the best gigs I've ever seen. Their talent was nakedly obvious and quite awe inspiring that night.

They have  a new album out called Interplay and I've just taken great pleasure listening to it, on my television set, (I still find it difficult to totally adjust to the technology leaps of my lifetime). It's a great record and I supect I'll put it on again as soon as it gets to its end.

The standard criticism of Ride has always struck me as a criticism of them, who they are and where they come from as much as of their music. That they are musical standard bearers for a Home Counties blandness. This implicit criticism strikes me as unfair given an actual focused listening to Interplay. It has so much going for it. The lyrics were never primarily what you go to with Ride. They fit fine here too. 

You really get the sense that Ride appreciate their own gifts now and are happy to stick to their own set of rules and sonic guidelines, rather than wanting to be Traffic, The Creation or god forbid Oasis. Interplay is a great and highly varied record which concentrates on the band's consistent asset. Their appreciation of the light. It's almost an hour long and I'd say they're a band worthy of an hour out of anyone's life.