[rayword45]

Day 1041: Everything Is Alive by Slowdive

I saw these guys last night because I got extremely lucky and snagged a free ticket off reddit when the resale market was full of scammers and the legit sellers were asking absurd prices. I'm talking like well over $100 for a second-hand when the original price was $40, $57.73 after AXS fees. And seriously, the only time I've seen so many scammers out in full force have been for festivals or other pop EDM shows that attract dumbass ABGs and frat bros that buy all their tickets, airfare, lodging and bunk-ass MDMA using daddy's credit card. I guess there's equal opportunity for scamming between Asians that have fried their brains via weekly research chemical usage and technologically illiterate Gen Xers.

The show had visuals, which was actually really surprising, but they were extremely minimalistic to the point of "who gives a shit?" and the show was largely a standstill stage presence for a standstill audience. Both Slowdive and the opener Drab Majesty cranked the everliving fuck outta the fog machine, which really added to the impression that it was about the sound and not the sights. Speaking of the opener, the frontman had a fashion sense that was equal parts William Basinski and Milo Yiannopoulos, down to the bleached hair, sunglasses and tailored suit, but thankfully sounded like neither (no diss to Billy). Shit was extremely 80s, and that aforementioned fog was so thick that I literally thought it was a solo act until the very last song, when I noticed a second dude in the back who also had bleached hair, sunglasses and a tailored suit. For the record, this was indoors and it was dark as fuck.

But back to the band I'm reviewing, I'm glad that the show was a lot less loud than my recollection of seeing Ride in January, which I'm glad for, and I'm SUPER glad that the audience was largely populated by older millennials and Gen Xers because the past handful of shows prior to last night averaged so young that I felt my hairline receding. And in the case of The Breeders, that age breakdown was both surprising and resulted in a much more inappropriately rowdy and impolite crowd than I expected. I also felt old at Ashnikko a couple days after that, but that crowd was populated by people with basic manners.

Anyways, Slowdive's set was pretty well balanced between classics and new stuff, and VERY well-balanced between "softer" moments of sweet melodies and walls of noise. It was fairly amusing that the crowd largely only cheered for Souvlaki songs but I can't act haughty over that, because that's also the stuff I came for. That being said, their 2017-and-beyond songs definitely popped a lot more live than on record... Wait this isn't a concert review thread, fuck.

This album was okay, I'd put it on par or slightly below their 2017 effort. The handful of songs they played live, only 4 out of 8 for the record, are a lot less mesmerizing when relegated to a static recording, though the opener and closer at least get close. The other songs are also decent but not as magical as their 90s output. That's not really a fair benchmark to have, but it is what it is.

Okay that's enough about the actual album. Now I only have to somehow catch My Bloody Valentine and I've seen all of the big three shoegaze bands in concert!

Best Track: The Slab
Rating: 6/10