-=- SHGZ -=-
* Shoegaze * Indie * Post-rock * Grunge * Dream Pop * Ambient * Ethereal *
Artist..: Ride
Album...: Nowhere
GENRE....: Indie
STYLE....: Shoegaze
LABEL....: Sire SCENE.....: 2015-01-03
BITRATE..: 992 kbps avg STORE.....: 1990-00-00
ENCODER..: FLAC 1.2.1 -8 -V TRACKS....: 11
SIZE.....: 370.5MB SOURCE....: CD
URL..: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nowhere_(album)
- TRACKLIST
1 Seagull 6:09
2 Kaleidoscope 3:02
3 In A Different Place 5:29
4 Polar Bear 4:46
5 Dreams Burn Down 6:06
6 Decay 3:36
7 Paralysed 5:34
8 Vapour Trail 4:18
9 Taste 3:17
10 Here And Now 4:27
11 Nowhere 5:22
Total Playtime: 52:06
Ride - Nowhere
Members:
Stephen Queralt
Loz Colbert
Andy Bell
Mark Gardner
The term shoegazer is synonymous with My Bloody Valentine, and even more
specifically with the album Isn't Anything and their powerful follow-up
Loveless. If one had to name the next thing that comes to mind when hearing
the word shoegazer it would probably be Slowdive's Souvlaki. The albums
Loveless and Souvlaki are usually considered the two-headed monster within
the genre. There is, however, a third album, released a full year before
Loveless and 3 years before Souvlaki, that arguably holds a claim to the
first truly great shoegazer album. Imagine a less abrasive and more laid back
Loveless, and you have Ride's Nowhere.
The album begins with 'Seagull", using a distorted guitar and funky bass line
that is suddenly met by a wall of swirling guitars. British vocals come in
after a little while singing soft and dreamy. The song is driving and reaches
an incredible and loud climax about 3 minutes in as there is a powerful
guitar solo. This is one of the better and more dynamic songs on the album,
and is 6 minutes of bliss. 'Kaleidoscope" begins with a delightful fast paced
distorted guitar which is joined by frantic drumming. The vocals have a
really interesting pacing to them as well. This is a very solid song.
'In a Different Place" begins with a gorgeous guitar part and a simple drum
beat. The part is played repeatedly for the first minute or so until the
crooning vocals come in to dominate the song and the guitar part is pushed to
the background for the moment. This song is a break from the harder and more
distorted stuff of the first two songs. This is a real radio friendly song
and a good one to start the first time Ride listener with. It has been among
my favorite songs for a while. It leads into 'Polar Bear" which has a
trembling distorted guitar that takes the listener into a dream land. The
British vocals come in and are pretty nice, but the real gem in this song is
the guitar parts. All in all it is another beauty.
'Dreams Burn Down" keeps the string of beautiful crooning vocals juxtaposed
with heavily distorted guitar going. Drums pace the song, but a wall of sound
created by the guitars swirls the song along nicely. Forgive me for using the
words swirl, dreamy, distorted, wall of sound, etc, but that is what the
album is all about. Anyway, back to the song, there are several enormous
climaxes in the song where the vocals cut out and the guitars just go nuts
and it is amazing stuff, but for the most part they are just pretty guitar
pieces. This is a really great song which rotates among my favorite on the
album. 'Decay" is one of the low points on the album. It gets the distorted
guitar part down, but the guitars aren't catchy and the vocals aren't as good
as other songs on the album.
'Paralysed" gets back to the long beautiful guitar intros, and does it with
much success. By the time the vocals come about a minute in, the song has me
captivated. The vocals really work well along side the pretty guitar and the
result is a nice song leading up to the song the band is known for. 'Vapour
Trail" was the first Ride song I heard and it was so great that I ended up
buying the album immediately after. This is sort of a love song. 'First you
look so strong. Then you fade away. The sun will blind my eyes. I'll love you
anyway." The vocals are so damn amazing and the dreaminess of the instruments
transports me to another world. This is another obvious highlight on the
album and is the song that is sure to get you hooked on Ride.
The song directly after 'Vapour Trail", 'Taste" has no shot to keep up the
beauty, so instead it returns to the driving style song from the beginning of
the album and a long intro. A minute in the vocals come in. They are pretty
nice. This is one of the shorter songs with just a couple verses and choruses
and then it is over, but it is a pretty solid feel good song. 'Here and Now"
begins with echoed guitars and what sounds like a distant accordion
accompanied by some simple drumming. The songs vocals enter in a minor key,
and the song continues on with bright instrumentation and darker sounding
vocals. They mesh rather well, creating another wonderful song. 'Nowhere"
starts off extremely strange with some buzzing noises and swirling
distortion. This is one of the more experimental songs on the album almost
with a spacey dreamlike and sad country style song all blended into one. This
isn't the greatest of album closers, but it sure does push the boundaries of
what music can be and lays the final touches on an album that has cemented
itself as one of the top albums in the genre.
This is an album for fans of My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive and other
shoegazer in general.
*
The golden rule of shoegaze is contrast. You have to offset all that noise
somehow. The number one way to do this was the ethereal vocalist, drifting
above the maelstrom with clean melodies and good enough lyrics. Ride utilized
the aforementioned trick while cleverly flipping the pop dynamic
quiet/loud/quiet into loud/REALLY LOUD/loud. Listening to their debut album,
Nowhere, is akin to powering through a vicious snowstorm while the spirits of
those frozen in the snow swirl overhead. ItÆs a mammoth sound, one that might
have been touted as the key shoegaze record had Loveless had not have come
the following year and closed the book on the whole genre.
Ride began like so many British bands, inspired by The Smiths. After
attending a Smiths performance, Andy Bell felt compelled to start a band of
his own. He knew Mark Gardener from his days at the Cheney School in Oxford
and met Laurence Colbert at the Oxfordshire School of Art & Design. Steve
Queralt was drafted from a local record store. Ride was formed in 1988 and
produced a demo tape in Queralts bedroom that found its way to Alan McGee,
owner of Creation records, who signed them in 1989.
Singer/guitarist Andy Bell stated to get to Ride you take Isnt Anything and
The Stone Roses and ôgo somewhere down the middleö, which basically nails the
sound of Nowhere. While My Bloody Valentine certainly had pop tendencies,
they didnÆt have pop ambition where The Stone Roses were basically all pop
ambition. Ride swiped MBVÆs guitar pedals while cribbing the big hooks from
The Stone Roses. The result was music catchy enough to sneak onto the pop
charts while possessing that atom bomb of distortion, only now that
distortion was strategically deployed to emphasize the hooks, not paint over
them.
Let us now sing the praises of drummer Laurence Colbert, who sees Bell and
GardenerÆs twin guitar attack and raises it with his cannon blast kit
smashing. After all, itÆs ColbertÆs wide open hi-hat kicking off ôSeagullö,
then Steve QueraltÆs buoyant bass line, THEN the guitars. Each member was
crucial to the bands sound. After all, what would ôDreams Burn Downö be
without those titanic two measures of arena leveling drums to start the song?
öThunder roared and lightening flashed/But you and I are in a different timeö
What set lead guitarists Andy Bell and Mark Gardener apart from legions of
lace lookers was they were always more interested in what was going on in
front of them than below them. Their twin guitar attack was melodic enough to
hum along to while a wind tunnel explosion of distortion always waited in the
wings. Opener ôSeagullö wields twin fighter jet guitar lines screaming in and
out of each other before giving way to Bell and GardenerÆs tight harmonies.
BellÆs vocal melodies were so pretty on songs like ôIn A Different Placeö
that he could sell an on-paper clunker like ôAnd weÆre smiling/When weÆre
sleepingö (Is that even possible?).
Everything comes together on twin highlights ôDreams Burn Downö and ôVapor
Trailö. The former is an impossibly huge ballad that, in lesser hands, would
do fine just twinkling forth on its skyward melody but is interrupted for an
epic blast of distortion bulldozing clean through the track that will rattle
your windows and instill a deep appreciation for those gentle parts. ItÆs a
tour de force; Bell breathes his lyrics with a sense of quiet awe, as if
ôlying under skyö was the most all-consumingly important thing happening on
planet earth at that particular moment. The latter song, ôVapor Trailö, is
just four and a half minutes of uninterrupted beauty. It makes like its title
and spirits off into the blue, seeing the album off over the horizon.
Aside from the occasional lyrical blunder (ôPolar Bearö) Nowhere is an
airtight showcase for RideÆs strengths. ItÆs potent mix of hooks ænÆ fuzz
holds as a document of a shoegaze band that was unfairly overshadowed only a
year later. But while My Bloody Valentine may have outpaced Ride in critical
terms, RideÆs popularity grew with their next release, 92Æs excellent Going
Blank Again, which gave Ride its only top 10 single (ôLeave Them All Behindö)
and top 10 album. One imagines a soild discography forming in the wake of
these twin successes but Ride made a sharp right into horribly lame dad rock
with 94Æs Carnival of Light (Or ôCarnival of ***eö if you let the band tell
it) before whimpering to an end with 96Æs Tarantula, Ride broke up the same
year of its release after Gardener walked out of the mixing sessions.
Ride may have blown it, but they left behind two shoegaze classics and a
reputation as the only live band in their field that mattered.
-=- SHGZ -=-
P.S.
** Thanks ***
*** BCC FNT IPC SSR ***
*** For Knowing Where The Music Is At ***
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