After reuniting a few years ago, Slowdive have released Slowdive, their first album in a while.

Slowdive were a band that were part of shoegazing… and so on.

Review begins now.

The songs move between soft and somewhat noisy whilst sounding consistently light, airy and relaxed. Sometimes the songs feel as though they are influenced more by ambient sounds and sometimes they feel more influenced by rock. However, they all sound very much like pop songs, or at least what Slowdive think makes for pop. This works well in favour of the album, giving it a sense of cohesion and progression.

Vocals are usually understandable despite feeling more like their purpose was for the sound rather than the delivery of words. They work well as another element of the music, seeming as though a lot of thought went into how they fit into the songs rather than the other way around. This extends to when when there’s complete clarity of the lyrics, which also come across as though there was a fair bit of work on them.

Whilst the music is decent enough, it is let down by the production.
It’s good enough to allow the music to shine where it needs to and there’s a good deal of clarity, but it seems that the record was made to sound as though it was made in the nineties.

It could either be the style of the songs or the actual production work itself. Either way, it unfortunately leaves the record sounding dated in a way that’s detrimental as it seems as though it’s a conscious attempt to recapture the sound of an era that the songs are somewhat removed from, harming how they sound and leaving a feeling that perhaps Slowdive might have played it a little too safe.

Slowdive’s Slowdive does have some problems, but it does work well as a record.
It could have turned out quite poorly.
To the credit of the band, it doesn’t.