The moment a song is born, the world is different. It’s now a part of our lives. We sing it in the shower. We dance to it at our wedding. We get pumped with it. We break up to it. We memorize it. We try to forget it. We rediscover it. This month, I’m joining Arron Wright’s Twitter music challenge: ##Popiversary2. Because why the hell not. Songs deserve their own anniversaries, too.
Year: 2017
The eponymously-titled album was the band’s first studio output in over 20 years. It’s highly unusual for a band to come back to record like that after such a lengthy hiatus. It’s even more unusual for a band to arrive in such spectactular form as Slowdive did in 2017, like not a single day passed since 1995’s Pygmalion. Their most recent studio album not only held up, it became my favorite Slowdive record. A big part of that is due to the strength of the final track, “Falling Ashes”.
What’s great about “Falling Ashes” is that it doesn’t depend on distortion and pedal effects to create the atmosphere. There’s an overwhelming expansiveness to the whole album where Slowdive uses some of their tried-and-true techniques, but “Falling Ashes” shows us a maturation to the band yet this is still undeniably Slowdive in every way. Impossibly beautiful. Unflinchingly contemplative. Utterly immersive.
“Love of my life, GRACE of my night.”