Holiday weekends usually aren’t the most exciting weeks for new releases, especially Labor Day, and this week I’ve only got two new albums, but they’re both awesome. Slowdive‘s magnificent fifth album, everything is alive. and fellow Creation records alumni Medicine’s ninth album, Silences. Speaking of Creation, The Boo Radleys‘ Giant Steps gets a 30th anniversary reissue, and to round things out there’s also a 20th anniversary reissue of Grandaddy‘s Sumday.
It’s a slightly bigger week for Andrew in Notable Releases as he reviews new albums from Jeff Rosenstock, Speedy Ortiz, Spirit of the Beehive, and more.
If you need more, There’s also the Indie Basement Best Songs & Albums of August 2023 wrapup.
Things pick up considerably next week as we rocket into the fall. Until then, have a great and hopefully long holiday weekend and read this week’s reviews below.
ALBUM OF THE WEEK #1: Slowdive – everything is alive (Dead Oceans)
Slowdive’s fifth album is a quiet, subtle stunner. Give it time to bloom.
Unexpected returns are becoming less surprising these days, but in 2014 when Slowdive announced they were reforming to play Primavera and were working on new songs, it was a shock and a thrill. Then three years later they released their first album in 22 years and, perhaps an even bigger surprise, it was not just good for a comeback, it was one of the best albums of the year. Expectations may be higher than ever for the band’s fifth album which Slowdive meet in their own sideways manner, delivering a quiet stunner and perhaps the best record of their career.
The album started with electronic sketches Neil Halstead had originally envisioned for as a solo album, but during the pandemic he brought in bandmates Rachel Goswell, Nick Chaplin, Christian Savill and Simon Scott as a way to connect when they really needed it, and it soon became clear this was going to be a Slowdive album. “We’ve always tried to work as a pretty solid democracy,” Halstead told MOJO. “There’s never a track that all five of us don’t really love, which makes it quite hard to get a record together. Like Nick might have less patience for anything that’s too ambient or boring. I lean more towards boring, I’m quite happy to make long, boring music, but if I tried to force that on the band it wouldn’t work.”
everything is alive is not boring but it does take a few listens to fully bloom, and the all lower-case lettering on the album and song titles seems intentional. This is a hand on the shoulder, not a giant hug hello, a record that may not have the immediacy of their 2017 comeback or the flowing grandeur of Souvlaki, but it is their most sonically cohesive and emotionally resonant album yet and plays like a summation of everything they’ve done to date, including Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell’s other group, Mojave 3.
There’s more than a little sadness here — the album is dedicated to Goswell’s mother and Scott’s father who died in 2020. The sense of loss is felt in the songs too, especially centerpiece “andalucia,” where Halstead looks back warmly at an ended relationship, remembering a moment like it was a photograph — a lover’s clothes, the John Cale song on the stereo — but he’s not stuck in the past. “I dream like a butterfly, perfect and temporary,” he sings as cascading guitars (echo’s of Eno’s Apollo) fade like a memory.
There is hope, though, too, and a sense of wonder, as the title suggests. It’s in every moment of the album, though the sweet and the bitter always go hand in hand, even on the album’s poppiest moments like the gorgeous, swaying “kisses” and swirling “alife.” Slowdive records always sound amazing, but everything is alive is particularly exquisite, with guitars, electronics, and voices melting into one beautiful cloud, allowing them to float as high as they’ve ever been.
everything is alive by Slowdive
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ALBUM OF THE WEEK #2: Medicine – Silences (Laner Archival Service)
Most of the leading noisemakers of the original early-’90s shoegaze era were British, but there were a few Yanks who got it right and one of those were Medicine, led by onetime Savage Republic drummer Brad Laner who mixed buzzsaw guitars, Brian Wilson melodies, crashing drums and occasional dance beats into a crushing, hypnotic mass. They were also one of the few US bands with UK bonafides: while signed to Rick Rubin’s American Recordings in the States, across the pond they were on Creation Records, home of Slowdive, The Boo Radleys (both covered elsewhere in this column), My Bloody Valentine, Ride, and Swervedriver. (1993’s 5ive made our list of the Best Shoegaze EPs of the Early ’90s.) The group called it quits in 1995, but Laner reformed Medicine in 2013 with drummer Jim Goodall and have been going ever since. After two albums on Captured Tracks, Medicine have flown a little under the radar, dropping Scarred for Life in 2019, and self releasing Drugs in 2022. They’re now back with Silences that is just as full melody, dissonance, and psychedelic invention as when they had Elizabeth Fraser guesting on their contribution to The Crow soundtrack.
Laner, longtime drummer Jim Goodall and new member Julia Monreal really click here, with songs that take wild swings and left turns but never without an ear for classic pop. Laner and Monreal’s woozy harmonies — a bit like Low’s Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker — are the center of all the psychedelic chaos, and pull you back when things seem like they might spin out of control. “Undecided” is the the most classic Medicine song on Silences, but there are great moments throughout, from the one-two-punch of “That’s Alright, Friend” and “Hey Hey Go Away,” that open the album, to the soaring “Sail On,” and the relatively laid-back “Born to Loose.” Glad that Laner and Medicine are still kicking and kicking hard.
Silences by Medicine
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The Boo Radleys – Giant Steps 30th Anniversary Edition (Two-Piers Records)
Shoegaze/Britpop greats’ best album gets a welcome 30th anniversary reissue.
The Boo Radleys were pretty much the only UK band to successfully go from shoegaze to Britpop and be successful at both. Their third full length, and second for Creation Records, was the best of both worlds, mixing melody and maelstrom with boundless creativity from bandleader Martin Carr. Giant Steps is The Boo’s best album, one of 1993’s finest, and according to me the 12th best album Creation Records ever released:
Liverpool band The Boo Radleys began as one of the noisiest of the ’90s shoegazers, with some songs on their 1991 Creation debut, Everything’s Alright Forever, sounding like a garbage truck in a rockslide. But deep down, guitarist Martin Carr was a lover of the classics — The Beatles, Kinks and other late-’60s psychedelic pop — and that side of him was ready to emerge. The watershed moment was the title track of 1992’s Lazarus EP which took a roaring, anthemic melody and built it up slowly with an extended, dubbed-out intro. It’s one of their best-ever tracks. “Lazarus” turned out to be the first taste of what would be their magnum opus — the boundary pushing, Coltrane-referencing, appropriately named third album, Giant Steps. Noise and hazy effects still rang through songs like “I Hang Suspended,” “Butterfly McQueen,” “Rodney King – Song for Lenny Bruce” and “Take the Time Around,” but nothing was obscuring the massive hooks Carr loaded the songs with. There were also just straight-up pop songs like “Wishin’ I Was Skinny,” “Barney and Me,” and “If You Want it, Take It.” It’s a record that, in its own way, is every bit as ambitious as Screamadelica or Loveless, and one that opened Creation’s door for Britpop’s coming surge. “I felt that everything was moving towards this big pop thing,” Carr says in David Cavanagh’s The Creation Records Story. “Loads of bands — young bands with guitars — were getting into the charts. Blur were getting there. Suede were having hits. We didn’t sell that many records with Giant Steps but everyone was dying to see what we were going to do next.” Next would net them a massive UK hit single — 1995’s “Wake Up Boo!” — but Giant Steps is still their finest hour.
For its 30th anniversary, Giant Steps has been remastered from the original tapes for this reissue, a process overseen by the whole band. The color vinyl Deluxe Edition also comes with a bonus 10″ featuring Saint Etienne’s inventive remixes of “Lazarus” and “Rodney King.” A much-needed reissue for this essential ’90s album.
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Grandaddy – Sumday Twunny & Excess Baggage (Dangerbird Records)
Grandaddy give their great 2003 album the 20th anniversary edition it deserves with lots of great bonus tracks
One of Modesto, California’s greatest exports — along with Peaches, Wine and George Lucas — indie rock band Grandaddy exuded a sunny melancholy, centered around Jason Lytle’s tales of adrift pencil-pushers and silicon valley ennui, finding melody in the mundane and elevating it to psychedelic space rock. The band managed to make two near-masterpieces in row: 2000’s The Sophtware Slump and 2003’s Sumday. The latter, which includes such classics as “Now It’s On,” “I’m on Standby,” “El Caminos in the West,” and “The Go in Go-for-It,” has gotten a 20th anniversary edition. That includes the original album remastered, Lytle’s original demos of all the songs and Excess Baggage which compiles b-sides and other rarities. If you’re new to Grandaddy, whose sound falls somewhere between Pavement and The Flaming Lips, the original album is a great place to start; if you already love it, the cassette demos strip things back nicely, while the songs on Excess Baggage are all good and make a nice companion piece. This era of Grandaddy could do no wrong.
Sumday: The Cassette Demos by Grandaddy / Jason Lytle
Sumday: Excess Baggage by Grandaddy / Jason Lytle
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