Some weeks in blogging things just come together nicely, in a way that wasn't planned but looks like it could have been. On Tuesday I wrote about Slowdive's 2023 album Everything Is Alive, an early 90s shoegaze band proving re- unions can be about new music not just the past (and making new music as god as or even better than the music they made first time around). On Wednesday I posted Hardway Bros' cover of Smashing Pumpkins' 1979 and the ethereal remixes of the song by Andy Bell (as GLOK). Yesterday I got home to an email from Andy's other band Ride with details of a new album, Interplay, out in March and a new single, Peace Sign, out immediately.
Peace Sign opens with a burst of feedback and some rapid fire drumming and then a wall of swirling guitars and a Prophet 5 synth. Andy says the song's lyrics were inspired by the free climber Marc- Andre Leclerc and the film The Alpinist, and the chorus, 'Give me a peace sing/ Throw your hands in the air/ Give me a peace sign/ Let me know you're there', is a lovely slice of optimism in a world that sometimes doesn't look like there's a great deal to be optimistic about. The drums keep hammering away, the bass thumps along, the guitars chime and burn, the words and harmonies flow forth, and it all sounds like Ride reborn again.
Back in 1992 Ride released their second album, the follow up to their 1990 debut Nowhere, a record of shoegaze perfection. On Going Blank Again they took twin overdriven guitars, a wall of FX pedal noise, twin vocalist harmonies, a strong sense of melody and a powerful rhythm section and fused them all together in one package. Andy Bell once said he got the idea for what Ride should like when he was sitting at home listening to The Beatles while his mum was hoovering, that conjunction of melody and noise. On Cool Your Boots they nailed everything together, a song that opens with a line sampled from Withnail And I ('even a stopped clock gives the right time twice a day') and then go all in, a descending chord sequence, blissed out vocals about having '50 states of mind', pummeling drums and fills from Loz and more guitars. The last three minutes are 90s guitars and drums heaven.