Review: Slowdive, SWX – ‘A woozy escape from reality’

It’s difficult to review a band like Slowdive, a band that uses music in a way that words can rarely be used; their performance evokes a spirituality that cannot be done justice on paper.

Their fans seem to know this, and a line winds around Bristol’s SWX long before doors open, each person wanting to be as near to the barrier as is humanly possible.

Their openers are Lunge, whose performance is a fleeting affair, appearing and disappearing with barely a word.

Their sound is a techno reimagining of Kate Bush, with the wild, unruly head-voice distinctive to her music but club-dance rhythms beating underneath.

It’s all immense fun and the perfect setup for Slowdive’s set, as well as feeling slightly like a fever dream.

Slowdive open the night by unveiling their new album Everything is Alive with Shanty which layers guitar, vocals and synth in classic shoegaze fashion.

With the build of each new chord, each new word a conversation dies down, a person peels themself away from the bar and the audience was sent into a Slowdive induced trance.

From there, the band glide into a more dance-y tune, Star Roving, with its distinctive riff and swirly vocals. Dizzying guitar blankets the venue, smudging the lines between a real and other-worldly experience.

Neil Halstead’s lyrics describing being under the stars, simply enjoying life encapsulate the feeling perfectly because, as it turns out, a Slowdive gig is a woozy escape from reality.

To preview their next few songs, SWX is bathed in an angelic light, spirals swirling on the backdrop behind them.

They play a run of songs from Just For a Day, their first album which put them on the charts and launched them into the world of shoegaze.

The influences from Cocteau Twins and My Bloody Valentine are clear, the walls of fuzzy distortion in Avalyn I,  the gritty guitar in Catch the Breeze.

Later in their set, they start to draw from newer material, Sugar for the Pill and Kisses, which have heartbeats in the bassline and vocals skimming the top, giving the ethereal feel of a dreampop band.

Just as the set is becoming lullaby-like, they pull out Alison and When the Sun Hits, their most streamed songs and, perhaps, their bounciest.

Attempts are made to sing along, resulting in a mesh of voices, tangling around a hypnotic central key, the combination of voices only adding to the band’s wall of sound.

Their encore sends stars spinning around the balcony, both physically and musically, with Dagger, The Slab and 40 days.

40 days, a song about longing for someone long gone, is a seemingly pointed comment about the pain of leaving the gig, back into cold, drizzly November, only traces of the grungy guitar slipping out onto the pavements.

The end of the night is, as 40 Days suggested, saddening, but the atmosphere continues in the people heading to their buses, or their club nights, an awareness of deep emotion which, without Slowdive’s music, would be difficult to understand.

Main photo: Esme Morgan-Jones

Read next:

• Review: Art School Girlfriend, Rough Trade – ‘Mix of electronic, rock, pop and a bit of shoe-glaze style’
• Review: Peach, Rough Trade – ‘An energetic anger-fuelled band’
• Review: Squid, SWX – ‘They are relentless’

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