Slowdive
Everything Is Alive
Release Date: Sep 1, 2023
Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock
Record label: Dead Oceans
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Album Review: Everything Is Alive by Slowdive
Excellent, Based on 5 Critics
Based on rating 8.5/10
Hours after my mother passed away, I can recall stepping out into the garden--bewildered, untethered, adrift. Then, inexplicably, every detail in the garden seemed to snap into a weird kind of piercing clarity. It was as though nature existed on a separate frequency, a wavelength that grief had momentarily allowed me to attune to. Every element pulsed with vitality; everything felt intensely alive, and for an instant, the engulfing sorrow gave way to a profound feeling of gratitude.
Based on rating 4.0/5
these shoes are made for gazin' While reading through the press release for everything is alive, one sentence gave me a little chuckle: "[f]or a genre that is often thought of as divisive [...]". Surely, shoegaze in 2023 comprises one of the least divisive genres, right? It's inoffensively floaty music some people love, most can understand or appreciate, and very few actively hate - if anything, I'd argue it's one of the least divisive genres out there. Regardless, I do get where the notion of Slowdive being (part of a) divisive (genre) comes from, even when disregarding their maligned position during shoegaze's heyday.
Opinion: Excellent
Tags: Slowdive, Reviews, Album Reviews.
Opinion: Excellent
Slowdive's second act has been a thing to behold. After a brief chapter as flavour-of-the-month, the music press attempted to bury the shoegaze darlings, before label Creation dropped them. That, truthfully, should have been that. Yet in amongst this lies some of the most special, groundbreaking guitar music of their generation, with albums such as 'Souvlaki' becoming key touchstones for generations of pedal-bothering groups.
Opinion: Average
everything is alive by Slowdive When Slowdive re-emerged in 2017 with their self-titled comeback album, it felt like receiving an improbable but very welcome gift. The band had released the glacial beauty of Pygmalion at the height of Britpop, and then disappeared off the map, Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell going on to form Mojave 3, and drummer Simon Scott releasing experimental instrumental work under his own name. Album number five, everything is alive, comes across like a sampler of all the aspects of Slowdive that make them appealing, arranged into an easily digestible, eight-song collection, while failing to amount to more than the sum of its parts.
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