Slowdive Play the Hits @ ACL Live (5.12)

This past Sunday night, 5 members of the band Slowdive quietly strolled onto the stage at Austins ACL Live Moody Theater to perform for the capacity crowd, a set that one could only imagine might be about as close to a perfect Slowdive set and performance as one could ever expect from the band. The band, well into its 40 years of existence including a brief 22-year pause between albums 3 and 4, has found itself a new audience of youth amongst the longtime, slightly more aged fans they acquired during their earlier years as one of the prominent purveyors of the sub-genre shoegaze. A genre that has found new life in a generation yet to be birthed when the band began.

If you ask most fans of the band what their favorite Slowdive track might be, chances are youll get a pretty mixed response. The band doesn’t produce hits by most standards, they just make great music. Or more importantly, great records. Contrary to early critics slagging. Drawing from their slim, but concise recorded material consisting of only 5 full-length albums, founding members Rachel Goswell and Neil Halstead along with the remaining tenured members spent the next couple of hours exploring the decades of worth of material within a wash of dream-pop shoegaze bliss.

Giving equal amounts of attention to the most recent release everything is alive, the 2017 self-titled release, and the classic 93 release Souvlaki the band didn’t hesitate to slip into the set a few tracks from Pygmalion and Just For A Day. Each song a slow-building wave of shimmering guitars, driven by the controlled vigor of drummer Simon Scott and bassist Nick Chaplin, while Goswell cast her witchy, lyrical spell of youthful innocence unforgotten. Each track the perfect piece of an experience larger than itself, unfolding as they seamlessly flowed together. Every selection executed flawlessly by the members of the band as they brought the recordings, already lush, and expansive, exploring their sonic landscapes and testing the limits of the confines of the venue. Leaning in from the start with shanty and Star Roving the anticipation of what was to come was elevated. The decades of material not revealing of its age as Kisses bled into Alison and then into When The Sun Hits in what felt like the apex of the evening.

A simple cheers and acknowledgment of Mothers Day from the band between songs was more than enough for the audience, while they quietly anticipated what was to come next. After a brief exit from the stage, the band returned to complete the evening in what many probably considered the perfect ending. Sugar for the Pill began the return to the stage, followed by a slightly more passive selection that found Halstead at the microphone, guitar in hand, illuminated by a single spotlight, pulling out an old fan favorite, Dagger. What could’ve been amore than satisfying conclusion, was only sweetened by the bands performance, a tribute to the late Syd Barrett, of their version of Golden Hair. Goswells voice added to the somber mood of the track while Barretts image appeared on the screen behind the band as she sang the handful of lyrics, exiting the stage following. The remaining members of the band sent us off in a sweet cacophony of their trademark sound renewed with a faith that the good things always last despite life’s tragedies. Life is fragile and fleeting. Our experiences are timeless when relished for what they are our experiences.

Remaining North American Tour Dates: