seeing slowdive live

my fav curators of shoegaze

When most people think of shoegaze, one of the bands that comes to mind is Slowdive. When some people, including me, think of their favorite shoegaze bands, Slowdive once again comes to mind. They are on their American tour right now, so obviously I had to buy a ticket (thank you Spotify presale). Then, the last week of September, I finally got to see them live. I thankfully was able to get close enough to the front to have a pretty decent view, which was only occasionally briefly blocked by someone’s phone recording a portion of a song. The opener was Drab Majesty, who was already on-stage and performing when I arrived.

Drab Majesty was a cool band that I hadn’t listened to before, but I think they were a good match for Slowdive. It was a duo of two men who looked almost exactly alike, with bleach blonde hair, metallic skin (the makeup was pretty good), and black suits. They brought out Rachel Goswell, the singer/guitarist of Slowdive, for a song in which she is featured. I think I only remember them speaking to announce that she’d be joining them on stage and when they were going off stage. Overall their set was fun to listen to.

Then we had some time before Slowdive came on. They were about 20 minutes late, but my friend was arriving a little late, so I was relieved he made it before they began. They started off with some songs off their new album and had a fairly even split between their albums, which was a little surprising to me. I feel like often times there are 1-3 albums that get a ton of play and then the rest get a song or so. They even played a song that wasn’t fully released: Sleep. Honestly, I have a hard time differentiating between songs since there aren’t a ton of discernible lyrics, so I liked the mixture. Everyone really came alive during When the Sun Hits, which is their most popular song. There wasn’t a ton of dancing in the audience, mostly head bumps and swaying. The band talked fairly minimally, mostly to say thank you. Crowd work isn’t a huge deal to me, so I liked how we just went from song to song without too much time in between.

Other than the music, I think they had a great lighting and background visuals. It was one of the best I saw at the venue, which usually doesn’t have a ton of crazy lights because it’s not super big. There were lots of strobe lights during some songs, with background visuals to compliment. One that was fun to watch was pill capsules floating around, with one opening and leaking its contents which fizzled out into what looked like a starry night sky. There were some smoky and geometric visuals as well. Also, there were feathery boas wrapped around the microphone stands which confused me a little because it was cute but kind of looked like swans or something.

Sometimes during the songs I just closed my eyes to be able to concentrate more on how the music sounded. When I did that, it was like I could feel the music through my body, especially my chest, and it was easier to distinguish between the different instruments. The guitar and reverb sounded a bit more crisp with my eyes closed for some reason. There were times when the effects made the guitar sound like a choir or someone screaming. Since the music is very spacey and instrument-heavy, there were times when I felt like I completely spaced out and then suddenly became aware of where I was again.

All in all, the show was great. I bought a tour shirt to add to my collection, a gradual accumulation of shirts in which I can point out a date & location on the back to say “I was there!” The experience was definitely worth it, and it was really cool to be able to see the people who made the album I would listen to on repeat freshman year of college late at night when my brain needed time to put itself back together (Souvlaki, in case you were wondering). I found the setlist online, so I could add the songs to my “Hey, I saw this live” playlist on Spotify, linked here in case you’re curious about the shows I’ve seen in my lifetime. To finish this article off, I’m embedding my favorite picture I took during the show, a photo of a person taking a photo of the show with a DSi that looks just like the one I had growing up.