Album: Nowhere
Artist: Ride
Artist: Ride
Born: Headington, Oxford
Released: October 1990
Genre: Shoegaze
Influenced: Radiohead, Mogwai, Secret Machines, British Sea Power, Beach House
For me, this album and My Bloody Valentine's Loveless are the two twin towers of shoegaze. The first MBV album and others like Catherine Wheel's Ferment or Slowdive's Souvlaki run them close, but never quite match these two for majesty. Nowhere is more at the poppier end of the shoegaze spectrum than Loveless, but still deserves to be played loud so that you can bask in its psychedelic maelstrom of guitar feedback. Compared to MBV, Ride wrote melodies and crafted songs first and added the sonic fireworks later, whereas Kevin Shields took the opposite and more innovative approach of trying to nurture melodic hooks out of guitar noise. Andy Bell, later of Oasis and Beady Eye, was Ride's main songwriter and also shared vocal duties with Mark Gardener on several album tracks, including Seagull and Kaleidoscope. Seagull makes for an intense start to the album, with its incessant looping guitar sound and bitter but triumphant lyrics about moving on from a relationship ("Now it's your turn to see me rise / you burned your wings, now watch me fly / above your head"). Kaleidoscope is very reminiscent of the Stone Roses, especially Gardener's vocal delivery, and is a classic slice of psychedelic shoegaze. In A Different Place moves at a more leisurely pace before dissolving into my favourite track on side 1, Polar Bear, which builds up to an ecstatic finish thanks to the expertly timed cymbal crashes of Laurence Colbert, as well as Bell and Gardener's vocal sparring.
If there are two songs that I associate with Nowhere and its iconic sleeve cover, they are Dreams Burn Down and Vapour Trail, both transcendent moments of shoegaze that make side 2 of the album absolutely essential. On both tracks, the legacy of The Jesus & Mary Chain is all too clear, the dark atmospherics and sonic intensity mixed with downbeat lyrics, such as the feelings of romantic desperation on Dreams Burn Down ("We fill up our days and nights / we fill up the gaps in our empty little lives"). Decay has a claustrophobic atmosphere that is shattered by the more airy Paralysed, on which Bell intones sombrely in his distinctive way about yearning to escape. Vapour Trail's chiming guitars and strings make for an upbeat finish to the album, as Bell sings blissfully about coming to terms with the end of a relationship ("Thirsty for your smile / I watch you for a while / you are a vapour trail / in a deep blue sky"). Later re-releases of the album (such as my CD copy of Nowhere) contain three additional tracks from Ride's Fall EP, also released in 1990, which contains the superb Taste, the propulsive Here & Now and the experimental noise distortion of Nowhere. Ride's follow-up album, Going Blank Again, is also worth checking out, but Nowhere is the band's crowning glory.
For me, this album and My Bloody Valentine's Loveless are the two twin towers of shoegaze. The first MBV album and others like Catherine Wheel's Ferment or Slowdive's Souvlaki run them close, but never quite match these two for majesty. Nowhere is more at the poppier end of the shoegaze spectrum than Loveless, but still deserves to be played loud so that you can bask in its psychedelic maelstrom of guitar feedback. Compared to MBV, Ride wrote melodies and crafted songs first and added the sonic fireworks later, whereas Kevin Shields took the opposite and more innovative approach of trying to nurture melodic hooks out of guitar noise. Andy Bell, later of Oasis and Beady Eye, was Ride's main songwriter and also shared vocal duties with Mark Gardener on several album tracks, including Seagull and Kaleidoscope. Seagull makes for an intense start to the album, with its incessant looping guitar sound and bitter but triumphant lyrics about moving on from a relationship ("Now it's your turn to see me rise / you burned your wings, now watch me fly / above your head"). Kaleidoscope is very reminiscent of the Stone Roses, especially Gardener's vocal delivery, and is a classic slice of psychedelic shoegaze. In A Different Place moves at a more leisurely pace before dissolving into my favourite track on side 1, Polar Bear, which builds up to an ecstatic finish thanks to the expertly timed cymbal crashes of Laurence Colbert, as well as Bell and Gardener's vocal sparring.
If there are two songs that I associate with Nowhere and its iconic sleeve cover, they are Dreams Burn Down and Vapour Trail, both transcendent moments of shoegaze that make side 2 of the album absolutely essential. On both tracks, the legacy of The Jesus & Mary Chain is all too clear, the dark atmospherics and sonic intensity mixed with downbeat lyrics, such as the feelings of romantic desperation on Dreams Burn Down ("We fill up our days and nights / we fill up the gaps in our empty little lives"). Decay has a claustrophobic atmosphere that is shattered by the more airy Paralysed, on which Bell intones sombrely in his distinctive way about yearning to escape. Vapour Trail's chiming guitars and strings make for an upbeat finish to the album, as Bell sings blissfully about coming to terms with the end of a relationship ("Thirsty for your smile / I watch you for a while / you are a vapour trail / in a deep blue sky"). Later re-releases of the album (such as my CD copy of Nowhere) contain three additional tracks from Ride's Fall EP, also released in 1990, which contains the superb Taste, the propulsive Here & Now and the experimental noise distortion of Nowhere. Ride's follow-up album, Going Blank Again, is also worth checking out, but Nowhere is the band's crowning glory.
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