Slowdive: Everything Is Alive – Hope, optimism and gorgeously pitched songs

Considering they were barely out of their teens when they released their debut album, and still in their mid-20s when they decided to split, in 1995, Slowdive may once have been regarded as a band who burned brightly but quickly. Despite the shoegazers’ various other projects in the ensuing decades, the Reading band clearly felt they had unfinished business. The eponymous album that they released in 2017, their first in 22 years, was hailed as a glorious return, and it has clearly galvanised the quintet.

Their fifth album is equally beautifully weighted. Coming off the back of a pandemic, and with two members losing parents in recent years, Everything Is Alive is more upbeat than you might expect. Hope and optimism are intricately mined, resulting in gorgeously pitched songs like the solemn, evocative Prayer Remembered and the immersive snapshot of Andalusia Plays, its hypnotic rhythm anchored by a chugging bassline and the murmur of electronics.

Neil Halstead’s soft rumble is the perfect foil to Rachel Goswell’s intangible trill, best heard on Shanty and Alife; the dreampop drawl of Skin in the Game and the atmospheric closer The Slab evoke shades of Beach House and The xx, two bands who may well have considered early Slowdive an influence. That can happen when you’ve been around long enough – but Slowdive are clearly not ready for heritage-act status just yet.