My Review: Slowdive Live in Manchester - 02 Ritz - 31 October 2023

  Slowdive - Live in Manchester

31/10/2023

Put on an evening in which you are walking on a five-pointed star, without any religious reference, while with rarefied songs you cross the ocean of emotions, raking memories and widening the pelvic radius of ecstatic, calamitous dreams, exuberant with class and restraint. To experience this you must show up to the date in a place predisposed to miracles, whether they are believable or not matters little, and widen your senses in an embrace under the sky illuminated by a band in a state of disarming grace. Having seen all of their tours, the Old Scribe does not need comparisons to establish that on Tuesday, October thirty-one, he witnessed a performance of heterogeneous and soft magnets, where rhythms, sounds, melodies, gentle chaos and noises educated in beauty transported listeners' minds to an imaginative system only partly known, as the presence of new elements was noted. The first surely represented by the perfect amalgamation of a set list that ranged yes between albums but preferred a structure that gave the idea of a journey through time without loading thoughts with nostalgia. An immersion in the most dilated sounds, in the back-and-forth games of guitars pregnant with magic, in the bass to colour the rush and the drums to direct the hips to the sheet of dreams. Spirituality came out of the amplifiers as a new language, full of impressive signs, where everything is contained in an intimacy shown just enough to colour the eyes with new sensations. All the tracks showed the unknown side, with prodigious settlings, as if drained of knowledge to deliver us a new identity. And then the fabulous Sleep to generate a quiver without parachute, a liberating cry along the lanes of a mistral and melancholic reverberation. Fifteen jolts of electricity warmed the air of Manchester's 02 Ritz, paralysing darkness and time, establishing the blood pact with engines brimming with unrestrained melodic fuels. 

Three songs from their recent sublime album: small differences for a great sensory evolution, the undeniable merit of a work that allows you to hear them as if they were newborns looking for love, getting it... Delirium inevitably showed itself, floating thoughts within the invisible notes that flowed into the abdomen.

With Crazy for You (from not so much loved Pygmalion), the psychedelia of shoegaze deals a blow to critics filled with ignorance, making explicit how experimentation, in Slowdive's case, leads to the door of musical paradise, through waves that synthesize the talent of those unwilling to abuse the clichés of success. Elegant, smiling, committed, excellently trained, the five seagulls from Reading give vitamins and cups of tea, make us lie down on a sleeper sofa and listen to the sound of their flights. Certainly the lighting system, their games, helped, for many audience members, to make the connection between the dreamy side and the imagination feel more. But the Old Scribe preferred to close his eyes or watch the stage without distraction: the art of Slowdive is a life lesson to which what comes out of amplifiers educated in composure, grace, minimalist development of textures that shock with intensity and beauty is enough. Rachel, Nick, Christian, Simon and Neil emphasized through this tour how these songs paint their expressive needs at the expense of the selfishness of those who would like to hear other moments of this unimpeachable life and musical journey. Here then is the imprint of the character of these compositions that reveal small and big secrets, perfectly aligned on the pages of this book that can educate the listener toward the endless interactions that were waiting for this uniqueness to define the tip of this star. The album that knew the most space was Souvlaki: not a compromise with the past, but merely a representing the decisive moment in their discography, as if it were a Thank You for the courage of a search that separated the band from their debut work, allowing them to land on new shores. 

Remarkable is the willingness to search for each other again with looks, as an immersion in each of the band's five inner worlds for a result that highlighted the amalgam and willingness to be together that still manages to be fruitful despite the decades having passed, with the danger of seeing skills and potential waning. But no: a play filled with ardor, with refined vehemence, with elegant seeds scattered by instruments full of imagination. A continuous, shocking emotion to give music the power to be an authentic need. 

The concert established the contact between serene souls and the ability not to fear the contrarieties of existence, piloting the wall of noise and reverberations toward stillness...

As always, the dress of songs lends itself to contact with musical suites that shift the centre of gravity of genres toward optimizing resources that are not afraid to knock on the door of mystery. Slowdive are pure philosophy, a need to dig through the dust of the planets encountered.

Small note, perhaps unprofessional, but necessary: the Old Scribe dedicates this review to his wonderful friend Krissy Vandewoude (Whimsical, The Churchhill Garden), thanking her for her (shared) love for the Reading Gulls...

Set-list

Shanty

Star Roving

Catch The Breeze

Sleep

Souvlaki Space Station

Crazy For You

Kisses

Sugar For The Pill

Slomo

Alison

When The Sun Hits

Golden Hair

Dagger

The Slab

40 Days

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

1st November 2023

Pic by Geoff  Shaw (Music, Photography, Running)