Slowdive

Souvlaki (1993)

Produced with Mark Freegard specifically to achieve clarity rather than noise, Souvlaki sounds cleaner and more spatial than Loveless — the guitars dry enough that individual chord voicings register rather than smearing into each other. 'Alison' and 'Souvlaki Space Station' demonstrate the band's gift for melody unobscured by effects; Brian Eno's contribution on three tracks pushed the album beyond conventional shoegaze into textural experimentation. Pitchfork's retrospective reassessment effectively launched the shoegaze revival of the mid-2000s.

Sleeve notes

Souvlaki · 1993

The press response to Slowdive's emergence in the early nineties was actively hostile in ways that look embarrassing in retrospect. The NME coined the term "shoegazing" partly as a dismissal of bands like Slowdive — static, introspective, more interested in texture than showmanship. Just for a Day (1991) was tentative, Souvlaki (1993) was a masterpiece, and then the room had moved on before anyone could notice.

Souvlaki succeeds because it never resolves the tension between the songs and the sound: Rachel Goswell and Neil Halstead's harmonies are warm and human, present in a way that My Bloody Valentine's vocals never quite were, while the guitar treatments wash the whole thing in a layer of distance. Songs like "When the Sun Hits" and "Alison" have the structural confidence of classics and the emotional temperature of dreams. Slowdive's 2017 reunion album, simply titled Slowdive, was received as a vindication — proof that the hostility had been wrong, not temporary.