In the world of music, reunion tours are often seen as cynical cash grabs from oldies acts whose prime years waved bye-bye to them long before, so it’s something akin to a phoenix rising when a band can break up to very little fanfare, then reunite 20 years later only to discover they’re vastly more popular than they ever could have dreamed.
Shoegazing/dreampop pioneers Slowdive are that unlikely success, and one of the band’s two guitar heroes Christian Savill was kind enough to talk to Haps about the band’s newfound popularity, their influences, and their very first UK top 10 album Everything Is Alive.
Haps: Both this and the previous tour have seen Slowdive visiting countries they’ve never played before. How does the audience reception in those places compare to the traditional audiences in North America and Europe?
Christian: Obviously we’re getting older (laughs) but what we’ve noticed is that in addition to the older fans that have been to hundreds of gigs and aren’t as energetic as they once were — although we love having fans of all ages — we’ve got a lot more kids attending that bring a new and different kind of energy.
At the time, we were very young, naive, and quite taken aback by the “build ‘em up to knock ‘em down” attitude of the British press. At the end of the day, we always knew that the music had to stand up to the test of time, and maybe our music doesn’t stand up. Maybe it does!
Haps: Most of those younger fans wouldn’t remember how vicious the British press was back in the day, and Slowdive have since buried Melody Maker. Have you or anyone in the band ever been contacted by some of those critics since then who’ve been willing to admit “Hey, mate, I got it wrong”?
Christian: (laughs) No, I don’t think so. One thing that made us laugh was a reviewer who slammed our second album Souvlaki and then praised our newest album, but we’re not looking for revenge. At the time, we were very young, naive, and quite taken aback by the “build ‘em up to knock ‘em down” attitude of the British press. At the end of the day, we always knew that the music had to stand up to the test of time, and maybe our music doesn’t stand up. (laughs) Maybe it does!
Haps: They could be unbelievably vicious. I remember one reviewer skewered Gene’s Olympian LP in two words: “Smiths-lite.”
Christian: (laughs) Oh my God, that’s brutal.
Haps: How did you all feel about the finished product when your first LP Just For A Day was released before the press decided to savage it? I’ve noticed that aside from Catch The Breeze, it’s very rare for songs from that album to find their way into current setlists.
Christian: That’s a fair comment. At the time we were feeling the pressure of having to release an album, but we’d just released an album’s worth of music (The Slowdive, Morningrise, and Holding Our Breath EPs) in the months before the recording sessions for Just For A Day were to begin. We were a young band, and we didn’t have enough songs for a whole album so that LP was pretty much written in the studio in a short amount of time. It wasn’t as strong as it could have been — we knew that — but maybe what we should have done is sprinkle some of the songs from the EPs onto it. Consequently, we don’t play a lot from that record because (laughs) some of it’s not that good.
Haps: Would you like to take this opportunity to tell the fans in advance not to ask for certain songs simply because you’re sick of them or because they’re problematic when played live?
Christian: We get people asking, for example, to “please play Spanish Air” off that album, and when we’ve rehearsed it, it doesn’t sound very good — so if we don’t play a song it’s because… we can’t (laughter). It’s as simple as that.
Haps: I understand that Sony owns the masters to the early albums; is that holding up any chance of a possible live album in the future using some of those songs?
Christian: We almost released a live album about ten years ago, but by the time we got around to mixing it, the moment had passed. We’ve talked about doing something live, a documentary of a live show, the band on tour, perhaps. It’s not out of the question.
Haps: Slowdive has always had a cinematic quality to its sound. Have you ever been asked to score a film outright? There are certainly enough instrumentals in the band’s catalogue to suggest that it wouldn’t go amiss, particularly after listening to the newest album Everything Is Alive.
Christian: There was a low-budget, independent film called “I Am The Elephant, You Are The Mouse” that we scored a long time ago. Aside from that, no, but we would certainly love to.
Haps: You have two sets of master tapes in your hands. The Smiths Hatful of Hollow and The Cure’s Pornography. You can save one but the other must be thrown into an active volcano. Which do you save?
Christian: It depends on which band member you ask; if it’s me, Hatful of Hollow wins every time. That album is the reason I picked up the guitar, to be honest. I know it’s only a compilation of radio sessions and singles…. Pornography is an amazing record too. I was always more of a Smiths fan. Nick (Chaplin, the band’s bassist) is a massive Cure fan, so he’d save their record.
Haps: The newest album works brilliantly as a bridge to the rest of the Slowdive catalogue. Was there a conscious effort on the part of the band to ensure that continuity would be maintained when you were recording it?
Christian: We kind of work in our own little bubble to be honest. It’s only when we’ve finished that we think “Oh, hold on, is anyone else gonna like this?” On our new record, there’s a song called “Kisses” which was very synth-heavy but then we wondered how we’d play it live. We’ve got songs that once finished don’t quite sound like us, but are then completed when Rachel and Neil put their vocals on top which kind of knit the track together as a Slowdive number. On the other hand, when Neil and Rachel performed as Mojave 3 (their post-Slowdive project) it didn’t sound like Slowdive at all.
It comes down to Neil’s songwriting; he writes really good melodies. Often when he brings them to the studio, they’re so simple you wonder why someone hasn’t come up with them before.
Haps: It’s easy for listeners to get hung up on the effects pedals and the layers of guitar, but at the end of the day, doesn’t there have to be a good song underneath it all that could sound fine on an acoustic guitar if need be?
Christian: It comes down to Neil’s songwriting; he writes really good melodies. Often when he brings them to the studio, they’re so simple you wonder why someone hasn’t come up with them before.
Haps: I understand that when it came time to select the eight songs on the new album that there were another seven that didn’t make the cut. Is there any chance that they might get released in the future, and do you in fact think they’re worthy of release?
Christian: It boiled down to only having 22 minutes per side of vinyl, which was our criteria for putting together the record, but I thought there were definitely some good songs that were left off that deserve a release.
Haps: What’s an example of an album or single in your collection that you think the average Slowdive fan would be surprised to hear you’re a fan of?
Christian: Crikey, that is a curveball. Probably my favourite band of all time is Kraftwerk which never features guitars! (laughter)
Haps: Can you compare the band’s experience with Creation Records versus your current label Dead Oceans?
Christian: I’d say they both let us get on with whatever it is/was we needed to do. To their credit, Dead Oceans never asked to hear anything while we were working on the album, which is lovely. With Creation, we were younger and less confident, so there was a bit more pressure to work more quickly (laughs).
Haps: What would you say was the best gig you ever attended as a fan?
Christian: Probably the little gigs that I went to when I was young. There was a Reading band called Loop, and the volume… those early gigs made me want to be in a band. The Kitchens of Distinction was another — they were really important to us as opposed to big shows, I would say.
Slowdive continues its Asian tour in Seoul tonight at Myunghwa Live Hall.
