{"id":1438,"date":"2025-01-04T13:14:06","date_gmt":"2025-01-04T18:14:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/?p=1438"},"modified":"2025-01-04T13:16:19","modified_gmt":"2025-01-04T18:16:19","slug":"1438","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/2025\/01\/04\/1438\/","title":{"rendered":"Colin’s Column: Slowdive @ Kemba Live"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Image credit Bene Riob\u00f3, via Wikimedia Commons<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I got to the show a lot later than I probably should\u2019ve. Doors opened at 7, and I arrived close to 9, skipping the entire opening act. I regret nothing. Nevertheless, after getting dropped off a block away from the venue I walked into KEMBA Live! buzzing with excitement. I found my spot pretty far back among some couples hanging out together, and kept it together for about 5-10 minutes before the band came out. I looked around and the audience was about what I would expect for a 90s indie band that a younger generation has grown to love: guys with cuffed pants, girls with skinny jeans, the odd unexpected conservative, shoegaze diehards, the obviously online, a fogbank of dedicated nicotine users, and a freshman journalist there to write an article and see a great show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Backed by oscillating guitar feedback, an atmospheric ambient soundscape, and swirling, animated lights (dialed to the perfect shoegaze hue of Slowdive), the band walked on stage. As they opened with an entrancing version of “Avalyn I,” they immediately dialed the entire audience into the noisy backdrop that would be part of the entire concert. From here, they rotated between some songs on more recent albums, while sprinkling more and more of the classic \u2018hits\u201d as the concert went on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With staples like \u201cStar Roving\u201d, \u201cCatch the Breeze\u201d, and \u201cSugar for the Pill\u201d the band warmed the audience up for the Souvlaki<\/em> powerhouses that ended the show. These included \u201cAlison\u201d, \u201cWhen the Sun Hits\u201d, \u201c40 Days\u201d, \u201cDagger\u201d and \u201cMachine Gun\u201d; \u215a of the closing songs were from the 1993 album. The ordering was pretty perfect. Obviously my favorites were the ones from Souvlaki<\/em>, but minus a song or two from their new album (a project I was not a huge fan of), I struggled to find a single miss on the setlist.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Compared to the last few live performances I\u2019ve seen, this one was definitely more tame. To be fair, two of the last performances I saw were Charli XCX<\/a> and a hardcore techno rave. Nonetheless, the band’s age definitely showed: both in the members themselves, and in the audience. The band felt pretty stagnant on stage, and often when Rachel had finished singing she’d just stand there awkwardly. The other band members also failed to distinguish themselves. Audience engagement was limited and even though I could tell they were enjoying themselves on stage, they struggled to communicate that to the crowd like musical performers<\/em> do. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But of course, what can you expect from a the pioneers of genre literally named after standing still on stage? Slowdive built their success from their music, not their performances. They showed off the textures and sonic landscapes they created across their career, and I found something beautiful in that too. It also helps to remember the band members are all in their 50s now. Still, I always appreciate a band that can put on a show as compared to a band that seems to just be playing their music.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for the crowd, they seemed to play off the band’s lack of energy in a similar way. I saw lots of dads, awkward teens (myself included), and 30-something-year-old hipsters standing around. The older music meant an older audience, and that meant a general lack of energy. Most attendees had one or two drinks across the entire show and limited their dancing to bopping their head occasionally. It stood in sharp contrast to the Julie show I saw earlier this year where I participated in some pretty intense shoegaze-backed moshpits. It showed me the importance of age in concert dynamics and made me appreciate both ways of experiencing a live show.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regardless, the band was great. Rachel Goswell has mastered how to sing shoegaze. With her iconic split-dye haircut, her vocals quietly snuck into every track, adding a texture of humanity to the rough distortion of the band’s melodies. Neil Halstead and Christian Savill created enamoring and full collages of sound on just two guitars thanks to their highly frequented pedal boards and Nick Chaplin\u2019s bass playing gave a feeling of concreteness to every song, no matter how loud. They have pinpointed the exact amount of reverb they like on Goswell\u2019s vocals, the perfect mic distances for Scott\u2019s kit, the perfect moments to crescendo, when to have Goswell on keyboard, and the guitarists knew every time they need to step on the flanger pedal or boost the distortion.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slowdive has definitely learned over the past 40 years how to engineer their shows in the best way possible. In all of these songs, their sound felt so much bigger than 4 people. The tones were on point, the guitar effects were perennial yet selective, and the drums crept into every song, giving a tempo to the cornucopia of electric sounds coming from the stage. Their sound encapsulated the indecipherable bliss that I love about shoegaze. The ability to create such emotional songs using such abstract methods and sounds has always been something I admired about the genre, and that was on full display during the concert. It\u2019s a band I am glad I got to see and a concert I think many people should experience. I also would like to thank Cora for securing a press pass so I could attend the show!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Image credit Bene Riob\u00f3, via Wikimedia Commons I got to the show a lot later than I probably should\u2019ve. Doors opened at 7, and I arrived close to 9, skipping the entire opening act. I regret nothing. Nevertheless, after getting dropped off a block away from the venue I walked into KEMBA Live! buzzing with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":1440,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1438"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1438"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1443,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1438\/revisions\/1443"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}