When the essential UK shoegaze album Souvlaki was released its reception was nothing like today’s. In fact, in the early 90s, Shoegaze was supposed to fall off. Even the relatively safe A Storm in Heaven by The Verve faced negative press, then did the shoegaze front-runner Lush with album Lovelife after their successful debut. The resurgence of Slowdive’s popularity perhaps slowly progressed in the internet communities of the late 2000s, yet it became much more remarkable with the spike of Tik-Tok’s marketability during 2017-2018, alongside the resurgence of shoegaze as a whole. Now, Slowdive marks an era that never existed.

Last week, I revisited Slowdive’s 2023 release Everything Is Alive. That was also the year Clockenflap brought Slowdive to Hong Kong, opened by Ichiko Aoba. I remember that the tracklist ended with Alison and When The Sun Comes, which everyone sang through. Souvlaki is supposed to be the band's magnum opus. From Everything Is Alive, Slowdive, to even the pre-disbandment album Pygmalion can one name a song as influential as "When The Sun Comes", "Alison" or "Souvlaki Space Station"? However, the number contradicts. In the UK album charts, Slowdive achieved 16th and Everything Is Alive had reached 6th at their release, while Souvlaki only had peaked at 51st.

I have always felt that Everything Is Alive lacked the energy that Souvlaki had. An immediate distinction between Everything Is Alive and Souvlaki would be the musical style. While Souvlaki stands out as a foundational shoegaze album, Everything Is Alive resembles a bare minimum of shoegaze. Instead, it shares more connections with synth-pop and Slowdive’s country-influenced successor (and predecessor) Mojave 3. A subtler difference can be noticed throughout the lyrics. The superstitious implications of 40 days from Souvlaki easily gets overshadowed by "Prayer Remembered" and "Andalucia Plays", and the mature lyricism of Everything Is Alive hardly reflects Souvlaki and Creation's youthful theme of ecstasy and love. Overall, Souvlaki is lyrically and sonically more powerful than Everything Is Alive.

What happened after Souvlaki? A better question would be “what happened before Souvlaki?” First of all, the UK's alternative scene was shifting away from shoegaze, as Grunge bands including Nirvana grew more popular after their breakthrough in the US. The success of Britpop in 1994-1995 would put the final nail in the coffin, and shoegaze never saw the light of mainstream success aside from a few bands including Lush and Chapterhouse. Internally, Slowdive underwent a breakup between two vocalists Nail Halstead and Rachel Goswell, which Halstead would later remark that it had a significant influence in the recording process. A term popularized by Simon Reynolds, post-rock, emerged in the UK’s alternative scene throughout 1995-1998 producing Stereolab and Mogwai. Slowdive’s subsequent album Pygmalion placed itself right within this era. (Despite that, Neil Halstead wasn’t directly influenced from post-rock and instead got his inspirations from electronica such as Aphex Twin)

Indeed, Pygmalion is the “slowest” album on Slowdive’s catalogue. Not only does songs like Cello have one of the slowest tempo in Slowdive’s discography, the structural build-ups of the songs take a good amount of time. Rutti already starts off with a pace that goes on par with post-rock outputs of Talk Talk, while the drone-ambient-like slowness and eeriness of Miranda and Trellisaze would even fit in the criteria for the songs by Swans. On a personal note, I think that Pygmalion marks the ambivalence of Slowdive’s musical sound that’s now been covered by their catchy, repetitive tunes. Nevertheless, Pygmalion is Slowdive’s slowest album by far.

When Slowdive reunited in 2014’s Primavera Sound, the ultimatum was the money. Although, Neil Halstead thought of recording another album that would potentially stand out Slowdive from the “legacy bands.” When Slowdive’s self-titled album came out, it was already pulling numbers that neither Souvlaki nor Pygmalion had. Conversely, the self-titled album is considered as a successor to Souvlaki, thanks to the drowning, powerful sounds that overwhelms as much as Souvlaki Space Station. Star Roving and Everyone Knows encapsulates the speed and energy resembling drowsy stadium-rock, whilst Falling Ashes hands the audience a space for introspection, with a riff that always makes me think about Radiohead’s Daydreaming. In comparison to Pygmalion, the band had definitely sped up instead of slowing down.

Perhaps Slowdive isn’t becoming slow at all. Yet, since the first three albums were popularized years after its release, it’s reasonable for anyone to mess up the Slowdive timeline. It’s now our turn to wait for a dariacore My Bloody Valentines album to prove who’s really the fastest of all.