Slowdive
In the Meadows, Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin
★★★★★
Band reunions are in the headlines again ahead of this summer’s return of Oasis – coming to a stadium near you at a premium price. But the Gallagher brothers will be doing well to have a comeback one-fifth as glorious as that of Slowdive, the early-1990s alternative-pop underdogs whose re-formation several years ago has seen them break out of their chrysalis and spread their wings gloriously.
That victory lap ticks off its latest milestone at the In the Meadows festival in Dublin on Saturday, when their headlining slot on the tented second stage is a wondrous serving of balmy space-pop.
Back in the 1990s, the band – from the Thames Valley, outside London – were derided by the then-mighty music press for their lack of rock’n’roll swagger and all-round sense of artful dreaminess. Their unassuming, psychedelic music saw them lumped alongside the Dublin band My Bloody Valentine as pioneers of a sound called “shoegaze” – sniffed at in the moment yet hugely influential over the decades.
First time around, the band never played in Ireland. They are now making up for lost time. In the Meadows is the third Irish show in less than two years. Amid the occasional rain shower and in the gathering twilight, it is a palate-clearing panacea, beginning with the sonic supernova Shanty, from Everything Is Alive, their 2023 album.
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Slowdive are a five-piece, but the focus is on their singers, Rachel Goswell (later seen up on the grass slope grooving to festival headliner Iggy Pop) and Neil Halstead. The mutually complementary haziness of their voices is well paired with the vast weather fronts of guitar, particularly on 1990s tracks such as Catch the Breeze and Souvlaki Space Station.
Accompanied by a gently blistering light show, their set is beautifully overwhelming. Surreal, too, if you were that one audience member up front trying to get lost in the band’s haunting soundscapes while also following, in real time, the Cork-Limerick penalty shoot-out in the Munster hurling final.
They finish with the gorgeous assault of Golden Hair – originally by the lost Pink Floyd frontman Syd Barrett, and accompanied here by a video projection of his scowling, puzzled face. But there is another surprise as the music rises to an ear-splitting sob and the face of the Carry On star Sid James fills the screen – a glint of humour mixed with the emotion-melting spectacle.
