No Filler Music Podcast - Sidetrack: Slowdive

Episode Date: August 25, 2019

On this week's Sidetrack we take a quick look at the shoegazing dream pop outfit Slowdive. As one of the early pioneers of the genre, Slowdive's melancholy, druggy & spaced-out ​vibes sound just as fresh and modern today as it did in the early 90s. No Filler is part of Pantheon Podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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It's interesting that there's still records that seem to resonate, you know, with another generation at this point as well, you know, when we're doing shows and stuff. You know, people still want to talk about those records, you know, which is really cool. And welcome to No Filler, the music podcast dedicated to sharing the often overlooked hidden gyms that fill the space between the singles on our favorite records. In each episode, we'll dive into a little history of the artists and the album of choice with snippets from interviews and concerts as well as music from the album itself.

My name is Quentin. With me, as always, is my brother Travis. And I guess we got some news, huh, bro? For the first time in the history of the No Filler podcast, we have some news to share with our listeners. Some news-worthy news, I guess is what we should say. So we have, since the last time we spoke, have joined the Pantheon Music Podcast Network.

I wish we had like an air horn sound to play in the background. Beo, peon, exactly. There's websites out there. You just go like airhorn sound.com or something like that. Oh, there's an app for that too.

But anyway, let's not skip over how important this is, Q. So we were... I'm excited, man. Yeah, I'm pumped, dude. I'm super stoked. So we were approached by this network and it is a music-only

podcast network. So all the podcasts on this network are just as fanatical about music as we are. So we're super excited to be part of this family. And this is our first episode under the network. So because of that, it's safe to assume that a lot of you listening, this is your first time listening, right? So we're going to kind of give a sort of a recap of what this is about, what the goal of the show is. what we'd like to do around here. So, Q, you kind of mentioned, you know, we did our standard intro there where we talked about what it is we do. But basically, the idea is we take an album and we talk about the tracks that weren't singles.

So basically, you know, hey, an album has 12 songs and two singles. What about those other 10 songs that, you know, a lot of you may have not have heard or don't get any attention because they weren't on the radio, you know? Yeah, I mean, for us, you know, I've always been, we've always been ones to appreciate an album in its entirety. Almost every band that I've gotten into, you know, if I purchase one of their records, I'm going to listen to it all the way through. Even in this age of, you know, streaming music,

I want to hear the album in its entirety. you know, I feel like that's something that's lost in this day and age, you know, with Spotify and fucking Pandora and whatever else. Well, I mean, really, I mean, with the start of iTunes, back when that was a whole thing, like, that was the whole idea was like, oh, I don't have to go out and buy the album anymore. I can just buy the songs that I want to hear. And for most people, that was the singles. Like, oh, I can pay, you know, 99 cents and get just the single that I care about. Okay, great. There's so many times I've had conversations with friends or, you know, They haven't bought an album in years.

You know, they hear a single on the radio and they go and purchase it on iTunes or they've added to a playlist on Spotify. And that's the end of it. And it's our belief and what we hope to do with this podcast is to highlight, you know, some of these songs that never get radio play, never, you know, see the light of day and showcase just how amazing some of these songs are. And sometimes it's the best work of the artist, you know. Yeah, and same with like, you know, you type in an artist name on Spotify and then you've got at the very top, you know, it'll be here. Here's the top tracks from this artist. Think about all the songs that you're missing out on. You know, if you just hit play on those top tracks. All right. So yeah, let's let's talk about how we do it. So we firmly believe that you can't talk about how great a song is without playing it. So we play a lot of music on this podcast. That's part of the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the.

show that I love the most is playing the music, we both are hearing it on our ends, and then we both get to react and sort of bounce off each other with what it is that makes that track so great. Sometimes we go back and replay a part of the song, you know, just to really hone in and focus on, you know, this really great transition between, you know, the verse and the chorus or whatever, you know. Oh, yeah, dude, or this like killer drum fill that I feel like you didn't appreciate the first time around. Right. So, hey, that's something to bring up. you're a drummer, I'm a guitar player. So, yeah, a lot of times you'll bring up something about the drums that I would never even think about.

So let's also mention that we're twin brothers. I don't think we said that before. So I don't know whether that's... And not only that, but we're twin brothers that happen to live like almost 2,000 miles apart now. That's also true. I'm up in Washington State and you're down in Texas. So we're doing all this through Skype, basically. But, I mean, that's it.

Like we just have such a strong passion for music and we love sharing music with people. So we thought, why not turn on some mics and share music with each other and with all you lovely people? That's right. So, I don't know, maybe that's where we leave it. Yeah. I think that was a good. Let's dive into our episode. What do you say?

Wait, did you say slow dive into our episode? Oh, I didn't say slow dive, but I see what you do there. Because that's what we're talking about today. We're talking about slow dive. So our last episode was our first true dive into Chill Wave. And we covered Washed Out and a handful of his first few albums. So you were talking to me earlier this week and you're like, dude, how the fuck are you going to tie in slow dive to wash down? Honestly, the only thing that I had to tie these two bands together was that.

the fact that this random article on pitchfork tied washed out to slow dive with the fact that you know you can listen to a handful of slow dive songs and the vocals are like a dead ringer for washed out uh and that's very true so it's probably safe to say that the earnest was a fan of slow dive then or maybe maybe uh it's possible shoegaze music maybe yeah absolutely for sure her a shoe gaze. And here's the thing that like, so, you know, when I, when I dove into slow dive and looked into their history and everything, like, one thing I didn't realize, and I feel like this is just like, this kind of calls us out on our age. So we're in our early 30s. When you think of the genre dream pop, like, what do you think about, you know? Like, when you think of

music and dream pop, what do you think about? Yeah, I mean, I think of that, that, that, stint in the in the early 2000s were exactly well actually you know starting with like i guess it's rebirth of dream pop in in the 2010s where with bands like you know we talked about i'm mr twin or twin sister back in the early 2000s when they first started were dream pop and like tennis you know and yeah and beach house bands like that dude but like the whole point is like dream pop started in the 90s man early 90s we were what three four music wasn't something that you know we weren't music fans no in the early 90s um but yeah and i mean dude i really liked the uh like the macarena right back then you know yeah what the fuck was that like i don't know what where would you what would you classify

the macarena under what kind of song is the macarana yeah what what is that exploitation of It's like a culture It's it's music to dance too I guess who knows man Music to to freaking hate Music class too Because that's they they used to make us Do the macarena

It was like an exercise for Yeah For music class music period Whatever you want to call it Yeah dude I hated every second of that Anyway so yeah but okay but The term shoe gaze however Doesn't is not applied to

The Dream Pop bands from the from the 2000s not from the 2000s so i think shoegaze is more more tied to the 90s uh dream pop era is that safe yes yeah and and those two kind of go hand in hand in britain in the early 90s so i've i've looked this up before but what what is the what's the origin of the term shoe gaze so it's it from what i've read and i've you know i've read this a few times before It's literally, it is an observation of how the artists would present themselves on stage during a show. You know, they were gazed at their shoes and they just wouldn't move around at all. They were very like catatonic is probably not the right word.

But, you know, like. So it's like they're in a dream state is what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know if that, you know, like part of the whole genre about, of dream pop is, You know, it kind of, it really does evoke like a dream state, like very melancholy, repetitive. Repetitive.

To quote this, let's see, what was it? Where was this? To quote this New York Times article from 1991, it says that Dream Pop combines nebulous, distorted guitars with murmured vocals sometimes. completely smudged into a wall of noise. So I don't want to get into this too much because next week we're going to cover my bloody Valentine, which to me, they're like the poster child of shoe gaze and Dream Pop. Yeah, they really are in the 90s.

Yeah. The quintessential, you know, shoegaze band. Yeah. That's kind of what you think of. They're almost like, it's almost like synonymous with the genre, you know? Yes, absolutely. And slow dive was, it was heavy. influenced by these guys. They were actually label mates at the time. But yeah, that wall of noise

is really, I feel like it's one of the defining points of the genre. Dream Pop celebrates rapturous and transcendent experiences, often using druggie and mystical imagery. A common theme is the desire to rise above the drab confines of everyday life. So, let's play a tune because I got a lot of music to listen to. Those too, I mean. So from what I've read from articles around the time of these albums releases, a lot of the critics said that their first full-length album, which is called Just for a Day, which came out in 91,

isn't really a good representation of their sound. because they were going into these legit studios for their first time, and they didn't know what they were doing. And I guess they just didn't have enough help with their producers to really share like a good representation of their sound. But they have an EP, a few EPs, actually, that came out before their full length that are a better representation of what they were going for. So I'm going to play a song from their very first EP,

which self-titled, it's called Slow Dive. And I'm going to play the very first track on that EP, which is called Slow Dive. So here's just a little representation of what Slow Dive's all about. What I like about hearing this demo from Slow Dive, the fact that it came out in 91 and the fact that Nirvana's Nevermind which is one of their biggest fucking albums

and like I just love my favorite thing about music is like you can always find the other side of the coin you know? Yeah. Like slow dive like that that song that I just played to me it has some grungy moments in it

like maybe in like the tone and like the overall feeling that you gave when you hear it. It's very like droney. But then it's got that quote, Wall of sound kind of shoegaze five. It's just, I mean, it's the reverb just cranked up, you know? Yeah. And the effect that they put on their vocals.

And I love that they've got both male and female vocals. So I'm going to name off the roster real quick here. We've got Rachel Goswell. She plays guitar and sings, along with Neil Halstead, also on guitar and vocals. They're the two main. hitters in the band. We've got Simon Scott on drums, Nick Chaplin on bass, and then they have a third guitar player named Christian Seville. That's slow dive. And I think it's so unfortunate for them

that like for whatever reason, like I said, they get the chance to step into the studio, record their first full length, and looking back on it, like I've listened to interviews from rather recently, they just feel like their first full-length album was not a good representation of their sound. And that, dude, can you imagine how, like, frustrating that must be? Yeah. Like, their demo recordings to them were a better representation of their sound. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of, this is a sidetrack, but it makes you wonder, like, how many actors, really good actors, their first movie, like their big first movie, like,

you know, theatrical release. is like a dud, you know, and that's just the end of their career, you know. Yeah, dude. Not that this is the same thing, because slow dive has gone on to, you know, to gain a lot of, a lot of notoriety. Yeah. But you're saying that that plus the fact that Grunge is happening right along with it, they just get, they get pushed aside, basically.

They get pushed aside. Yeah. So, yeah, that's the thing. On top of the fact that they were like, God, damn it, I wish this sounded more like us, you know? Yeah. With their first full length, on top of that, you know, they just get overshadowed by My Bellity Valentine and bands like Oasis and the whole bread pop movement.

That's a big bummer. But so they've actually reunited and they've got the entire like original lineup. And they released an album a couple years ago in 2017. and it's fucking great, dude. We're going to play a little bit of one of those songs. But what I want to do now, I've got another song of theirs that, to me, I think this one I've gone back to

and replayed more than any of the other songs since kind of diving into them. So their third studio album is called Pygmalion. And that came out in, I believe, 94. The thing about this album is it's one of those things, where, you know, we've talked about the strokes before, and we've talked about how Gieland Casa Blank is fucking full of himself, you know?

Sure. It seems kind of like that's the deal here with this album, Pygmalion, and Neil Halstead. He kind of just went into the studio and kind of did this one on his own. Like, there's, you know, the other members were there, but it was kind of like, okay, this is,

this one's on me, you know? And it's kind of a, it's totally, it's a lot different than their previous releases. It is much more minimalist and it's really fucking dark. But a lot of it is just acoustic guitar or, you know, it's way more stripped down. Their drummer Scott left the band because he didn't like the fact that they were using drum machines for most of their tracks. You know, so he was like, where the fuck's my place in this shit, you know? Yeah. So he left.

So this is kind of a departure from their previous works. But there's the opening track on this album, it's called Ruddy. I think that's how you say it. R-U-T-T-I. It's over eight minutes long, dude. There's just such a mood behind this song. And it's a very slow burn for sure. So we're going to listen to a pretty good chunk of it.

Just remember, it's eight minutes long. We're going to play like over three minutes of it. There's just something about this song, dude. So here it is. This is track one off of Slow Dives' 1994 release Pygmalion. Let's hear it. So where else does he take that song? Because you say it's an eight-minute song, so there's about five minutes left.

Does that guitar part, the instrument, metal guitar bars, does that just extend throughout the rest of the song, or does his vocals come back? His vocals come back, yeah. I actually had a little bit lengthier clip where he comes back into singing, but like it's a lot of the same, but with the bass and the drums kicked in, you know?

It kind of just replays the song, but with the rest of the band coming in, you know? Yeah. I just love that song, dude. Yeah, I'm always a fan of songs that like taking on a journey like that, you know? Yeah. I mean... Yeah, dude.

We talked about that at length with Mr. Twin Sister a couple of months ago. I mean, but that's another thing, though. It seems like taking you on a journey is such like a cliche. But I mean, like, you know, it sounds like with shoegaze, it's pretty, it's pretty repetitive, but not necessarily in a bad way. So it's not like they're going to take you to very many different places. and, you know, sounds and whatnot, like twin sister might do, where they have all these really interesting, like,

handoffs and stuff. But, like, when you're doing a, like you said, it's a slow burn, that song. Like, you're just, you're waiting for the, you're waiting for the payoff or whatever. And then when it hits, like, it's really satisfying. Like, when that guitar and the, you know, the little shaker thing comes in.

Yeah. Like, it's, you really have to invest in a song like that, you know. Exactly. And that's the kind of stuff that I appreciate, dude. and I love the guitar tone. But like you can see where the other bandmates are coming from here. Yeah. That's just Neil and his guitar for the first half of that fucking song.

Sure, yeah, sure. I can see where Scott, the drummer, was just like, okay, I don't see my place anymore in this band. And like in previous albums, they were using drum machines and stuff. You know, so they replaced him with another drummer, but like I totally get it. there, especially when they're stepping into the studio for their third album, Pygmalion. And it's pretty much all Neil and his ideas. Like, that's got to be really frustrating. But I, you know, I picked that song to play today because I just, just something about

that song, dude. I love it, man. I listen to it every day for the last week, probably. Wow. Yeah. So I've got a song from their latest release, which came out two years ago. So again, they all, they reunited. So when they reunited, did they bring the drummer back?

Oh, yeah, he's back, dude. It's Scott. It's Scott's back, dude. And I say Scott, that's his last name. I'm sorry. His first name's Simon. But yeah, dude, it's great. So they released an album in 2017.

It's self-title. It's called Slow Dev because it's like, hey, we're fucking back. Remember us? And it's great, dude. like it's almost like and this is something that I always just think that's so great like with music and like imagine

getting together again with all these people that maybe you haven't really hung out with in several years you know maybe 10 years or more it's almost like they never left you know it's almost like they just they picked up where they left off you know

yeah and it's great dude I'm gonna play track three here real quick could just give you a little taste of what they're up to now. This song is called Don't Know Why. Yeah, I like that quite a bit, man. That's great. Yeah, what I love about it is that they were able to just get back together and just

pretty much do what they've always been doing. Yeah, it's like they pick up where they left off. Yeah, and it's just, it just sounds so, it just sounds so fresh. And, you know, it just, they've got an audience, even today. It kind of reminds me of, and like I know for sure, the bands like M83 or like Black Moth Super Rainbow, I know those, these guys were heavily influenced by My Bloody Valentine and, you know, Dream Pop from the early 90s. You can hear that, that influence that they, that they had, you know?

And that's, I feel like that's why they still have an audience today and that's why they still sound so fresh and new and how they were able to come back together. And they knew that they would have that they would have an audience even today. It's great, dude. Yeah. Well, with the, you know, with the dream pop that we listened to in the 2010s, you know, yeah, there's definitely still people out there who want to hear this kind of music, you know. Yeah. It makes me happy. I had an outro clip already lined up that, you know what, this is already a lengthy episode. Let's just make it a little bit longer, dude. So Travis informed me that there was a mashup with slow dive and washed out that we actually happened to showcase on our music blog back in our heyday in the early.

2010s. So we're going to have that as our outro, but I have one more clip to play from Slowdive. This is a bonus track on their second studio album called Slovokie. It came out in 94. So this is an instrumental track, and I wanted to share it because it kind of goes in line with the chill wave sound where, you know, like we said, it's very, repetitive and kind of droney, you know. It's really great. It's an instrumental track again.

So this song is called Good Day Sunshine. Yeah, so that's amazing. So they had some instrumental songs like that, huh? Yep. Yeah, that's great. So what's funny about that is like, and I was actually thinking this like through some of the songs you're playing, some of the IDM, like, nostalgic electronic,

musicians like Boards of Canada or Casino versus Japan, I sort of borrow from some of these sounds a lot. And I feel like something like that is sort of in line with that because it's, you know, it's not electronic because they're doing it with with guitars and, and, you know, it sounds like a lot of those, a lot of those bands were kind of influenced by them too, like those electronic musicians at least. Yeah. And that, that, you know, we're talking hypnagogic pop again, you know. Right, right. Yeah. Well, the funny thing is it's hypnagogic because it sounds like a band from the 80s, right? Yeah, from the 80s or 90s.

Yeah, actually, I had pulled this quote, and I didn't find a time to fit it into the episode here, but I'll just say right now, dude, to quote someone talking about Chill Wave, it's a muffled production aesthetic that sort of sounded like every track was being played out of the built-in speakers on a CRTV. That's, yeah, dude, that's what Chill Wave was all about was just capturing that nostalgic feeling, you know, from the 80s and 90s.

Like, that's what it's all about. Yeah. And these were the artists that kind of paved the way for the sound, like the shoe gaze, dream pop. The sort of lo-fi sound. Lo-fi, yeah. So, yeah, I just stumbled across that track because every, uh, every, uh, A slow dive record that's up on Spotify is like a bonus track release. You know, they've got a bunch of extra songs.

And that one is just kind of tucked away towards the end on disc two. Again, that song was called Good Day Sunshine. Yeah, man, slow dive. This is one of those moments again where it's like, man, like it's just, this has been so many years where I, you know, I could have been jamming out to some slow dive, man. Yeah. Isn't that funny? Like, it's never too late to get into a musician.

But, you know, once you do and you realize, oh, they've literally been around since, like, the entirety of my life. Yeah. It's like I could have been listening to this album for decades, you know. But, like I said, it's never too late to get into a band. It's never too late. And in the case of slow dive, they just reunited. They've got a new album that was, you know, at the case of, you know, the case of slow dive, you know,

like that came out a couple of years back and it's fucking fantastic. So yeah, man, that's the sidetrack for today. Again, I didn't want to dive too much into like the history of shoegays because we are covering the gods of shoegays next week. We're going to cover my bloody Valentine's album Loveless, which I believe came out in, I think it came out in 91. Let's find out, shall we? Yeah, dude.

Slow Dive didn't have a chance, man. Loveless came out in 91. That's where we're going to cover next week. Yeah, dude, I can't wait to share these songs with you. Especially, yeah, dude, it's such a good album. There's so many good songs on this record. My guess is that the majority of them are fair game. I don't think they release too many singles.

So, yeah, dude, it's going to be great. Yeah, so that's it for today. This was kind of a lengthy sidetrack. Usually we like to keep them under half an hour, but we kind of had to, you know, introduce ourselves to hopefully a good handful of new listeners now that we joined the Pantheon Music Network. Again, I'm super stoked. Dude, I am really excited to be part of this. I can't wait to share this podcast with more people, hopefully, and to share more music with people every week. Yeah, and before we wrap up, I don't think we explained what our sidetrack episodes.

are all about in the beginning. But basically, we cover, you know, we do a full-length episode where we talk about an album in depth and kind of go into an artist in depth. And then the side track is, you know, devoted to a, it's not, I mean, there's no formula, really, aside from, hey, here's another artist or genre or, you know, song that features somebody from the record. or the album that we talked about last time. Like a while back, we did a sidetrack on Feist

because she popped up in a handful of songs on a Kings of Convenience record that we covered the week before. So it's just another way to kind of squeeze in, you know, like the whole point of this podcast is to share music with people. That's pretty much what my whole life is about, dude. You know?

If, like, write it on my tombstone. Like, that's my favorite thing in the world is to get people on to a new artist. That's it, man. That's what this is all about. All right. Well, that wraps it up, man. Yeah, so anyway, like we said, we're no filler.

You can check us out on the Pantheon podcast network. We just joined. We're stoked. Also, visit our website, no filler podcast.com. You can find all of our show notes there. You can find all of our episodes. We've done like 80 episodes up to this point. So there's quite a bit that you can go through.

We've talked about bands like Radiohead. We've talked about corn. We've talked about Crosby Steel's Nash. We've tried to cover a pretty wide range of music, and we're going to continue to do that. So keep checking us out once a week. We put out episodes usually are on Sunday. So subscribe, follow us, do all those things.

Yeah, so for our outro, today we're going to play a song by the band violins. They did a mashup of a washed out song called Feel It All Around, which most of us, I think, are well aware of. That's the theme song to Portlandia did. Yeah, yeah. So you've probably heard this song. They mashed that song up with the song that I actually introed us into this week from Slowdive called Suvlaki Space station and it is called space around the feel station. And that's what we're going to outro out with today. So, dude, the funny thing is like when you hear those two songs separately, like, no wonder

violins was like, these two songs are like made for each other. Because the baseline for. Yeah, they really, they really didn't like, I'm sorry. Yeah, they really didn't like splice them up too much, you know, like they really just almost just laid them on top of each other. Yeah, I think it's the baseline from feel it all around. It just plays perfectly with Slovakia Space Station. So anyway, it's no wonder they were like, hey, we've got to match these two together.

Yeah, so again, that's going to do it for us this week. Be sure to tune in next week. Again, we're going to dive a little bit more into Shugays, and we're going to cover My Bloody Valentine's 1991 release Loveless. So thank you again so much for listening. My name is Quentin. And my name is Travis. And y'all take care.