Ride
Carnival Of Light

THE REVIEW

It's 1994. Just yesterday these four former Oxford university students (singers and guitarists Mark Gardener and Andy Bell, bassist Stephan Queralt, and drummer Laurence Colbert) were the greatest promise of British rock; today they risk falling into oblivion. It is no longer the time of "Nowhere" or "Going Blank Again," it is no longer the time of shoegaze. A revolution is sweeping away its dreamlike intimacy and heavenly atmospheres to make way for flamboyant melodies and muscular sounds; it's Brit pop.

The Ride realize that the wind is changing and it is time for a change. So they decide to blend their sound with new influences and to reconcile the two genres with each other in a delicate balance. But the task succeeds only halfway. If the album, produced by John Leckie (The Stone Roses, The Verve, Radiohead, Muse, etc.), is indeed the most psychedelic and sixties of their career, Gardener and Bell are now at odds and unable to cooperate with each other, so much so that the record is perfectly split in half with side A written by Gardener (folk, psychedelic, and close to the old Ride sound) and side B written by Bell (electric, sixties, and close to the nascent Brit pop).

“Carnival Of Light,” although fragmented, is still capable of delivering great musical moments to listeners such as the opening track "Moonlight Medicine," the powerful and electric "Birdman" and "How Does It Feel To Feel," and the ballads "Crown Of Creation" and "I Don't Know Where It Comes From", sung together with the Christchurch Cathedral School Choir. Nevertheless, due to the drop in popularity, the album sales were quite low (Creation would recover two months later with the release of Oasis's "Definitely Maybe"...).

Subsequently, Bell's growing delusions of grandeur (he would become the sole composer) will lead to the disbandment of the group in 1996, two months before the release of their last album, the mediocre "Tarantula." The fate of the two rivals will be very different. While Andy Bell, after the unfortunate stint leading Hurricane #1, will join Oasis and then Beady Eye, Mark Gardener, after a brief experience with Animalhouse, will continue a low-profile solo career. The light had now gone out.