Ride
Weather Diaries

My Bloody Valentine. Slowdive. Now Ride.

This shoegaze revival is now a certainty and has also borne good fruits, the juiciest of which seems to be this “Weather Diaries,” the first studio work since the 2014 reunion. The new album follows Andy Bell's experience with Oasis (as a bassist) and Mark Gardener's not-so-successful solo career, the two leaders who decreed the dissolution of the project after the disastrous “Tarantula” in 1996.

Produced by the Turkish-origin DJ Erol Alkan (formerly with Klaxons and Long Blondes) and mixed by the always excellent Alan Moulder, this new work by the British band is a distillation of pure Ride sound. The differences from the past (now far away) are a greater accessibility and a more polished sonic uniformity of some episodes: just think of one of the singles, “Charm Assault,” but also the curious garage rock of “Lateral Alice.”

There is no shortage of groovier episodes, where the melody emerges from an icy noise typical of the band's shoegaze roots, see “Home Is A Feeling” (intelligently released as the second single, as opposed to the reassuring aforementioned “Charm Assault”) and “Impermanence,” the most tied to Gardener and companions' earliest sounds.

“Lannoy Point” kicks things off with a pulsating and engaging rhythm, celebrating the newfound unity between the two “souls” of the band, marrying a perfect union of sound wall and delicate melodicism. In the other single “All I Want,” the rhythmic tangle set up by the excellent drummer “Loz” Colbert is prominently featured.

The title track pleasantly approaches prog fascinations and serves as a watershed introducing a second part where Ride takes greater liberties and freely ranges among quite different influences (the power pop tinged with shoegaze of “Cali,” the somewhat The Verve crescendo of “Rocket Silver Symphony” – a coincidence in similar sound? – and the white noise of “Integration Tape”) before closing on the open space introspection of “White Sands.”

A splendid return, far superior to “Tarantula” (and understandably so) and perfectly in line with Ride's best production. An album absolutely capable of coming close to their best works.

Best track: Weather Diaries