MFR

Download: Slowdive- "Alison"

With all the talk surrounding My Bloody Valentine's "new" album, I got to thinking about other shoegaze bands from that era, such as Ride and Slowdive. I've already written about Ride before, more specifically their fantastic album Nowhere, so I'd thought I'd write about Slowdive this time. Their second album, Souvlaki,, has some of my absolute favorite songs of all time, including the euphoric "Alison", the ethereal "Machine Gun", and the e-transcendent "When The Sun Hits".

The band formed in 1989 and broke up in 1995. During that time, they put out three albums: Just For A Day, in 1991; the aforementioned Souvlaki, (which contained two tracks that were co-written with Brian Eno), an album that was released in the UK in 1993 and in the US in 1994; and Pygmalion, a widely misunderstood album, and, as a result of its commercial failure, a rare, collector's album, in 1995. All three records were re-released in late 2005, with the first two albums being given bonus disks and the third merely being put back into print.

To read a more detailed biography, go here. While you're reading that, check out the numerous videos posted below. You'll find both versions of the video for "Alison" - one has a more "party" style atmosphere to it; the other is a narrative video with much more footage of the band - and a whole slew of live videos, many of which are taken from the band's last gig they played in Toronto. All videos are for songs from each album Slowdive had released. My favorite is the clips of Fantasia set to the song "Slowdive", which you can find at the very bottom of the post.

Enjoy!