Along with the
20th anniversary reissue of Ride's debut LP,
Nowhere,
comes a thick booklet of old photos, liner notes, and a Jim
DeRogatis-penned look back on the Oxford shoegazers' near-perfect
debut. Flip to page 20 and you'll find a gem: a grainy shot of the
foursome sitting on a bed, shoulder-to-shoulder, each with their own
reading material. Vocalist/guitarist Mark Gardener is at one end,
nose-deep in a copy of the cornball self-help novella
Jonathan Livingston Seagull. His bandmate, songwriting foil, and eventual nemesis Andy Bell is left of center, peeking out from behind an issue of
Bunty, an old British comic written for teenage girls. Bassist Steve Queralt is engrossed in now-defunct UK pop rag
Number One,
while drummer Loz Colbert seems rapt by the Christopher Isherwood
novel perched at his thumbs. With the exception of Gardener's book, a
likely reference to
Nowhere opener "Seagull", it's all very
English. But at the same time, there's magic more universal to unpack
from this one image. The four of them look like brothers. They look
like ordinary, wise-ass kids you knew or know. They look like a band.
If I asked you about My Bloody Valentine, the other most seminal
shoegaze band, chances are you'd think immediately of Kevin Shields and
the countless places you've heard his singular guitar vision unfurl.
But while Ride are often mentioned in tandem with MBV, their footprint
owes more to their songwork than their sonics, and more to the way all
four members clashed and combined. They weren't visionaries or titans;
they were young writers with a taste for high volumes. And they didn't
situate their melodies amongst tides of effects-pedal-induced mayhem,
either; they did it the other way around. Howls were there to support
hooks, and the psychedelic interplay between Gardener and Bell's two
guitars was far more pivotal to their mission than drapes of
all-enveloping noise. But that said,
Nowhere, their seismic
debut full-length, found them playing with elements of the shoegaze
sound as much as they ever would. While it's one of the genre's
enduring moments, it's Ride's for another reason: This family of songs
is their most focused.
The remastering on this edition makes that all the more clear. It starts with a sharpening.
Nowhere
was never an especially warm listen, and felt a little flat at times
if it wasn't played dangerously loud. The new shine seems so necessary
once you hear it. Each jangle and contour has been shored up and made
more distinct, resulting in a richer listen. The first whinnies of
"Seagull" sound even more serrated than before, and the elliptical
guitar figure at its core is less muddy. Gardener and Bell's dual
vocals on "Polar Bear" are now as streamlined as that song's livelier
coda. And those are just two spots where you can hear again what a
great all-around fit they were in the beginning. Not a note feels
errant or alone, and Queralt and Colbert sound inseparable, capable of
pummeling through squall and enhancing fragile passages with ease.
Colbert comes on strong enough to dole out compound fractures,
especially during "Dreams Burn Down" and "Vapour Trail." The latter
remains immense, standing tall as the most gripping
four-and-half-minutes of their career. Twenty years later, it's exciting
to realize there's a lot more to be relished in between all its
chimes.
Such is the case for much of the first disc. When
Nowhere first arrived in late 1990, Ride had already released three outstanding EPs (
Ride,
Play, and
Fall) that year alone. The original North American release added three bonus tracks from
Fall,
which are joined here by three additional tracks from the album
sessions: the workman-like trio of "Unfamiliar", "Beneath", and
"Sennen". The new edition also includes "Today", a beautiful,
acoustic-based torch song that plumes for miles and miles. Count it up
and that's 23 songs of fantastic quality, all culled from an opening
stretch so fertile, the band would have a much easier time crafting
early setlists than they ever would replicating that initial spark.
Though the booklet is nice and the remastering essential, what makes
this anniversary package most intriguing is its second disc: a live
set from a Los Angeles show at the Roxy in Spring of 1991. Ride didn't
come close to making a splash in the States like they did at home, but
on this night, if audience noise is any indicator, their reception was
electric. Through headphones, it's hard to believe anyone on stage
spent a moment gazing at their shoes, as the legend goes. Rifling
through just half of their catalog at the time, they sound like wild
elephants throwing their weight around. It's a terrific, thunderous
recording and you can quickly get a clear sense for why their live show
garnered as much excitement as it did then.
At the same time, the nature of what they were trying to accomplish
as a band really comes through in full. The more abrasive tones of MBV
and Sonic Youth were clearly an influence as they first started to write
and record, but it's the from-the-gut pop screech of Dinosaur Jr. that
sounds like their closest kin here. Ride's music wasn't necessarily
game-changing but the songs are the kind that last. When they close
with "Drive Blind", a cut from their self-titled debut EP, they abandon
the song's course just two minutes in to catch a massive swell of
guitar. It grows and grows and it grows some more, and then, sure
enough, the volume dips, and they circle right back to where they
started: a melody. They were really good at that.
