Polar Bears

Ride and The Charlatans began a double header tour of North America yesterday, the two bands swapping headlining duties each night. Pet Shop Boys and New Order did a similar thing last year, as did Suede and Manic Street Preachers. I can see the attraction for the bands- split the costs, shift more tickets, play slightly shorter sets without the pressure to be top of the bill every night. For the fans too, it's a winner- in the combinations mentioned here there can't be many people who'd pay to see one of the bands without even the slightest interest in seeing the other. If Ride and The Charlatans want to repeat it over here, I'm definitely in. They played together back in the early 90s, a tour of seaside towns billed as the Daytripper tour (I say tour, it may have Brighton and Blackpool only). 

Back in 1990 both bands released their debut albums, The Charlatans Some Friendly in October and Ride's Nowhere a week later. Both albums had songs titled Polar Bear too. I think I remember reading somewhere that the bands became aware each other were writing songs titled Polar Bear and both went ahead, finding some kinship in it. 

The Charlatans' Polar Bear was a live favourite, the group having built up a fanatical following following the release of debut single Indian Rope. It chugs in on funky guitar and organ, a distorted woodwind topline snaking around for two minutes before Tim steps up to the mic, voice quite low in the swirly mix, singing about  a girl who's 'freezing to death with no clothes on/ She doesn't know what day it is', the song bubbling up for the line, 'I've never had one of those'. The verse, 'Life's a bag of revels/ I'm looking for the orange one', was a fan favourite, inspiring a fanzine and oft quoted in reviews in the music press. Later on Tim gets more oblique, 'Have you seen my polar bear?/ It's the white thing over there'. Polar Bear split opinions in the group, some thinking they didn't do the song justice and overproduced it, others wanting it to be a single. In the end, with Martin Blunt threatening to quit if it was the next single, they put out The Only One I Know instead which would seem retrospectively to be the correct decision. 

Polar Bear

Ride's Polar Bear was the last song on side one of their debut, a Mark Gardener written song, and also has lines about an unnamed girl. 'She knew she was able to fly', Mark sings, 'Because when she came down/ She had dust on her hands from the sky/ She said I touched a cloud'. The guitars are a squall of noise, the drums and guitars grinding their way forward through the intro. The second verse contains one of my favourite Ride lines, the sort of line only a nineteen year old can get away with, one of those profound middle of the night thoughts that seem daft in daylight, stoned silliness- 'Why should it feel like a crime?/ If I want to be with you all the time?/ Why is it measured in hours?/ You should make your own time'. We should all make our own time eh? I might do it today.  

Polar Bear

Music Is The Answer

It would be overly dramatic to say that music has saved my life this year but there's no doubt it has been there to pull me through and has provided moments where I have been, temporarily, transported out of myself. Grief has been permanent- changing but still permanent- and music has been one of the ways through which I have been lifted out of it, even if only for a few minutes. 

Back in December 2021, in the week or two immediately after Isaac died, I didn't listen to any music. The grief was so raw and so harsh, so present in my body. I never knew that emotional pain could be so physically painful, that it could actually hurt so badly. There was a Saturday afternoon in December were I sat in our back room. It seemed like it was dark all day and that that particular Saturday afternoon would drift on endlessly forever. Eventually I played a record from the pile near my feet, Promise by SUSS, which I'd bought not long previously (although it came out in 2020). SUSS play ambient Americana/ ambient country, and the album is a quiet wash of gentle drones and sounds, pedal steel, e-bow guitar, mandolin and so on, with loops. If I remember correctly, I just needed something to take away the silence in the room, ambient music to provide something else to focus on while sitting staring into the room. 

Home

As the afternoon wore on I was able to sit on the sofa and listen to wordless, largely ambient music and it helped in some way. I played both sides of Promise and when it finished I plugged my phone into the stereo and played what was then the latest in Richard Norris' monthly Music For Healing ambient releases, December. The music couldn't take the pain away but it seemed to provide something, a salve of some kind. After forty minutes of Music For Healing I pulled out a record from the pile near to me, the records that were either most recently bought or taken from the shelves because I wanted to listen to them- the pile was all from before Isaac's death. A few records in was the recent re- issue of Victorialand by Cocteau Twins. The gauzelike guitars, ambient-ish haze and Liz Fraser's voice all became part of that afternoon. 

The Thinner The Air

During 2022 I've been to lots of gigs, more than in any single since the late 80s/ early 90s I think, when gig going was cheap and weekly. Some were bought as presents last Christmas- we had no time to do any real Christmas shopping for each other in the aftermath of Isaac's death. In January I saw Half Man Half Biscuit at the Ritz. A month later we saw John Cooper Clarke with Mike Garry and Luke Wright at the Bridgewater Hall. I saw John Cooper Clarke again in November at the Apollo supporting Squeeze courtesy of a friend with a spare. A few weeks ago the same friend gave me a ticket for Stereolab at the New Century Hall. In between I've seen a revelatory Ride doing Nowhere at the Ritz, Paul Weller at the Apollo, Andy Bell upstairs at Gullivers, The Charlatans doing Between 10th And 11th in full and then the hits at the New Century Hall, Echo And The Bunnymen in imperious form at Manchester's Albert Hall, Ian McCulloch solo (with a band) at Nantwich Words and Music Festival, Pete Wylie and Wah! at Night And Day, Warpaint (also at the Albert Hall), Pet Shop Boys at the arena and Primal Scream at Castlefield Bowl. Quite a few of these were courtesy of the generosity of friends, something I'm really grateful for. 

At some of these gigs I've cried, sometimes completely unexpectedly and overhwlemingly. At Echo And The Bunnymen in February the opening chords and first verse/ chorus of Nothing Lasts Forever reduced me to a mess of tears, I almost dissolved completely. In September The Charlatans' North Country Boy made me cry, Mike Garry's poetry did it, Pete Wylie did it more than once, Pet Shop Boys too with Being Boring. None of these tears have been a bad thing, they've all hit an emotional spot that connected me to Isaac in some way. As well as the tears (and the looks from other gig goers that a middle aged man crying at a gig can bring, followed by me shrugging and smiling) these gigs have provided moments where I've been transported out of myself for a while- for a song or for an hour. Good gigs can do that anyway, provide an act of communion between band and crowd, between music and people, but the act of being transported away somewhere else is a magical one and not much else has been able to do it this year. 

In October I DJed at the Golden Lion in Todmorden as part of The Flightpath Estate group, five of us supporting and warming up for David Holmes. The memories of that afternoon and evening still linger and of Holmes' set in that packed pub, four hours of dance music, the transportative effect of music once again lifting me up and out of myself. 

In a year where grief and pain have been ever-present, where the physical manifestations of bereavement have been there almost every single day, where the loss of Isaac has been such a huge sucking black hole in our lives, music in all its forms- that long ambient afternoon last December, experienced live at gigs, listened on record, streamed through the computer, listened to via headphones while out walking, bought from Bandcamp and burned to CD to play in the car, played on a tinny portable speaker on a balcony in Gran Canaria in July- has often been the answer. It won't bring Isaac back- nothing will- but at times it makes being without him something that can be borne or briefly make the loss and his absence fade for a while. 

Vapour Trail, the final song from Ride's Nowhere when it came out back in 1990 and the set closer at the 30th anniversary tour, was a beautiful moment at the Ritz, a crowd of middle aged and their late teenage/ early twenties children singing along to the swirling guitars, pounding drums and Andy Bell's declaration of love. Music is the answer. 

Vapour Trail

Forty Minutes Of Reunion Ride

The pair of albums Ride have made since they reformed- Weather Diaries from 2017 and 2019's This Is Not A Safe Place plus the four track Tomorrow's Shore EP from 2018- show a band who haven't reformed just to play the heritage rock circuit, hawking their three decades old back catalogue round to crowds who want a night of nostalgia (though they do that too, and one of the best gigs I've been to this year was the band's 30th anniversary of Nowhere tour at the Ritz back in April so please don't imagine I'm being a bit sneery about heritage rock although I appreciate I was a tad critical of Primal Scream's Screamadelica gig in July so maybe don't come here expecting consistency). 

Ride's re- union has produced a slew of good songs that stand alongside the older ones. At The Ritz six months ago after they'd played Nowhere, the second half as a mix of old and new, three re- union songs played alongside Twisterella, OX4 and Leave Them All Behind, and they all blended in perfectly, played by a band more than up for it, old tensions resolved and new sounds and kit allowing them to stretch out. The mix below is eight songs made since they reformed, three of which they played at The Ritz (Kill Switch, All I Want and Lannoy Point). 

Forty Minutes Of Ride

• Pulsar
• All I Want (GLOK Remix)
• Kill Switch
• Lannoy Point
• Future Love
• Catch You Dreaming
• R.I.D.E.
• Cali (album version)

Pulsar was the lead track on Tomorrow's Shore, a soaring piece of melodic space rock, as good as anything they've done. The EP was closed by Catch You Dreaming. All the reunion records have been produced by Erol Alkan and mixed by Alan Moulder

Lannoy Point opens Weather Diaries. All I Want is from that album too, here in GLOK remix form, Andy Bell remixing his own band. Cali is for me the album's highlight and their finest reunion song, six and a half minutes of blissed out, post- shoegaze guitar rock. It was a big part of the soundtrack to our summer holiday on the Atlantic coast of France that year too and always reminds me of the sand dunes, beaches and sunsets around Messanges, Bayonne and Biaritz. 

R.I.D.E., Kill Switch and Future Love are all from 2019's This Is Not A Safe Place album, Future Love in particular sounding like The Byrds reborn for the 21st century. 

Monday's Long Song

Eleven minutes of early 90s guitar wrangling from Ride, Mark Gardener and Andy Bell twisting their guitars and FX pedals into all kinds of shapes and noises. If you can play twin guitar without any obvious verse/ chorus structure or words for more than ten minutes and keep it interesting and exciting, you've got something going for you, as the Ride boys prove here (especially as they were not long out of their teens when they recorded this).

Grasshopper was the B-side to the Leave Them All Behind 12", out on Creation in February 1992. Leave Them All Behind is an epic long song itself. 

Grasshopper 

First You Look So Strong, Then You Fade Away

Ride were welcomed on stage at The Ritz last Thursday like returning heroes, a 90s indie re- union where the group have made new music that stands alongside the songs and albums of their/ our youth. The gig and tour was postponed from two years ago, a anniversary tour for their 1990 debut Nowhere, and advance clips from elsewhere made it seem that they were on fire, a run of rapturous gigs. Arriving on stage at nine they set about playing Nowhere in full, in order, kicking straight into the full pelt indie/ shoegaze/ Byrds-y assault of Seagull, feedback ringing, drums pounding and vocal harmonies at the centre with that loopy bassline driving it. Nowhere as Andy Bell tells us, 'is a funny album, it starts fast and then slows down'. The band play it like it's new material, energised and enthused by the reaction of the crowd and their own rediscovery and expansion of the songs. If anything, the songs sound better live in 2022 than the early 90s recorded versions- the twin guitars scorching and soaring where they need to, the harmonies spot on and the rhythm section underpinning it all. Loz Colbert's drumming is a sensation in itself and Andy Bell switches between pedals and guitars, noise and melody. Paralysed burns slowly, Dreams Burn Down is an epic bedsit anthem and Vapour Trail is greeted by a mosh pit, and a mass singalong as the song finishes and the crowd take over, something approaching hysteria. 

After the album is done they play some songs from the period- the beautiful, 60s/ 90s guitar pop of Taste, the harmonica- led fuzz and feedback of Here And Now and the huge, skyscraping set closer Nowhere, breaking down into feedback and the static distortion of waves lapping against a shore as the band wave goodbye. There's an encore of course, where the old and the new get blended together and the crowd are dancing, bouncing, singing and waving hands in the air, the indie kids of 1990 (now all grown up into middle age) and their children (also now grown up) blasting out the lines together. There are two songs from the re- union album Weather Diaries (Lannoy Point and All I Want), a tour debut for Twisterella (because the support band bdrmm were bugging them to play it), OX4, Kill Switch (from 2019's This Is Not A Safe Place), a delirious Unfamiliar (from 1991's Today Forever EP) and to finish Leave Them All Behind, the eight minute opener of 1991's Going Blank Again and the perfect set closer, twin guitars fed through FX pedals, massive bass and drums and those Byrdsian harmonies filling the Ritz, 'just let it flow/ just let it flow', the sounds spiralling round and round, caught in a loop of noise and harmonics. 

Vapour Trail

All this and I had a chat with Andy Bell afterwards too. 

Now You're Looking Back

This song came out in March 1991, the lead song on a four track EP from Ride called Today Forever. It followed their debut album from the year before, Nowhere. At the time I wasn't too fussed but now, thirty years later and heard on the heels of the Ride re- union and Andy Bell's releases as himself and as Glok, it sounds like a superb blast of early 90s shoegaze/ rock, fading in on a crystal guitar line before the bass and drums punch their way in and pull you in. Then there's walls of fuzz, twin distorted guitars and Byrdsy toplines and those trademark vocals, slightly behind the music. 

Unfamiliar

Here they are on Top Of The Pops looking impossibly young. They were young but they look really young. Long sleeved t- shirts, fringes and avoiding looking down the camera's lens.

Fast forward nearly three decades and they put out Weather Diaries in 2017. This was my highlight, a beautifully, swooning piece of 21st century alt- rock, driving bassline, chiming guitars and lovely twin vox from Mark and Andy, singing about summer love and the beach and in the 'summer is gone' a real sense of loss. There's a soaring, keening guitar line over the chorus and then a dive back in that really hits the spot.

Cali 

Here they are in session for KEXP, older and wiser. 

It's Been So Long And We've Come So Far

This Friday last year was the day schools closed to all but a small number of children of key workers. I vividly remember taking our Year 11's final assembly and then sending them on their way, their last year cut short, no exams, no prom, no 'proper' leaving, the rites of passage truncated. Three days earlier our son Isaac had been told to begin shielding and that's where he's been ever since, cut off from the rest of the world. I remember feeling last March that we were in this for the long haul, that the school year was probably going to be seen out in lockdown (and biting my tongue when some of the kids suggested that they'd be back in a few weeks- some adults too seemed to think that three weeks lockdown would be enough to see Covid dealt with). But to be here a year later, still in lockdown, is still hard to fathom. A whole year. In this part of the country, apart from a brief spell last summer when the government paid people to go to restaurants and spread the virus, we've been living under some form of lockdown or tiering restrictions ever since. A year of living in lockdown has taken its toll on people in all sorts of ways but it also shows that people can adapt and get used to anything if we have to and that most people do see that in extreme times sacrifices have to be made for the greater good. 

I've kept up my habit of walking most evenings. Sometimes now there's still a bit of light in the sky, the dusk pushed back a little further every day. I noticed two nights ago while walking round in the dark that the blossom has suddenly appeared on the trees. I've started listening to music while walking. It's a good distraction- otherwise I just go over frustrations with work or whatever in my head and come back having had some exercise but not really feeling any mental benefit. Listening to music through headphones always adds a slightly cinematic feeling to walking, the music wrapped around your head like a personal soundtrack. This song by Ride came on in my headphones two nights ago and it floored me, the combination of guitars, waves of FX, the twin vocals and that drop out part, when everything falls away to just the grungy bassline. The lines, 'Always keep your eyes on the pulsar/ Guiding you home from wherever you are/ We're on our way home from another star/ It's been so long and we've come so far', were almost enough to move me to tears- the potency of pop music eh?

Pulsar

I can't think of any other bands who have reformed in middle age and who have done it as well as Ride. I wasn't too fussed about them first time around. I bought their debut EP and then a couple of others from the first shoegaze phase but lost interest after that. Their re- union hasn't been just for the payday, a jaunt around the heritage circuit playing the greatest hits. They've recorded two albums and several EPs/ singles that are better than the ones they made as young men- songs from Weather Dairies like Lannoy Point, All I Want and the superb lost summer shimmer of Cali, Pulsar and Cold Water People from Tomorrow's Shore and Future Love from This Is Not A Safe Place to list but a few. They've done it right- a sense of unfinished business, with age and experience and a determination not to get it wrong twice. 

Repetition

Ride's forthcoming album This Is Not A Safe Place promises to be an adventurous and shape-shifting affair. Brand new song Repetition has a synthesised bassline, huge krautrock drumming and the feel of band who have morphed way beyond from where they started. Put this along side Andy Bell's GLOK. More please.

Future Love

Ride's second life has taken a lot of us by surprise. I wasn't a huge fan first time around, a few songs notwithstanding, but age, time and experience have given them something either they didn't have then or that I didn't notice. They also prove that re-unions need not solely be for nostalgia or money, making an album (Weather Diaries in 2017) that had several very good songs on it and then followed it with an excellent e.p. (Tomorrow's Shore in 2018).

This new song was released onto the internet last week, ahead of an album in August. Future Love is Rickenbacker led indie disco gold, the guitars and harmonies improving on each subsequent play, with Erol Alkan back at the controls and on production. A good way to start May.

Tomorrow's Shore

Ride put out a song last year, Pulsar, that ended up being one of my favourite songs of 2017- Pulsar, a  dreamy bass driven guitar song about space and life and travel. They released it on vinyl last week with 3 other new songs including this one, Catch You Dreaming, a Ride song dominated by synths. Catch You Dreaming is about a couple watching the end of the universe. I like the science fiction concepts behind these songs- makes a change from the usual guitar band stuff.



The second track on the 12", Keep It Surreal, is my current pick, a short, sharp burst of guitar mangling with a falsetto vocal. You can buy it (and the whole ep) digitally or on vinyl here.

Pulsar

The return of Ride and their position close to my stereo is something I definitely wasn't expecting this year. I wasn't too bothered about them back in the early 90s, a couple of songs aside, and their Britpop incarnation was of no interest to me at all. But the 2017 Ride and their Weather Diaries album (a couple of songs too long maybe but a good record and Cali is one of my favourite songs this year) and now a new single- all of these things are pleasing me. This new song, Pulsar, has a lovely throbbing distorted bassline, highlighted by a drop out twice, and some beautifully FX laden guitars. Erol Alkan's production gives everything a hard shine. Good stuff.

Cali

I expressed the view on Twitter recently that the new single from Ride is a lovely thing, shot through with an end of summer feel. Opinions were divided: some suggested that the new album is superb, party due to Erol Alkan's production and the simultaneous crunch and shimmer of the guitars; some could hear The House Of Love in the twin vocals; some suggested that it was alright, fine in a traffic jam on the radio but lacking true greatness; some suggested my mid-range hearing is shot.

I'm still into it several days later. From the opening bass intro, and diving bass runs through the verse, to the twin guitars and slightly out of focus vocals, it shimmers and swoops. The single version is shorter than the album one (which has an extended ending part) and the surfing video seems apt. An online reviewer suggested that hearing men in their forties sing lines like 'Kissed you on a beach and I was saved' is a bit embarrassing but I don't buy that. When payday finally arrives I shall be buying the album.

Everything Changes

More new music- there's lots of new music around at the moment isn't there? A good thing, keeps us on our toes. This is the new one from Kid Wave, a group a lot of us round here fell for back in 2015 with their Wanderlust album. Everything Changes is all warmth- fuzzy guitars, a chiming lead and slow motion vocals. Shoegaze but with focus.



Reunited Oxfordians Ride have put out two new tracks. The first one, Charm Assault, was alright I felt but a bit too brash. It was followed by Home Is A Feeling, a sprawling FX pedal piece of work which lets you swim in it and also sounds like it could have been recorded in the Thames Valley in the summer of 1992, fringes and love beads.



But Kid Wave take the lead I think.

Chelsea Girl

I was listening to Ride the other day, sparked off by an interview with them in The Guardian recently (about their re-union) and a recent clip of them playing live for a radio station I saw somewhere online. I think I've said this before but I often thought the guitars on their first few e.p.s and the first two albums were tremendous, a swirling, overdriven, effects pedal pleasure. The drumming was top notch too. It was the vocals (and the lyrics) that were off putting- although I realised this weekend that I can live with Mark Gardener's vocals much more than Andy Bell's. After the second lp they fell under the spell of Oasis and the brasher 90s version of Creation Records, and started making classic 60s rock. Much less interesting. Their early stuff definitely has its moments- Chelsea Girl is the first song on their first piece of vinyl.

Chelsea Girl

Like A Daydream

I was not knocked out completely by Ride, Creation's floppy haired and long sleeved t-shirt shoegazers. The guitars usually sounded good- although they never got anywhere near My Bloody Valentine's fx swirl but they got compared to them by the NME often enough. I bought their first ep, the one with the red roses on the cover and then dipped in and out, often via other people. It was the vocals that put me off, too self-consicously fey and flimsy, and their lyrics seemed like an afterthought as well. But this song, happily for this run of posts, is a good one. Clanging guitars, manic drumming, youthful excitement captured.