Ride
Box Set (Ignition) To quote the Damned, “Neat, neat, neat.” This 3-CD overview of shoegazing masterminds Ride is top-flight feedback murk, both long-overdue and frighteningly current. What happened to Brit rock after the demise of Alan McGee’s Creation label (once home to Ride and My Bloody Valentine)? Well, there was that Gallagher Brothers meltdown, followed by Ride guitarist Andy Bell joining Oasis on bass. Oh, the shame of it. For a while there, though, Ride, awash in an iridescent rain of Bell and Mark Gardner’s shimmering guitars, and the punishingly gorgeous double assault of drummer Loz Colbert and bassist Stephen Queralt, was an astonishingly evocative band — part Jesus & Mary Chain, part Kevin Shields-style effects house, and part live juggernaut. Nice, then, that disc three, live at the 1992 Reading Festival, manages to capture the glorious vocal harmonies of Bell and Gardner on mind-warping classics “Vapour Trail” and “Leave Them All Behind,” as well as the lesser-but-still-great “Seagull” and “Close My Eyes.” Disc one, The Best of …, has all the hits and precious little from final fuck-up LP Tarantula, but it’s disc two, Firing Blanks: Unreleased Ride Recordings 1988-95, that wins the “Why Did You Have to Break Up, You Fools?!” Award. Late-era track “In a Different Place (Differently)” is Ride at its most languid and trippy, while the bizarre “Xmas Song” feels like Mazzy Star on, I dunno, even more downers. (And who’s that giggling in the background?) No one has topped the Bell and Gardner dual-guitars-with-whiny-vocals sonic barrage, and likely no one will for some time. Now let’s get Bell away from those soul-sucking Gallagher boys, eh?This article appears in September 6 • 2002.