If all you did was read the album reviews from recent years, you’d think Ride might be deliberately forgetting where they came from, obstinately moving away from the sound that propelled them to the front of the 1990s shoegaze explosion. Seeing them live tonight though, it’s clear they’ve not forgotten that past but haven’t stayed beholden to it either – the whole makes sense here, the new and the old slotting neatly alongside each other.
For a start, this is a beautifully crafted set, clear and sharp throughout all seventeen of the songs we get tonight, ringing like a struck bell. The more recent high-energy tracks like ‘Portland Rocks‘ segue smoothly into older numbers, ‘I Came To See The Wreck‘ flowing easily into a soaring ‘Twisterella’.
The close of the main set gives us ‘Vapour Trail‘ and an epically rolling version of ‘Seagull‘ before the encore shines a spotlight on both the old and the new with ‘Light In A Quiet Room‘ folding into a pulsating ‘Leave Them All Behind‘, and the night’s noise closing on a searing ‘Chelsea Girl‘.
It was always going to be a time-travelling set, bouncing between eras, but while it necessarily – and for the older heads, happily – recalls the past, Ride avoid nostalgia like the pox, standing firm in looking forward.
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