[MUSIC/Indie/Grunge ~ UK]
Governor Hindmarsh Hotel, Sun 29 Nov, 2022.
Down the road Guns‘n’Roses are tearing up Adelaide Oval to a massive crowd. There was little danger anybody there was missing the Ride gig at The Gov. Likewise, the people bask in the swirly shoegaze indie of Ride could not give a flying …’care’ about Axl and Co, tonight.
When Ride got big in the early 1990s, it was pre-grunge and it was dripping with elements of My Bloody Valentine, Stone Roses, Sonic Youth and sixties psych, but in a UK Indie framework. They signed to Alan McGee’s Creation label, who were such an uber-cool label they had Adorable, The Cramps, Love Corporation, MBV, Boo Radleys, Guided By Voices, Sugar, Jesus and Mary Chain and Teenage Fanclub (to name a few). Australia was an early adopter of their sounds and they first toured here in 1991 and again the following year.
The two main songwriters – Andy Bell and Mark Gardener – developed major issues with each other and the way they worked together (resulting in them ‘not’ most of the time) and the band broke up in 1990 before the release of their fourth album Tarantula. Bell went on to form Hurricane 1 but broke that band up when he became a full-time member of Oasis. Gardener formed The Animalhouse but soon moved to France and stepped away from music for quite a while. But time passes, water goes under bridges, hatchets get buried and there were re-issues and box sets and eventually reunions… and here we are with the full original line-up of Ride celebrating the fortieth anniversary of their debut album Nowhere. Technically speaking it’s two years late (COVID etc) but nobody here tonight is complaining.
The first portion of this evening is indeed them playing all of the Nowhere album in full (and in order) and it is bloody glorious. A swirling, trippy, musical soundscape, beautifully reconstructed. The lighting is dark, the music kind of is too. Seagull, In A Different Place and Paralysed all shine, but people lose their minds when they get to the all-time shoegaze classic Vapour Trail. Mark Gardener was once possessed of one of the best haircuts in indie music, and while less ‘follically’ blessed these days, his voice is golden and Andy Bell’s guitar jangles, and jags like lightening on a still night.
The second part of the night consists of a few new songs like the excellent Future Love and Kill Switch, both from the 2019 record This Is Not A Safe Place, a trio of much loved and enthusiastically welcomed songs from Leave Them All Behind (the title song, OX4 and the epic Twisterella).
Finishing with the lead song from their debut EP from 1990 Chelsea Girl, we are left dizzy from the glorious swirl of it all and hope they’ll be back to do the 40th Anniversary tour for the Leave album.
Axl who?
4.5 stars
Review and photos by Ian Bell
SETLIST:
Seagull (Nowhere 1990)
Kaleidoscope (Nowhere 1990)
In A Different Place (Nowhere 1990)
Polar Bear (Nowhere 1990)
Dreams Burn Down (Nowhere 1990)
Decay (Nowhere 1990)
Paralysed (Nowhere 1990)
Vapour Trail (Nowhere 1990)
Taste (Nowhere 1990)
Unfamiliar (Nowhere 1990)
Nowhere (Nowhere 1990)
Lannoy Point (Weather Diaries 2017)
Future Love (This Is Not A Safe Place 2019)
OX4 (Leave Them All Behind 1992)
Twisterella (Leave Them All Behind 1992)
Kill Switch (This Is Not A Safe Place 2019)
Leave Me All Behind (Leave Them All Behind 1992)
Chelsea Girl (Smile 1990)
