When I first read the song name for “alife” I kept reading it incorrectly as “alfie.” Maybe it’s me, or maybe I’m tired but autocorrect seemed to be screwing with me too. “alife” was changed to “alfie” and “life.” Sickening, eh? “alife” is an ace tune and deserves so much better than me randomly blogging after an extended absence. It’s taken from the upcoming Slowdive album which I can only assume is also ace, Ace.
This Friday, Slowdive will release their highly anticipated new album, everything is alive, via Dead Oceans. Today, the shoegaze legends present its final single/video, “alife,” and announce a slew of early listening events across North America. On the “infectious, gorgeous” (Stereogum) “alife,” Rachel Goswell’s voice is drenched in reverb and longing as she sings, “Two lives are hard lives with you,” complementing the vocal delivery of Neil Halstead throughout. Paste describes it in their new Cover Story as “Goswell’s (likely) greatest harmony performance in 30 years.”
Of “alife,” Halstead adds: “‘alife’ is one of the first tunes we finished for the record. Shawn Everett did a really nice job with the mix. We tried so many times to figure out a good mix by ourselves and couldn’t do it . . . it sort of had us beaten until Shawn stepped in. We decided if he could handle that one he could probably do the whole record. Our friend Jake Nelson did a really nice animation for this song; it takes some of the imagery from the artwork and digs a little deeper into that.”
Prior to Friday’s release, Slowdive and Dead Oceans are presenting album playback events at stores across the US. Cities. These are free and open to the public. Specific times and more details are linked below.
