Summer 2015 was a bit of a transitional time for me. I had finished my second year of university and was mainly spending my time at home, but at the same time was urgently trying to find some work to do for the optional year in industry that was included in my degree. A lot of my friends had secured a year abroad for the upcoming period of uni, and obviously I wanted to graduate with them. So, I had to find something quickly. I did, and I may talked about how that went some time in the past. While I was doing those applications and waiting for any results, Pitchfork Media uploaded a documentary on Slowdive’s 1993 album Souvlaki on their YouTube channel. It was based on a record I’d never heard before, but I decided to watch it to kill some time. I suggest that you do too, it’s a good one.

Hearing the members of the band talking about how the album was made, the context it was created in, plus the in-depth commentary on some of the songs on there led me to searching out the album on Spotify. It has been one of my favourites since. It was an instant add to my iTunes library. This blog had been going on for two years by that time, so my personal highlights like ‘Alison’, ‘Here She Comes’ and ‘Altogether’ couldn’t have their posts on here. There’s another left that will have its own post, but it will be a long time from now. The album goes down as one in the trinity of classic shoegazing albums, the others being My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless and Nowhere by Ride. And it’s just so dreamy. Drenched in reverb and packed with pop songs with great hooks. It does have its darker moments though.

‘Melon Yellow’ is one of them. The bass guitar is backwards throughout creating this woozy, unbalanced feel to it all while the sudden hits on the snare echo into the distance. The lyrics don’t tell a coherent story. Seems like they’ve been put together in order to create a feeling or follow the movement of the music, which is fine I have no problems with that. There’s a lot of space in between each lyric allowing the instruments to kind of do their thing during the verses, but then all the harmonies and production trickery washes over you during the “So long, so long” choruses. Another track to get lost in. The two vocalists Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell who were in a relationship broke things off during the making of the album, and I believe this track is another of Halstead’s that just sees him feeling low and wishing things were different. It’s a common theme throughout.