“Shoegaze,” they explained to me, has recently become a rather popular trend on TikTok: mood introverted and the bursts of enveloping energy released by the mighty walls of guitars would marry perfectly with the sense of disorientation and disillusionment that is marking the kids in the twenties. The impression of falling into the void, like drowning, transmitted by the compositions of musicians who “play while looking at their shoes”, would not be so far from what a generation that has lost values, certainties, references is feeling. This is why many kids have tuned into these melodic lines and these sound stratifications: they find comfort in them, just like we did in 1991, because sometimes everything changes so as not to change ever again. The web even tells us about a new sub-genre, defined with the term “zoomergaze”, that is to say “nu-gaze in the time of Zoom”, a revival that draws heavily from the nineties, adored by those who do not want to be tied exclusively to the digital sound typical of PC music and other more “contemporary” styles.
All this explains why, entering the Cavea space of the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome, you immediately notice many very young people crowding around the barriers to enjoy the first ever date in the capital of Slowdive, a band today (even more than in the past) considered the most important and influential of the shoegaze scene. The reflux actually started a little more than ten years ago, led not only by the sacred monsters who defined the characteristics of the genre in their time (in addition to Slowdive we have for example witnessed the return of Swervedriver and Ride), but also by the affirmation of new protagonists no less relevant, such as Nothing and DIIV, further amplifiers of the phenomenon. A comparison is triggered with the recent concert of Fontaines DC, also hosted in the Cavea space, where however the situation was exactly the opposite: the Irish are a band composed of musicians around thirty years old who usually appear in front of an audience much “older” than them. This is because – despite some deserved radio airplay – post-punk guitars do not in any way arouse the interest of the younger generations, who instead prefer to pay homage to a band of over fifty-year-olds – Slowdive, ready to stage the genesis of an “ancient” sound that has returned to shine.
Brought back into fashion by two excellent albums (the self-titled one from 2017 and “Everything Is Alive” from last year), Slowdive collect the most overwhelming applause when they propose their historic songs. “Shanty” is a great piece to start with, with those swirling interweavings of guitars and synths, supported by psychedelic visuals projected onto a screen placed behind the stage, “Kisses” is the prodigious single like The Cure have not been able to write for years, “Sugar For The Pill” has now fully entered among the classics of the English band, but it is up to “Catch The Breeze”, fished out from “Just For A Day” their first album, year 1991, to warm bodies and hearts, and even more so to the cosmic-flavored psychedelia of “Souvlaki Space Station”. However, it is in the final part of the first slot of the show that the quintet accompanies the audience towards the peak of emotional involvement, thanks to an irresistible sequence. One after the other, “Alison”, “When The Sun Hits” (the most acclaimed, the most sung in unison) and “Golden Hair” (or how to make a Syd Barrett cover very personal) arrive, between lyrics dreamy and voices half hidden under a wall of sound elaborated with guitars played like windmills, supported by a vast array of distortions, feedback, delays, choruses and reverbs.
Two minutes of pause and then we go with the encores, which include the distant past (“Slowdive”, from the very first EP of the group), the present (“Slomo”) and the most beloved album (“40 Years”, from “Souvlaki”). Great guitars by Neil Halstead and Christian Savill, undoubtedly the main distinctive elements, on a par with the iconic presence of Rachel Goswell, always at the center of the scene. Wonderful sounds, set in a scenario that makes them perfect, so much intensity, an infinite indescribable beauty. At the opening there is the pure gem of the set of Any Other, which full band is promoting the songs from the recent “stillness, stop: you have a right to remember”. She will also be part of the memory of one of the most beautiful evenings of this very rich – from the point of view of musical events – Roman summer.
(Photo Musacchio/MUSA – Auditorium PdM)
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM