When
The Sun Hits Interviews
Neil
Halstead & Simon Scott of
SLOWDIVE
SLOWDIVE
Interview conducted by Asa Eisenhardt
Buy tickets now, get airfare later. This was my line of thinking when
Slowdive announced a slot at Pitchfork Music Festival, their first North
American show since, well, their seemingly final one in Toronto some 20 years
ago. And indeed, this was the right decision to make - Slowdive are back with a
vengeance, looking healthy and sounding phenomenal, decades, jetlag, and fickle
British music journalists be damned. Singer/guitarist Neil Halstead and drummer
Simon Scott took a few minutes to chat with When the Sun Hits in between a day
full of interviews and photo shoots.
Given the small amount of time we were allotted, we kept the questions to just a handful, and focused on specific, nerdy stuff.
****
What, if any, non-musical
influences did you have when working on Slowdive material? Films, your
surroundings, etc?
Neil Halstead: I think in terms of songwriting, the
images were always from nature, you know? A lot of sea imagery.
It’s also
interesting-- someone [on YouTube] did a video for “When the Sun Hits” and used
[footage from] Picnic at Hanging
Rock. That was one of my favorite films as a kid. It has a weird, [and
had a] kinda magical, psychy, druggy feel to it. It’s basically about these
schoolgirls at the turn of the century who disappear. It’s filmed as a true
story.
I think it’s
definitely true that sometimes films would have a certain resonance that would
sometimes inspire me to write music. It’s interesting to me that someone would
do a video with that film and Slowdive’s music.
What a coincidence!
NH: Yeah!
So, the story goes that the band’s name
comes from a dream Nick had. Now, I know this is 25-odd years ago, but do you
have any recollection of--
NH: I think in Nick’s dream, it was Slowburn.
Ahhh, okay. I know this is really
reaching, but I was just curious as to whether you had any recollection of what
the dream was about…
NH: I just remember we were coming into rehearsal and sorting
out [band] names, and [Nick] saying “I had a dream that Slowburn was the name.”
And Rachel was like, “Well, how about Slowdive?” She was a big Siouxsie and the
Banshees fan. I didn’t know Siouxsie at the time, but I just thought the
name fit, and I ended up writing the song “Slowdive” around that name we’d just
[come up with].
What, if any, role do effects have in
your compositional process? Do you have sounds in mind, or is it a very
bare-bones sort of thing? I guess this applies to you too, Simon, given your
post-Slowdive groups and ambient work.
NH: For me, having the effects on the guitar was a big part of
how songs were written - basing the song around the atmosphere as much as
anything.
Simon Scott: Yeah, I mean, whether it’s relevant or
not, I’m looking for the happy error. So I’m using technology to find that
moment where the seed begins - where you then start to grow the composition of
the track. So, yeah, there’s definitely technology and effects pedals
[involved] for me - super important. Having said that, just writing something
nice on acoustic guitar, with no effects… the 8” lathe cut record I just put
out (a split with Danny Norbury on
Brian Records --ed.) has no effects whatsoever. It’s just field recordings
and a Guild [acoustic guitar] that was made in Rhode Island.
Where there ever lyrical themes that were
overlooked because were more focused on the sonic end of things? From the
little I’ve read up on Slowdive lyrics, there’s some interesting phrases-- in
“Machine Gun,” the bit about “the weight of the water,” Neil’s line about the
“son of Shiva,” and then one of my favorites on Just for a Day is “Ballad of Sister Sue” and it seems to tell a
pretty dark tale. Was there any sort of consistency to the themes? I guess most
people would assume the old standards of sadness and love…
NH: [laughs] The old
standards...
The dependable standards!
NH: Well, I don’t know really. I don’t think there was ever
knowingly a theme to the lyrics. You know, we were talking about this earlier
in another interview-- [the lyrics] are all quite angsty. The songs were
written by 17-, 18-, 19-year-olds. So yeah, I suppose some of it comes from
feelings when you’re a bit alienated as a teenager. Songs about love, stuff
like that. I don’t think we ever broke the mold with the lyrics, you know? It’s
pretty standard stuff, probably.
I don’t think
we ever thought as a band that lyrics were the most important part. For
Slowdive as a whole, the sound was.
Creating an atmosphere was [the focus]. So you’d create an atmosphere and the
lyrics would then reflect that in some way, or go into it in some way to make
it more powerful.
So the words were more of a melodic tool?
NH: Well, sometimes it varied. “Dagger” is about really
specific stuff and I can relate it to a particular time in my life because I
know what it’s about. And also “When the Sun Hits.” But the stuff from Souvlaki has a lot more personal lyrics,
for me, whereas the first album is less personal.
Given Simon’s work with ambient music,
could you ever see him maybe doing some of that on a future release? Especially
since you experimented with ambient and loop-based stuff on Pygmalion? Or would that be too many
cooks in the kitchen?
NH: I really hope Simon gets involved when we do the next
record. It’s really important to me that everyone contributes.
SS: To be honest with you, though, we haven’t any idea what the
new record will be like, because we haven’t started it yet.
Right.
SS: But it would very nice to use the technology we’ve
got twenty years later, such as Max/MSP, a whole bunch of laptops and loopers
and so on and so forth to try and enhance the songs...but we just have no idea
what it’s going to sound like. It might end up being like an acoustic album. It
might kind of end up being like a folk record or something...although I doubt
it.
When I interviewed
Simon at Decibel Festival a couple years ago, we discussed the collection
of demos made between the first two records [frequently circulated as I Saw the Sun --ed.]. There’s many great tracks on there - “Joy,” “Colors in Spin,”
“Silver Screen” and they were played live here and there during the Just for a Day era. Could you ever see
adding them back into the set?
NH: I don’t know! I haven’t listened to that stuff in years.
And, I don’t know, I suppose to me...well, maybe we made the wrong decision, I
don’t know, but my memory of those songs is that they were really in debt to
Joy Division, Echo and the Bunnymen…
SS: Bowie...
NH: Bowie. And I know for me, I was going through a certain
period where I was obsessing over these records and it was almost like they
influenced too much of what Slowdive were doing and I don’t think it felt like
they were really properly Slowdive songs.
One humble fan’s opinion - I think “Joy”
is the perfect meshing of Joy Division rhythms with you and Rachel over the
top. I think it’s kind of a perfect halfway. And then “Silver Screen” reminds
me a little bit of the Beatles in a good, anthemic way…
SS: “Joy” is called “Joy” for a very particular reason - we
listened to only Joy Division for, like, two weeks.
There’s a Slowdive/Chameleons-influenced
Seattle band called C’est La Mort who cover
“Joy.”
NH: The Chameleons were also a big influence [for us] early on.
One of the guitarists would use two amps with a stereo delay. I loved that
guitar sound. You can also hear [similar] with Kitchens of Distinction…
NH: Yeah.
Kitchens opened for you once, right?
NH: I think we might have played with them at a place down in
southeast London. We were really huge fans.
SS: We used to go see them as fans! Kind of an underrated
shoegaze reference point, aren’t they?
Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for
your time, Simon and Neil! Have a great show.
Both: Thank you.
Postscript:
As for Slowdive’s set at the festival, I couldn’t have worded it any better
than Kirstie
Shanley did on The Big Takeover blog. Don’t you dare miss them on their fall tour!
Asa Eisenhardt resides in Seattle, Washington, and eagerly awaits his next voyage to the Souvlaki Space Station. He plays in Nostalgist and runs the Nostalgium Directive record label.
