Currently Listening

Ride — Going Blank Again (1992)

Finding this only in the past three weeks, I can’t stop listening to it. But I know Ride is sort of the poppy runt of the shoegaze scene in the U.K at the band’s peak, so why should anyone bother with it? (Other than the fact that they explicitly rejected the “shoegaze” moniker…) It’s all in the buildup and release: The last two minutes of lead track “Leave Them All Behind” is pure noise-pop candy. It’s just as loud as their peers My Bloody Valentine but still retains an accessibility eschewed by many of the Ride’s labelmates of that time. Finding the melody in the noise is not difficult, removing the challenge many have about approaching this genre of music. But yet! Get wrapped up in the atmospherics and ignore the lyrics, which don’t matter anyway. Think of the vocals as just another instrument in creating the seemingly padded wall of sound. The best advice, however, is to find a copy of Ride’s debut, Nowhere.