About

A TAV Essential Listening Album.

The English shoegaze band Slowdive formed in 1989 and primarily consisted of Nick Chaplin (bass), Rachel Goswell (vocals, guitar), Christian Savill (guitar) and the band's primary songwriter Neil Halstead (vocals, guitar).

Souvlaki is Slowdive's second studio album, originally released in 1993. The album contains synthesizer contributions from Brian Eno on "Sing" (which he co-wrote) and "Here She Comes". The band named the album after a skit performed by the Jerky Boys, an American comedy duo that recorded prank phone calls. – Press Release

“Across this record, the band kicks up a swirl that matches Halstead's sleepwalking pop perfectly: Guitars stretch and swirl in slow-motion layers, and the vocals seem to be calling desperately out of them, even when they're just lazy chants. This stuff manages to be both pillowy-soft and passionately deep-- shades of the way My Bloody Valentine could blur heaviness into an out-of-focus lull, or the way Galaxie 500's drowsy strum could come out with a fist in the air.” – Pitchfork, 9.3

“Souvlaki manages to avoid one of the major tropes of Shoegaze by highlighting the individual layers of the songs, rather than stacking them one on top of another until a wall of sound is achieved that is so dense that most of the song’s other attributes are drowned beneath it. Souvlaki is crisp, clear, and balanced. Even when the music drifts toward “classic” Shoegaze territory, such as the thick, space-rock/dub-influenced ‘Souvlaki Space Station’ or the blissful cascade of ‘When the Sun Hits’, Halstead and the group have an extremely keen knack for letting each instrument ring separately; you don’t have to listen closely to hear Nick Chaplin’s Pixies-esque bass line in the former or Simon Scott’s pulsating and steady rhythmic foundation in the later.” – Sputnik Music

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