Ride
Roundhouse, London
20th September 2024
Rather than resting on their laurels, re-energised Ride demonstrate a determination to remain a creative force as they mix 1990s classics with new material on their latest tour.
If Ride’s guitarist Andy Bell rejoins Oasis next year for the reunion stadium shows, it’s unlikely he will need to learn any new songs. His own band, however, showed a determination not to rely on nostalgia in a set that switched seamlessly between the present and the past.
Even though Ride started out in 1988, and first broke up eight years later, only half of the 16 songs at a sold-out show promoting their new album Interplay dated from their first period. In fact, they were brave enough to open with two songs from the recently released LP, which proved that this is not a group content to be thought of as a mere heritage act. And although a significant chunk of the people present were probably Ride fans from when they first burst properly onto the indie scene in the early 90s with floppy fringes, fuzzy vocal harmonies and searing guitar pedal distortion, the prevalence of new material did not diminish the audience’s enthusiasm.
In all, half of the set was made up of songs released since the four band members got back together just under a decade ago – five from the new album. An impressive feat of integrity, and deserving of respect. Imagine Oasis doing that when they wander out at Wembley!
Ride have never been sing-along crowd-pleasers, but the qualities that made them such a special band – so much superior to the other groups categorised alongside them as ‘shoegazers’ by the music press – are as obvious now as then. They fuse so many unusual elements and still sound refreshingly different to pretty much anything else. The contrast between the syncopated restless energy of drummer Loz Colbert and the steady control of bassist Steve Queralt is a show in itself. So too the vocal interplay between Bell and frontman Mark Gardener. Back when they were young and angelic, Ride sounded ethereal and mysterious.
The mystery might have worn off now that they are such familiar figures, but the subdued drama of the vocals is as compelling as ever. When they did return to favourites like Taste – a “banger”, as Gardener said, Seagull and Leave Them All Behind, the look on so many faces around me showed that Ride are truly cherished. Revitalised by making new music that sounds very much of this era, the band have imbued the rich sound of their original classics with a raw energy that sounds of the moment.
They ended with Chelsea Girl, explaining it was the first song they ever wrote together. Separated by 35 years from the new material, it ripped through the Roundhouse with the same attention-demanding mix of yearning and screeching guitar noise that made people sit up and listen when it first came out.
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Ride are on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and their website
Words by Tom Parry, you can find his author’s archive here plus on Twitter and his website
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