I realize I’m in the minority when I say I love the days when autumn bleeds into winter. I love the crisp air that descends with the first seasonal chill; I love the smell of trees shedding the last of their leaves; I love that it all reminds me to embrace the warmth of cozy seclusion with the people I care about most. And the new fifth album from UK shoegaze pioneers Slowdive, Everything Is Alive (Dead Oceans), won me over because it evokes some of the same emotions. On “Prayer Remembered,” glassy guitar notes echo through weighty bass, hazy keyboards, and sparse drums sunk in a bottomless well of reverb—it simultaneously reminds of how all-consuming and eternal the first cold winter nights can seem and how calm and relieved I feel when I see warm light shining from my apartment window after a long walk in the deep freeze. Shoegaze is having a moment: upstarts such as They Are Gutting a Body of Water are experimenting with the style’s heavenly wall of sound, and early-90s cult bands are getting back together. (Boston five-piece Drop Nineteens are releasing Hard Light, their first album in 30 years, this November.) Everything Is Alive is Slowdive’s second full-length since their own reunion in 2014, and its gentle, mature sound suggests that they have a lot more exploring to do within shoegaze—whether they meant to or not, they helped define its golden age, but they’re not about to settle for simply repeating the moves they devised before their Gen Z fans were born.
Slowdive Drab Majesty open. Tue 10/3, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre, 4746 N. Racine, sold out, all ages