Ride @ Leeds O2 Academy, October 2015 (Photo: Gary Mather for Live4ever Media)
Gone are the days when the heritage tour circuit was looked down upon, perceived snootily as the down-market final resting place for the likes of Howard Jones and Spandau Ballet.
Since the trickle of more credible artists turned into a flood (My Bloody Valentine, The Jesus & Mary Chain etc, etc) it feels in fact like old bands playing old music has more substance to it as a scene than some of the new stuff.
Unlike some of their contemporaries, one half of Ride‘s songwriting kernel, Andy Bell, has at least been gainfully occupied since the band’s messy 1995-6 dissolution, playing in Hurricane #1, Oasis and latterly Beady Eye. His yang Mark Gardener has remained mostly on the fringes, but a reunion made possible ironically by Liam Gallagher is now in full swing, other original members Steve Queralt and Loz Colbert now also treading the boards on bass and drums respectively.
If proof were needed that approaching these shows as exercises in curation is the right one, then twelve or thirteen hundred ‘mature’ Yorkies turning out on a Sunday night for this, the first date on the Nowhere 25 tour, is surely it.
Bell (shades, expensive football casual jacket) and Gardener (wide brimmed hat) may make for unshowmanlike frontmen, but we all know that the real playmakers here are, of course, the guitars. Like precision weapons, they’re interchanged from the pair’s arsenal almost after every song and then coaxed during them into making the swooping, sepulchral howls of melody and precision white noise that both set them apart from the other bands of the shoegaze era, but also give their work the durability to make this reunion a living organism as opposed to a hollow payday.
The set splits into three parts, the first an aperitif made up from what might be apocryphally called a greatest songs roster, of which opener ‘Leave Them All Behind‘ and ‘Twisteralla‘ – the latter still as close as they came to outright pop – are placed at opposite ends of the Ride spectra between harmonic grandeur and Poly disco accessibility.
Their debut album and tonight’s centrepiece, ‘Nowhere‘, relied much more on finessed space and sensory overload than how it sought approval from the masses. When recreated in order it’s possible to feel the transcendence of songs like ‘Dreams Burn Down‘, ‘Seagull‘ and ‘Nowhere‘; each patient, layered and cloistered journeys and all presented at a faithfully ear-splitting forty-something unfriendly volume.
They aren’t the same of course, because a quarter of a century is too long for the memory of performers and audience alike to not be scarred by subsequent experience, but the latter are so hushed most of the time the night begins to take on the feel of a recital. The mood is unerringly psychedelic, with back-dropped slides pulsing to half-obscure players and causing a disorientation occasionally supplemented by blinding strobes, the overall effect making the listener subconsciously fall in on themselves.
It would seem appropriate to finish that way, but the foursome re-appear to deliver two final knock out punches in ‘Chelsea Girl‘ and the arpeggiated pummelling of ‘Drive Blind‘ before a cover of The Stooges‘ ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog‘ closes out.
It may seem like an odd statement, but getting these occasions balanced sympathetically is a lot harder than it looks – turn the dial too far one way and it’s sentiment for sentiment’s sake, to the other and it ignores the purpose. In their youth talented avatars who came to an unlikely state of critical siege, as men Bell, Gardner and co. now understand that they can provoke, overwhelm and entertain at the same time.
Until next time then. Or maybe Howard Jones.
