| · "The only band that matters" according to New Music Express had their heydey in the ’90s. The ’90s are over.
While it’s hard to knock the shoe-gazing brilliance of Ride’s early records, that music is from a particular time and place. Indie guitar rock was coming into its own in North America, and in the U.K., bands that were making waves on the college charts here were top of the pops.
There is no denying the impact that Ride (and bands like them) had on the music of today. Ride’s 10-minute instrumental "Grasshopper" is as wanky and indulgent as anything Mogwai ever put out and Coldplay’s Chris Martin has obviously taken his cues when it comes to whiny Brit-pop vocals.
Ride had two great albums followed by a career of trying to live up to that. Waves is a collection of the material that Ride recorded with master producer John Peel between ’90 and ’94, and while those are the fertile years of Ride, listening to this compilation just encourages a return to the original recordings. Peel may offer a better than average live-to-tape sound but when all the material is almost a decade old, there doesn’t seem to be much point in rehashing it. Die-hard fans and completists will no doubt drool over the alternate interpretations of a few classics, but overall, this one isn’t worth the ride.
|
Copyright ©2003 FFWD. All rights reserved.