Review:
Nowhere

'NOWHERE'. AN anachronism if ever there was one. 1990 has stood back and watched Ride arrive everywhere, dragging the guitar from the gutter and proving that being baggy and bloated isn't actually a requisite trait to traipse into the (s)limelight.

The debut album is their trickiest proposition yet. In a sense, Ride have dug their own graves and overseen the final ceremony. They've almost been too good for their own good. Like The Sundays' 'Reading, Writing, Arithmetic' way back in January, they've lost that crucial element of surprise. They've already astonished us with 'Drive Blind' and 'Taste'. Now we're expecting miracles. Now we want them to achieve the virtually impossible and transcend their own transcendence. Brutally unfair, really.

To its credit, 'Nowhere' starts as though it's finishing: 'Seagull' soars through the hazy maze of spiralling guitars, thundering towards a savage, squabbling finale. The storm before the hurricane, we hope. But when 'Kaleidoscope' steams in, chords ringing like an unmanned switchboard, it takes the entire ecstatic ethic one step too far. With drummer Lawrence providing a welter of acrobatic Moonies, the overall effect is irritatingly unsettling, nerves set ablaze by Ride's reluctance to find a satisfactory niche.

Ride's more spectacular moments occur when maudlin moods overwhelm them. 'A Different Place' reveals a different pace, more sweet than sweaty with a thunderstruck tambourine and quivering bursts of ever-inventive guitar. 'Dreams Burn Down' is still, after all these plays, utterly exceptional, the ubiquitous non-specific wordplay mirroring the vulnerable-but-lethally spike plectrum pluckings until Ride kick like a posse of can-canning mules and lurch through Sub Pop power spasms. And better still is 'Paralysed', vacant but hardly empty evidence of unnatural maturity wherein Floyd-esque axe licks shamelessly shake Ride to the peak of desolation.

So, two-thirds of 'Nowhere' sublimely reaffirms our faith, confirms out belief born way back in 1989 that Ride were destined to become the most important ambassadors for guitars in the new decade. But 'Nowhere' also incorporates an over-urgent tyke called 'Decay', which tenaciously evades our grasp when we really, desperately wanted to embrace another 'Chelsea Girl'. It fails - unluckily - to gel as a Great Album should. It doesn't challenge or thrill unexpectedly.

The overall effect is rather like Tottenham beating Walthamstow Avenue 6-0 with attractive footballing skills: they've done the business, done what was required and entertained when they should have reached double figures and amazed. Close, but not close enough. Ride are eight miles high... and hovering.

NME - 1990

recorded at Blackwing Studios, London, England by Mark Waterman mixed at Swanyard Studios, London, England by Alan Moulder