Happy 30th Anniversary to Slowdive’s debut album Just For A Day, originally released September 2, 1991.
A few Januarys ago, I was briskly crossing Southwark Bridge when I came upon a curious sight. Many of the passersby had come to a standstill, and I smiled as I realized their shared purpose: all faces were transfixed, tilted toward the elusive London sun. As they lapped up the light, a rare flash of brilliance in the damp flit of a winter day, I couldn’t help but sympathize. Living in San Francisco, I, too, am accustomed to gray mornings and afternoons. Even in the summer, the sun often doesn’t hit until the day nears night.
And I’ll admit there are times I feel its absence even when it’s burning brightly. When that happens, I turn to my companion for some 25 years: Slowdive.
Say the English shoegaze outfit’s name to any fan, and you’ll likely hear gushing about sophomore album Souvlaki (1993), successor Pygmalion (1995), or even their self-titled Slowdive (2017), which arrived 22 years later, a long-held fantasy surprisingly realized. And, while all certainly divine their own hypnotic charms, none fill me quite the same way as their debut, the vastly undercelebrated Just For A Day (1991).
Knowing Slowdive at all is an unequivocal gift, and undoubtedly my affinity for their first full-length album is partially because it was my first foray into their feedback-flung world. But there’s another indisputable reason: From start to finish, Just For A Day just utterly glows.
Like the sun itself, the aural atmosphere of Just For A Day is constantly scintillating, building and bursting with sonic energy in incessant crescendoing wah-wah bliss.
Although Slowdive isn’t generally a band you’d hear on commercial radio, I was fortunate enough to discover their music in early adulthood. It was freshman year of college, and I was making my record store rounds, running down my list of desired finds on my trusty index card. At that point, I’d only heard of Slowdive in talking to other fans of Chapterhouse, Catherine Wheel, My Bloody Valentine—the handful of ‘80s/’90s UK-based shoegazey bands I knew. (Admittedly, ever the adoring Cure fan, I was also keenly aware Slowdive were Creation labelmates with Ride—one of Robert Smith’s new favorite bands.)
So, as I scoured the used CD racks, my heart leapt when I spied Slowdive on a jewel case spine. In unfussed lowercase text, the cover read “slowdive” in the upper-left corner and “just for a day” underneath. I grabbed it immediately, somehow gleaning, despite its terse title and compact diction, its rapturous meaning. To be fair, while its wording may be sparse, the artwork is vaguely reminiscent of Jupiter—a sensual drama of oranges and reds. A sandstorm swirling amidst the dunes or two bodies collapsing into one. Synesthete or not, whatever your interpretation, I think we can all agree it’s an ethereal cover conveying its contents perfectly.
Slowdive formed in Reading, England, out of the ashes of indie act Pumpkin Fairies, with childhood friends Rachel Goswell and Neil Halstead refashioning their aesthetic around a common passion for both classic rock and the dreamier side of the 1980s. Enlisting the support of third guitarist Christian Savill, bassist Nick Chaplin and percussionist Simon Scott, the pair of vocalists/guitarists envisioned a distortion-heavy sound that drew from a range of influences, including Pink Floyd, the Rolling Stones, Cocteau Twins, The Jesus And Mary Chain and The Cure.
The band name itself is inspired by the Siouxsie And The Banshees’ single “Slowdive”—a moniker all the more apt when you consider its opening line “Get your head down to the ground” (Ah, the paradox of shoegaze, to shuffle downward and conjure the heavens). Clearly, this was a band that owned its sound from the beginning.
And it’s likely no coincidence that Slowdive issued Just For A Day during the year’s last wisp of summer. Released in August 1991, following a trio of well-received EPs, the first LP from this quintet of teenagers shows remarkable, if aching, wisdom. It latches onto the fleeting, epitomizing the beauty of the moment, knowing it will not last. I could always lose myself in this record for hours because of its tension. It was somehow raging against, yet surrendering to, some greater existential resignation. As if to say, it’s all just for a day, just for some finite amount—so immerse yourself, really feel it.
Charging into this intoxicating realm, opening track “Spanish Air” makes an arresting entrance. At once euphoric and melancholic, waltzing drums and sweeping guitars wrap around a wistful chorus (“I long for the sun / The midland air / For all that I have / There's written in waves / I know that now / There's left to be seen / I know that I've lost him / I'm leaving here”). Despite its pensive poetry, I find the instrumentation romantic with Goswell and Halstead’s vocals breathily drifting into the Slowdive ether.
“Celia’s Dream,” the second track, glistens, a floaty, diaphanous veil masking the deep pain hinted at in the album’s title (“She told me that she loved me / Love, just for a day / And all the time I feel her / I feel her fade away”). In what would become classic Slowdive form, the pedals ripple here, encircling welling heartache in ever-swelling sonic haloes that elicit every tucked-away emotion.
As with the British Romantic masters, Slowdive’s ability to tap into the sublime is entwined in nature. The lyrics are rife with pastoral imagery, imbuing a certain purity amidst the turbulence. Wind, waves, rain crash around, in roiling symphonic storm, followed by grand epiphany—like sunshine finally stealing into the darkest of places.
Pressing my knuckles into my lidded eyes, I can still see the rays of LA sun spilling across Drake Stadium bleachers—just downhill from the UCLA dorms. I’d spend afternoons, in between or after classes, weaving my way around the tiered seating, the moving coaxing my thoughts along, or at least passing the time. I’d put “Waves,” my favorite song from Just For A Day, on a go-to mixtape for such introspective quests. For its near-six minutes, it offered reprieve from my suffocating sadness, an outstretched hand lifting me, however temporarily.
The lyrics are notably determined, too, revealing an inner strength I coveted (“Don't you know, I've left and gone away / You're knocking on the door I closed today / And everything looks brighter / The waves, they just soothe my pain away”). Wiping away my tears, I’d wait for the moment I could find a way to let go, too (“Leaving all my sins, I turn away / Like soaring birds, I watch my sorrows play”). Even if I couldn’t personally attain it at the time, I felt the turning point in the music, and it inspired hope. Ultimately, “Waves” is a song of reckoning, and made me think my life—or at least my psychological state—might one day be different (“My thoughts can go / But now, my sorrow's done”). I owe this song a lot. Thank you, Slowdive.
As one of the earlier entries in the now legendary shoegaze canon, ahead of even My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless (1991), Slowdive’s first LP Just For A Day is too often skipped over, in favor of noisier, more experimental works that followed. But this album dwells in its own distinct world—one that plays well in the shadows, but also casts an unmistakably numinous light I shall always treasure.
LISTEN: