“Interplay” – Ride

Album: Interplay

Artist: Ride

Year: 2024

Genre: Alternative Rock

Grade: B+

English shoegazing/noise-pop pioneers Ride — a key band of the early 1990s — reformed in 2014, and their subsequent career has fallen into the familiar trappings that so many once-classic, now-forgotten legacy acts often face: stuck between forging a new future and recreating the glory days. The first two albums of Ride Mach II — Weather Diaries (2017) and This Is Not a Safe Place (2019) — were average releases that exemplified this internal struggle. Thankfully, Interplay (2024) finds the band moving in a new, fresh direction.

The sound of Interplay draws on new wave, Britpop and reverb-heavy alt rock, foregoing the roaring squalls and noisy surges of Nowhere (1990) and Going Blank Again (1992). The riffs are still large and powerful, the melodies grand and cinematic, the lyrics universally trite — in short, Interplay is still unmistakably Ride, which is great, but the nostalgia factor of their last two albums is gone. Rather, they aim for a different kind of nostalgia, recreating the glory days of New Order, Depeche Mode and The Cure rather than their own.

For instance, “Last Frontier” — the best song on the album — is filled with soaring Peter Hook-esque bass lines and starry, unassuming Bernard Sumner-esque vocal melodies. On other songs, the music echoes Blur, Pulp and The Stone Roses, but in clever enough ways that it isn’t a blatant rip-off or an obvious homage.

That’s because the production is inspired, with instrumental prowess to match. Led by the strong rhythm of drummer Loz Colbert, Ride rocks out while remaining easy to listen to — well-structured songwriting, pretty vocal harmonies and controlled distortion. And if you still crave that classic Ride sound, the blaring “Portland Rocks” should do the trick.

Compared to other shoegaze pioneers who have recently returned (e.g., The Jesus and Mary Chain and their 2024 LP Glasgow Eyes), Ride sounds much younger; rejuvenated, even. It’s heartening to know that Interplay fulfills the promise of their reformation, a new beginning for a group whose legacy was thought to be over. The future is bright for this 35-year-old band.

NOTES & CHORDS

• The closing trifecta — “Portland Rocks,” the seven-minute “Essaouira” and the drumless “Yesterday Is Just a Song” — is the album’s most interesting stretch, showing Ride approaching ambient neo-psychedelia. Maybe that’s where the future takes them?

• “Last Frontier” is easily the catchiest tune, but it’s hard not to draw comparisons to New Order’s “Love Vigilantes” and “Age of Consent.” And maybe the first 15 seconds sounds a little like U2’s “Even Better Than the Real Thing,” though that’s purely coincidental.

• Andy Bell’s never been a charismatic singer, but his voice has always been pleasant. His deep-voiced attraction lacks a discernible persona, yet he sounds just as good now as he did back in 1990.

---