Slowdive may occupy an odd zone in the music industry, but they're in good company. Like Dinosaur Jr. and Pixies, Slowdive arrived during the golden age of alternative music, semi-chaotically broke up, reunited in the 21st century, and then stayed together.

During their time away, Slowdive's celestial, tempestuous brand of rock music had been codified as a genre unto itself: shoegaze. Which used to be a pejorative, and was now a badge of honor.

When they returned to the game in 2014 — thinking they'd play a festival or two — they realized the world was more primed than ever to embrace them.

"I think it took us a moment to feel like we're not just the heritage band," their founding guitarist and vocalist, Neil Halstead, admits to GRAMMY.com. "We felt a bit awkward... people wanted to hear songs that we wrote 20 years ago."

For a minute, Slowdive gracefully assumed the "heritage band" role, playing beloved oldies like "Catch the Breeze," "Machine Gun" and "Dagger" for old heads and a zealous new generation. Soon, they realized their creative synergy was intact: they could be not only back, but here.

In 2017, they dropped the acclaimed Slowdive; now, they're out with everything is alive, a continuation of their long-delayed evolution that hews closely to what made them special, with a few aesthetic twists.

Diaphanous tracks like "prayer remembered," "kisses" and "the slab" could have been released in 1993, but they sound right at home in 2023.

Read on for a full interview with Halstead about the journey to everything is alive and his ripening dynamic with vocalist Rachel Goswell, guitarist Christian Savill, bassist Nick Chaplin, and drummer Simon Scott.

*Slowdive (L-R, clockwise from bottom left: Neil Halstead, Simon Scott, Nick Chaplin, Christian Savill, Rachel Goswell)*

This interview has been edited for clarity.

**What was the germ of everything is alive? What did the band primarily wish to communicate?**

Approaching any record, I think you  just want to enjoy the creative process. You always hope that you're gonna try and do something a little different than maybe what you've done before.

When we decided we were going to do this record I brought a bunch of stuff in for the band — electronic music I'd been working on for a couple of years;' it was no guitars — just sort of modular and kind of synth bass, minimal electronic music.

The most important thing for me is that it's a valid creative exercise. That it's fun and it's enjoyable. I never really think about where it's going to end.

What's your relationship with electronic music been like over the years?

I suppose my interest in electronic music dates back to when we were doing [1995's] Pygmalion. Up to that point, I was an indie kid, into my guitar music and stuff.

I sort of started getting into more sort of techno — Aphex Twin, Warp Records, bands like LFO. Exploring stuff like John Cage, and Stockhausen, and that more experimental side of music, opens up all those areas.

In the last, I guess, 10 years, I've sort of got much more into modular kinds of systems. Which is just really good fun. I make a lot of music that doesn't really have any outlet, you know. I really just enjoy making it. It doesn't really involve guitars.

Slowdive's drummer, Simon [Scott], is in the U.S.; all his solo stuff is sort of field music, and much more ambient kind of bass music. It's kind of granular. He likes to really explore different textures.

I think there's always been a side side of Slowdive that is more interested in the instrumentals, rather than making songs — the side that enjoys just creating textures.

After Pygmalion, certainly, my interest was more electronic music, and then it reverted to acoustic music and folk music. [Electronic music] is certainly where my head's at these days. 

[everything is alive] was really enjoyable because it kind of brought those electronic things into Slowdive world as well.

Regarding modular synths, what are you nerding out about lately? It seems like it could be a bottomless rabbit hole.

Yeah, it's a bit like guitar pedals, because you can collect these things and continue to collect them. There are always new modules coming out.

It is a massive rabbit hole and a massive waste of money, but it keeps me entertained and happy. I can lose so much time just messing around with them, and then realize I haven't actually recorded anything.

But there's something quite nice about that as well. It's very in the moment; it's very present working with that kind of technology.

Souvlaki was released when I was a year old; you guys were barely in your twenties. How would you characterize your working relationship with Slowdive as grown-ups, without the rough edges of youth? It seems like it'd be much saner.

It's definitely less hysterical. You got it right with the rough edges of youth, but some of that angst was really helpful in creating music. Souvlaki, Just For a Day — it's kind of teenage music.

That was an important part of what we did. We wouldn't have made those records if we'd not been teenagers. So, it's a different thing now, trying to make Slowdive records.

I don't know if it's a more sane experience, but it's more measured. I couldn't really conceive of making a record like Pygmalion now, because to make that record, I almost had to alienate the rest of the band. No one else was really into electronic music; I had to force my hand with that.

To their credit, they let me do it, but I think it probably broke the band up; we split up after that record. I wouldn't want to put everyone in that position. Now, I'm much more willing to compromise, and they're much more willing to find a way through, where everyone's happy with the record.

Which is probably a better way to make Slowdive records, but it does mean it takes longer to make them.For it to go on a Slowdive record, everyone has to love it. That means you lose a lot of material [chuckles] but that's just the process.

How did the material germinate past the point of electronic experiments, and bloom into a proper Slowdive album?

Purely by just taking them to the band. A lot of them we would use as the basis for a track, so we'd literally have the band play along to what was there.

Then, we started taking bits and pieces out, and seeing what we were left with — thinking Well, maybe we can record this in a different way, you know. With every track, we would approach it quite organically and just see where it went.

Maybe we would try adding a few guitars, or maybe I'd just say to Simon, "Can you try drumming along to this one." And things started to take shape, where we were kind of like, OK, that sounds cool. That's kind of interesting.

For my part, I remained really detached from the original ideas, because it had to be a Slowdive record. So, everyone had to feel like they were part of the process.

Tell me about a part of everything is alive that benefited greatly from your bandmates' touch.

There are so many moments like that. "prayer remembered" was a really nice one. It was literally just this one arpeggiating synth that I played, that created the melody and the tune. I had Simon and [guitarist] Christian [Savill] play along to this thing.

Then, we took the original modular away from the track, which sort of left this space. Simon ended up taking some of Christian's guitars and feeding them through a Max patch system — you can granulate and change the sounds.

There's this kind of choral component that flips in and out, which is this Match patch stuff that Simon worked from. It's really lovely, and it adds so much to the track. 

When Simon figured out the drums for "the slab," that was a big moment for us. I think with the track "chained to a cloud," that was a big moment as well, because originally, that had a load of choruses. Once we took the choruses away, it really simplified the whole thing, and it became this very linear journey.

It's just little moments where suddenly, things start to make sense. You start to feel like the tracks are creating their own endpoints, as they go into their own special places.

Can you speak to the production aesthetic — how you wanted the sound to impact people?

We had Shawn Everett mix the record; I went out to L.A. to mix the record with Shawn. Having him take raw stems and make them fit together really well was a big moment for us.

It definitely brought a lot of attitude to the records, particularly in terms of the drums. Making them a bit dirtier sounding and stuff like that was really important to the finished record.

When Slowdive reunited in the 2010s, what was it like to see the aesthetic of Slowdive and your contemporaries become a lodestar to aspire to?

To be honest, I wasn't really aware that shoegaze had kind of become a thing. 

There was a moment in the early 2000s, when a German label did a compilation where they had all their bands do cover versions of Slowdive songs; it was an electronic label that you really wouldn't associate with guitar music at all. 

I remember hearing that and being like, Oh, this is kind of interesting! It was weird that they'd even heard of us, let alone decided to do a whole record of Slowdive songs, coming from a completely different genre.

But it wasn't until we got back together in 2014 [to play Primavera Sound in Barcelona that] we were like, "OK, maybe we could do that." We'd been seeing each other a little bit. It was quite good timing, in terms of people feeling like they could put in a bit of time and do a festival or two.

But once we started doing the festivals, and then a few shows of our own, we realized that this shoegaze thing had taken on its own life; a whole generation of kids had found this music through the internet. I wasn't aware of that until that point. I don't think anyone else in the band was either.

It's great that shoegaze has taken ahold of its own name, and affirmed that, in a way. When the term was coined, it was obviously not meant in a particularly nice way. It's great that that term has been regained, and it's a proper genre now, which I think is kind of cool.

My hunch is that neither Slowdive nor your contemporaries thought you were making any codified style of music. Rather, it seems like you all were just trying to make rock music with dreaminess and beauty to it.

I think you're right. Originally, it was just a bunch of bands that wanted to make guitar music that sounded different — that wasn't necessarily going to sound right on the radio.

That wasn't the thing anyone was really thinking about. It was more like, I want to make a record as beautiful as Cocteau Twins, or as massive-sounding as My Bloody Valentine, or as ridiculous as Loop.

I think they didn't just want to make a pop song that sounds decent on the radio. There was something else going on there.

How Deafheaven's Sunbather Changed Our View Of Metal

Indie band Mercury Rev have announced their next album, a tribute to Bobbie Gentry's The Delta Sweete Revisited, will be available on Feb. 8.

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The album features an array of guest voices. Mercury Rev's incredible selection of guest vocalists on the tracks kicks off with Norah Jones performing "Okolona River Bottom Band." Others lending their voices to the effort are Phoebe Bridgers, Vashti Bunyan, Rachel Goswell, Marissa Nadler, Beth Orton, Lætitia Sadier, Hope Sandoval, Kaela Sinclair, Susanne Sundfør, Carice van Houten, and Lucinda Williams, whose rendition of "Ode To Billie Joe" was added to the original album's tracklist.

"Bobbie is iconic, original, eloquent and timeless," said singer Margo Price, whose guest vocals are featured on "Sermon." "She has remained a strong voice and an eternal spirit of the delta, wrapped in mystery, yet forever here."

The Delta Sweete was Gentry's 1968 follow up to her debut Ode To Billie Joe, for which she won three GRAMMYs at the 10th GRAMMY Awards.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">NEWS: <a href="https://twitter.com/mercuryrevvd?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@mercuryrevvd</a> have announced the release of Bobbie Gentry’s The Delta Sweete Revisited! The album is a re-imagining of Bobbie Gentry’s forgotten masterpiece and features an incredible cast list of guest vocalists. More info here... <a href="https://t.co/ctfOtZ9kGb">https://t.co/ctfOtZ9kGb</a> <a href="https://t.co/TFfyaYdSVa">pic.twitter.com/TFfyaYdSVa</a></p>&mdash; bella union (@bellaunion) <a href="https://twitter.com/bellaunion/status/1062726053943300096?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 14, 2018</a></blockquote>

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For the full track list and additional details see Bella Union's announcement and Pitchfork. Mercury Rev recently concluded their 2018 U.S. tour and will be playing across Britain in Dec.

Lucinda Williams Plots 'Car Wheels On A Gravel Road' 20th Anniversary Tour

Next year, the Cure will celebrate 40 years as a band with a celebration concert at London's BST Hyde Park on July 7, 2018, and they're bringing along some very talented friends.

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Interpol, Goldfrapp, Slowdive, Editors, Twilight Sad, and Ride will join the Cure, along with additional performers to be announced at a later date, according to Rolling Stone.

Led by emotive frontman Robert Smith, the Cure have provided the soundtrack for a generation with their dreamy rock sound and impassioned, crafty songwriting. From the refreshingly melancholic anthems of the 1980s on such landmark albums as Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me and Disintegration, to their chart-topping GRAMMY-nominated 1992 album Wish, to their pair of solid releases in the 2000s, including 2004's The Cure and 2008's 4:13 Dream, the Cure have continued to influence new bands and win new fans. Last year, they played a string of U.S. tour dates and even debuted two new songs live in New Orleans.

Presale for the 40th-anniversary celebration show starts Dec. 12 with tickets going on-sale to the general public starting Dec. 15. More information is available via the Cure's website.

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When Code Orange's Jami Morgan came to work with Steve Albini, he knew that he and the band had to be prepared. They knew what they wanted to do, in which order, and "it went as good as any process we've ever had — probably the best," he glowed.

And a big part of that was that Albini —  a legendary musician and creator of now-iconic indie, punk and alternative records —  didn't consider himself any sort of impresario. 

"The man wears a garbage man suit to work every day," Morgan previously told GRAMMY.com while promoting Code Orange's The Above. "It reminds him he's doing a trade… I f—ing loved him. I thought he was the greatest guy."

The masterful The Above was released in 2023, decades into Albini's astonishing legacy both onstage and in the studio. The twisted mastermind behind Big Black and Shellac, and man behind the board for innumerable off-center classics, Steve Albini passed away on the evening of May 7 following a heart attack suffered at his Chicago recording studio, the hallowed Electrical Audio. He was 61. The first Shellac album since 2014, To All Trains, is due May 17.

Albini stuck to his stubborn principles (especially in regard to the music industry), inimitable aesthetics and workaday self-perception until the end. Tributes highlighting his ethos, attitude and vision have been flowing in from all corners of the indie community. The revered label Secretly Canadian called Albini "a wizard who would hate being called a wizard, but who surely made magic."

David Grubbs of Gastr Del Sol called him "a brilliant, infinitely generous person, absolutely one-of-a-kind, and so inspiring to see him change over time and own up to things he outgrew" — meaning old, provocative statements and lyrics.

And mononymous bassist Stin of the bludgeoning noise rock band Chat Pile declared, "No singular artist's body of work has had an impact on me more than that of Steve Albini."

To wade through Albini's entire legacy, and discography, would take a lifetime — and happy hunting, as so much great indie, noise rock, punk, and so much more passed across his desk. Here are five of those albums.

Pixies - Surfer Rosa (1988)

Your mileage may vary on who lit the match for the alternative boom, but Pixies — and their debut Surfer Rosa — deserve a place in that debate. This quicksilver classic introduced us to a lot of Steve Albini's touchstones: capacious miking techniques; unadulterated, audio verite takes; serrated noise.

PJ Harvey - Rid of Me (1993)

Some of Albini's finest hours have resulted from carefully arranging the room, hitting record, and letting an artist stalk the studio like a caged animal.

It happened on Scout Niblett's This Fool Can Die Now; it happened on Laura Jane Grace's Stay Alive; and it most certainly happened on PJ Harvey's Rid of Me, which can be seen as a precedent for both. Let tunes like "Man-Size" take a shot at you; that scar won't heal anytime soon.

Nirvana - In Utero (1993)

Nirvana's unintended swan song in the studio was meant to burn the polished Nevermind in effigy.

And while Kurt Cobain was too much of a pop beautician to fully do that, In Utero is still one of the most bracing and unvarnished mainstream rock albums ever made. Dave Grohl's drum sound on "Scentless Apprentice" alone is a shot to your solar plexus.

"The thing that I was really charmed most by in the whole process was just hearing how good a job the band had done the first time around," Albini told GRAMMY.com upon In Utero's 20th anniversary remix and remastering. "What struck me the most about the [remastering and reissue] process was the fact that everybody was willing to go the full nine yards for quality."

Songs: Ohia - The Magnolia Electric Co. (2003)

When almost a dozen musicians packed into Electrical Audio to make The Magnolia Electric Co., the vibe was, well, electric — prolific singer/songwriter Jason Molina was on the verge of something earth-shaking.

It's up for debate as to whether the album they made was the final Songs: Ohia record, or the first by his following project, Magnolia Electric Co. — is a tempestuous, majestic, symbolism-heavy, Crazy Horse-scaled ride through Molina's troubled psyche.

Code Orange - The Above (2023)

A health issue kept Code Orange from touring behind The Above, which is a shame for many reasons. One is that they're a world-class live band. The other is that The Above consists of their most detailed and accomplished material to date.

The band's frontman Morgan and keyboardist Eric "Shade" Balderose produced The Above, which combines hardcore, metalcore and industrial rock with concision and vision. And by capturing their onstage fire like never before on record, Albini helped glue it all together.

"It was a match made in heaven," Morgan said. And Albini made ferocity, ugliness and transgression seem heavenly all the same.

11 Reasons Why 1993 Was Nirvana's Big Year

What is about the Beatles' Let it Be sessions that continues to bedevil diehards?

Even after their aperture was tremendously widened with Get Back — Peter Jackson's three-part, almost eight hour, 2021 doc — something's always been missing. Because it was meant as a corrective to a film that, well, most of us haven't seen in a long time — if at all.

That's Let it Be, the original 1970 documentary on those contested, pivotal, hot-and-cold sessions, directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg. Much of the calcified lore around the Beatles' last stand comes not from the film itself, but what we think is in the film.

Let it Be does contain a couple of emotionally charged moments between maturing Beatles. The most famous one: George Harrison getting snippy with Paul McCartney over a guitar part, which might just be the most blown-out-of-proportion squabble in rock history.

But superfans smelled blood in the water: the film had to be a locus for the Beatles' untimely demise. To which the film's director, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, might say: did we see the same movie?

"Looking back from history's vantage point, it seems like everybody drank the bad batch of Kool-Aid," he tells GRAMMY.com. Lindsay-Hogg had just appeared at an NYC screening, and seemed as surprised by it as the fans: "Because the opinion that was first formed about the movie, you could not form on the actual movie we saw the other night."

He's correct. If you saw Get Back, Lindsay-Hogg is the babyfaced, cigar-puffing auteur seen throughout; today, at 84, his original vision has been reclaimed. On May 8, Disney+ unveiled a restored and refreshed version of the Let it Be film — a historical counterweight to Get Back. Temperamentally, though, it's right on the same wavelength, which is bound to surprise some Fabs disciples.

With the benefit of Peter Jackson's sound-polishing magic and Giles Martin's inspired remixes of performances, Let it Be offers a quieter, more muted, more atmospheric take on these sessions. (Think fewer goofy antics, and more tight, lingering shots of four of rock's most evocative faces.)

As you absorb the long-on-ice Let it Be, here are some lesser-known facts about this film, and the era of the Beatles it captures — with a little help from Lindsay-Hogg himself.

The Beatles Were Happy With The Let It Be Film

After Lindsay-Hogg showed the Beatles the final rough cut, he says they all went out to a jovial meal and drinks: "Nice food, collegial, pleasant, witty conversation, nice wine."

Afterward, they went downstairs to a discotheque for nightcaps. "Paul said he thought Let it Be was good. We'd all done a good job," Lindsay-Hogg remembers. "And Ringo and [wife] Maureen were jiving to the music until two in the morning."

"They had a really, really good time," he adds. "And you can see like [in the film], on their faces, their interactions — it was like it always was."

About "That" Fight: Neither Paul Nor George Made A Big Deal

At this point, Beatles fanatics can recite this Harrison-in-a-snit quote to McCartney: "I'll play, you know, whatever you want me to play, or I won't play at all if you don't want me to play. Whatever it is that will please you… I'll do it." (Yes, that's widely viewed among fans as a tremendous deal.)

If this was such a fissure, why did McCartney and Harrison allow it in the film? After all, they had say in the final cut, like the other Beatles.

"Nothing was going to be in the picture that they didn't want," Lindsay-Hogg asserts. "They never commented on that. They took that exchange as like many other exchanges they'd had over the years… but, of course, since they'd broken up a month before [the film's release], everyone was looking for little bits of sharp metal on the sand to think why they'd broken up."

About Ringo's "Not A Lot Of Joy" Comment…

Recently, Ringo Starr opined that there was "not a lot of joy" in the Let it Be film; Lindsay-Hogg says Starr framed it to him as "no joy."

Of course, that's Starr's prerogative. But it's not quite borne out by what we see — especially that merry scene where he and Harrison work out an early draft of Abbey Road's "Octopus's Garden."

"And Ringo's a combination of so pleased to be working on the song, pleased to be working with his friend, glad for the input," Lindsay-Hogg says. "He's a wonderful guy. I mean, he can think what he wants and I will always have greater affection for him.

"Let's see if he changes his mind by the time he's 100," he added mirthfully.

Lindsay-Hogg Thought It'd Never Be Released Again

"I went through many years of thinking, It's not going to come out," Lindsay-Hogg says. In this regard, he characterizes 25 or 30 years of his life as "solitary confinement," although he was "pushing for it, and educating for it."

"Then, suddenly, the sun comes out" — which may be thanks to Peter Jackson, and renewed interest via Get Back. "And someone opens the cell door, and Let it Be walks out."

Nobody Asked Him What The Sessions Were Like

All four Beatles, and many of their associates, have spoken their piece on Let it Be sessions — and journalists, authors, documentarians, and fans all have their own slant on them.

But what was this time like from Lindsay-Hogg's perspective? Incredibly, nobody ever thought to check. "You asked the one question which no one has asked," he says. "No one."

So, give us the vibe check. Were the Let it Be sessions ever remotely as tense as they've been described, since man landed on the moon? And to that, Lindsay-Hogg's response is a chuckle, and a resounding, "No, no, no."

The Beatles' Final Song: Giles Martin On The Second Life Of "Now And Then" & How The Fab Four Are "Still Breaking New Ground"