Slowdive (album)


Slowdive is the fourth studio album by English rock band Slowdive. It was released on 5 May 2017 by the record label Dead Oceans. It was Slowdive's first studio album in 22 years, following Pygmalion. It was also the band's first album since Souvlaki to feature the drummer Simon Scott as a member.
Slowdive was preceded by the singles "Star Roving", released on 12 January 2017, and "Sugar for the Pill", released on 28 March 2017.
The album artwork is a still image from avant-garde cut-out animation film, Heaven and Earth Magic, by beatnik artist and polymath Harry Smith.

Critical reception

Slowdive received acclaim from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 82, based on 30 reviews.
TJ Kliebhan of Consequence found that Slowdive had "delivered a fresh dream-pop sound that is still uniquely Slowdive", concluding that "Slowdive delivers nearly everything their fans desire in a return: familiarity, innovation, and vast atmospheres to get lost in." The Skinnys Duncan Harman said that the album "represents an awareness of legacy, and the importance of not pissing all over it; to that extent, it's an essential addition to canon." Drowned in Sound reviewer Dom Gourlay called Slowdive a "majestic return that doesn't just fill in the gaps, but points unflinchingly towards future horizons." Sean T. Collins of Pitchfork said that the album "offers maximum-volume shoegaze too, better than the band ever has before", and Cam Lindsay of Exclaim! wrote that it "certainly was a long wait, but finally Slowdive have given us the album that we have been dreaming about for the last 22 years."
In October 2025, Paste ranked the album at number 237 on their "250 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century So Far" list, writing: "Every song is breathtaking, from the soaring opener "Slomo" to the melancholic "Sugar For the Pill". While it’s not as risky and experimental as Pygmalion, it thrives in its simplicity, with a precise attention to detail where each instrumentation fills its purpose to create Slowdive’s most atmospheric record yet."

Personnel

Credits are adapted from the album's liner notes.
Slowdive
Additional personnel