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Feb 21, 2017 By Christopher Roberts Ride

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British shoegazing icons Ride reformed in 2014 and have been touring. They announced back in December that they were working on a new album and now they have shared its first single, “Charm Assault.” It doesn’t sound much like their earlier shoegaze material, and is instead more of a straight-up rocker closer to the latter half of their output. Ride haven’t released a new studio album since 1996’s Tarantula, which was put out after the band split up and was poorly received, so this is their first new song in 21 years. The new album is scheduled for release this summer on Wichita. Listen to “Charm Assault” below via Pitchfork (who premiered it).

Ride’s Andy Bell (who was also in Oasis after Ride split up) had this to say to Pitchfork about the new song:

“‘Charm Assault’ is a pretty straightforward expression of frustration and disgust at the people who currently run our country. The tour in 2015 was a good way of reminding us what we were good at in the first place and ‘Charm Assault’ feels like a natural continuation from our peak. When we started writing together again we tried to imagine we’d kept on making music all this time, and this was just the latest one.”

Erol Alkan (Klaxons, Mystery Jets, Beyond the Wizards Sleeve) is producing the new album. He had this to say to Pitchfork:

“Nowhere and Going Blank Again were big records for me and my friends when we were growing up. I’ve vaguely known Andy for a few years through his brother-in-law but we didn’t actually meet until a couple of years back. I had an email from them asking if I’d like to collaborate with the band, and once I’d heard the demos, I was 100% in. Andy’s very well versed in electronic music, so we had a common bond in that as well as alternative music. The new music contains all the great elements you want from Ride-Great songs, loud guitars, beautiful harmonies, powerful rhythms.”

The quartet’s original run lasted from 1988 to 1996 and included four studio albums (Nowhere, Going Blank Again, Carnival of Light, and Tarantula). In 2015 they also released Nowhere25, a 25th anniversary reissue of their 1990-released debut album Nowhere. A few years ago we interviewed Ride’s Mark Gardener and Andy Bell about Nowhere and you can read that article here. And then in 2015 in another interview we did with Gardener he went through Nowhere track-by-track and you can read that here.

Ride Tour Dates:

03-12 Belfast, Northern Ireland - Limelight
03-22 Dublin, Ireland - Olympia Theatre
03-24 Glasgow, Scotland - Glasgow Barrowland (6 Music Festival)
07-13-16 Benicàssim, Spain - Festival Internacional de Benicàssim

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