• News

• All

Aug 16, 2019 By Christopher Roberts Photography by Steve Gullick Ride

British shoegazing icons Ride have released a new album, This Is Not a Safe Place, today via Wichita. Now that the album is out, you can stream the whole thing below. Also below are the band’s upcoming North American tour dates.

Singer/guitarist Mark Gardener had this to say about the album in a press release: “It’s got to be moving forward and for tomorrow and reflecting what’s going on now, otherwise, what’s the point? Nostalgia scares the hell out of me to be honest because I see it as a complete dead end creatively. I find it quite difficult playing some songs a lot from the ‘90s, but with new sounds and new places we go it’s like a blood transfusion into the works of your body.”

Previously Ride shared the album’s first single, “Future Love” (which was one of our Songs of the Week). Then they shared another song from the album, “Repetition,” which had a bit of an ‘80s vibe to it and was also one of our Songs of the Week. Then earlier this week they shared the third and final pre-release single from the album, “Clouds of Saint Marie, “ which leans into dream pop.

Ride reformed in 2014 to do some touring and finally released their first new album in 21 years, Weather Diaries, in 2017 via Wichita. That was followed by the 2018 EP, Tomorrow’s Shore. As with those two releases, Erol Alkan produced This Is Not a Safe Place. Alan Moulder mixed the album, the fourth Ride album he has mixed. The band came together at the end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019. A previous press release said the band were influenced by “the Jean Michel Basquiat exhibition at London’s Barbican Centre and the post-punk sound of The Fall and Sonic Youth, for an album rich in their trademark shoegaze atmosphere, whilst simultaneously sounding rejuvenated and creatively ambitious.”

Read our 2017 interview with Ride about Weather Diaries.

Until Weather Diaries Ride hadn’t released a new studio album since 1996’s Tarantula, which was put out after the band split up and was poorly received. 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 North American Tour Dates:

9/13 - Columbus, OH @ The Athenaeum Theatre
9/15 - Chicago, IL @ Riot Fest
9/16 - Detroit, MI @ St. Andrews Hall
9/17 - Toronto, ON @ Danforth Music Hall
9/18 - Montreal, QC @ Fairmount
9/20 - Boston, MA @ Paradise Rock Club
9/21 - Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Steel
9/22 - Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club
9/24 - Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer
9/26 - Nashville, TB @ Exit / In
9/27 - Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle
9/28 - Asheville, NC @ Orange Peel
9/29 - Atlanta, GA @ Variety Playhouse
10/1 - Austin, TX @ Mohawk
10/2 - Dallas, TX @ Tree’s
10/4 - Boulder, CO @ Boulder Theater
10/7 - Vancouver, BC @ Venue
10/8 - Seattle, WA @ Crocodile
10/9 - Portland, OR @ Wonder Ballroom
10/11 - San Francisco, CA @ The Regency Ballroom
10/14 - Los Angeles, CA @ Teragram Ballroom
10/15 - San Diego, CA @ House of Blues
10/16 - Santa Ana, CA @ The Observatory

Support Under the Radar on Patreon.