What a time to be alive for fans of Ride.
Last week, the legendary shoegazers delivered not one, but two new songs — their first fresh material in more than 20 years — and today have followed up the sonic barrage with news of a short North American tour along the east coast. Included in the five dates is a July 19 stop a Royale in Boston. Tickets go on sale Friday at 10 a.m.
Ride will also play gigs in Toronto, New York, Philadelphia and D.C. Last time the boys were in town, they played the Paradise Rock Club in October 2015.
It’s expected that the new Ride album, produced by Erol Alkan and mixed by Alan Moulder, should be out later this year via Wichita Records.
Of new track “Home Is A Feeling,” which you can hear below alongside fellow newcomer “Charm Assault,” guitarist Andy Bell says: “Out of all the new songs ‘Home Is A Feeling’ comes closest to the early Ride sound. We felt comfortable going vintage on this tune because the album we are making has a pretty broad sonic scope. It’s a short and sweet, melodic tune, with stacked harmonies, reverbed-out guitars, slowed down drums, and a huge distorted bass sound. Erol put his sage-scented electronic wizards hat on to sample up some of our harmonies and make them into a synthesiser preset, which we ended up using on this and some of the other tunes too. We wanted this song to sound jet lagged, so everything on it was recorded with varispeed, either faster or slower than real time. It’s like 1966 Beatles meets 1988 MBV… in other words, Ride.”
RIDE 2017 North American Dates
July 17: Massey Hall, Toronto, ON
July 19: Royale, Boston, MA
July 20: Terminal 5, New York, NY
July 22: TLA, Philadelphia, PA
July 23: Sixth & I, Washington