100 Greatest Songs of the 90’s #35 slowdive – Souvlaki Space Station

Released : 1993

A quick reminder that all’s not fair in love and war: the Manic Street Preachers once described slowdive as the band they hated “More than Hitler,” part of a silly feud of which thirty years later neither party will speak of.

The gathered music press weren’t too hot on Souvlaki either, an album that featured guitarist Neil Halstead writing whilst staying in rural Wales after his painful break up with the band’s singer Rachel Goswell.

Halstead approached the legendary Brian Eno with a view to him taking on the album’s production duties, but although only a couple of tracks emerged from that union, the veteran’s influences were the inspiration for Souvlaki Space Station. With a dub influenced rumbling bass and a gigantic, echo drenched riff, it was the song which arguably took shoegaze into an expansive new dimension. After taking more then their share of criticism suddenly these much slagged off kids it seemed were all Reich.