Firstly let me just start by saying that this is an album review I honestly never thought I’d be writing.

If someone had told me three years ago that I’d be listening to a new album by Ride, a band that formed such an influential underscore for my teenage years, I’d have stared at them in utter disbelief. And yet here we are, it’s 2017, and I’m listening to Ride’s long awaited fifth album Weather Diaries.

By the time the seminal British shoegaze quartet imploded after the release of their fourth – and most would have thought their final – album Tarantula in 1996 they’d all but abandoned the dense swirling visionary soundscapes that had made their first two albums, Nowhere and Going Blank Again, so immediate, entrancing and highly original in favour of a more retro rock inspired palette. After that there was precious little activity from camp Ride save for a couple of instrumental jams released in 2002 as the Coming Up For Air EP and a series of anniversary releases.

Until late 2014 when the band announced that they would be reuniting permanently.

And what a reunion it has turned out to be.

RIDE 2017 – Steve Queralt, Andy Bell, Mark Gardener, Loz Colbert – photo courtesy of Inertia Music

Not content to simply head out on tour and once again show fans old and new alike why they were considered one of the most formidable live bands of their era, the reunited quartet of Andy Bell, Mark Gardener, Steve Queralt and Loz Colbert have delivered their fifth album, their first new music in over 20 years, and yes it’s every bit as good as one could have hoped for.

Weather Diaries opens with some suitably ethereal chords before Bell’s guitar heralds the opening to Lannoy Point. The simplest of riffs that’s born aloft on a pulsing electronic wash and some very tasty Korg Poly 61 arpeggiated sequencing before Loz’s drums kick in. By the time Gardener’s vocal line comes in with lyrics expressing his anger and dissatisfaction with the current state of the U.K. – specifically in relation to Brexit – we’re off. How these four men can create such a heavenly sound that juxtaposes the very nature of the lyrics is beyond me, but stacked against the opening tracks of those first two Ride albums (Nowhere’s Seagull and GBA’s Leave Them All Behind) this is a rock solid first track that both immediately screams Ride and yet sounds new, fresh, clean and clear.

This gives way to Charm Assault, the first single lifted from the album, and it’s yet another clear indication that despite the intervening years these guys still know how to write a killer pop song with an ear worm guitar hook that spirals along in a very Smith-esque way. The “aaaah’s” that open the track are a typical piece of Ride handiwork when it comes to songwriting, something they’ve employed loads in the past and yet it never gets old. And again there’s this wonderful contrast between the riff/verse section and the direct sneering approach to the chorus. Much has been written since its release about the thinly veiled lyrical references to the buffoonery of Boris Johnson but hell, what did people expect? These are grown up gentlemen who have the right to sing about whatever they please, and given all that was going on around them during the writing of the album some of it was bound to find its way into the lyrics. The band at their poptastic best.

Perhaps the most modern, updated take on the bands sound comes with All I Want. The cut up vocal sample that bubbles along through the piece gives way to that huge uplifting chorus. It’s a true indication of a well written song when it makes you want to sing it loud at the top of your lungs in the car, and that’s exactly what the song does. Again the political slant in the lyrics, but then Ride were criticised by the English music press back in the day for having nothing to say, so they’re certainly making up for lost time.

Four songs in and we’re treated to the most direct link back to their shoegaze roots with Home Is A Feeling. A mammoth, cerebral smear of reverb drenched guitars and those bang on harmonies by Gardener and Bell give it the sedately beautiful mark that was splashed all over those early EPs and their debut album. And indeed this feels like coming home; like a warm familiar sanctuary, a physical entity, something you can wrap your entire soul inside and feel safe, comforted, happy and at peace with the world. A slice of unfettered dreamy perfection. An almost Cure-like riff opens the title track; a seven-minute opus that sees Bell’s lead vocals meditating on the changing world around us all and yet lyrics like “you never know what someone’s thinking until they’re just about to go”  could almost be cryptic references to the circumstances surrounding Gardener’s abrupt departure from the band in the mid-nineties (lyrics are always open to interpretation aren’t they?). Whatever the true meaning behind them is, sonically it’s a masterpiece of dark, subtle rhythms that are capped off by a lovely Bell guitar solo before the whole thing descends into an apocalyptic wall of sound squall of wah that echoes classics like Nowhere and Dreams Burn Down, only offering relief by fading away with some ghostly guitar lines. We’re at the halfway point and so far it’s sublime.

Rocket Silver Symphony begins life as some atonal pitch shifted synth sounds before some almost New Wave vocals courtesy of (Loz?) are dispatched by another anthemic Ride chorus that descends to that heavenly place where great choruses go to die. It’s that massive barrage of guitars and layered vocals that made their Going Blank Again-era songs such a glory, a revelation. Lateral Alice is a punchy take on proceedings again. This time it’s Queralt’s enormous fuzzy bass line that underpins the track, an unrelenting slab of MC5-meets-Jesus And Mary Chain alt-rock with some suitably surrealist lyrics from Bell, the whole thing wrapped up in a layered mix of guitars and those exquisite harmonies.

One thing Ride did so damn well on their sophomore album was fuse their dense effects laden foundation with the purity of sixties pop, and on Cali they’ve revived it in spades. Almost a companion piece to GBA standout track Twisterella it’s all jangly guitars, sun-drenched Californian harmonies and some ambient guitar lines with lyrics like “kissed you on the beach” and “summer is gone”  that give the song a real Byrds/CSNY feel.

This leads into Integration Tape – a piece that Bell describes as being the central key to the album. Two and a half minutes of dissonance via William Basinski that serves as a sonic lynchpin for the entire work. We’re dragged back into melody land by Impermanence, another Gardener-sung slice of psychedelia that gently sways through its chiming verses before building to a crescendo of a climax and fading away. It’s that perfect guitar pop formula that they first used so well on the classic Vapour Trail but with a more sophisticated and slightly world weary tone.

Which brings us to the album closer, White Sands, and it’s an understated almost bare bones waltz built on a repeating guitar line and some piano chords that hang in the air like a distant memory. Gardener’s plaintive lamentation that they “came the long way around” again seems to address the events of the past that saw the band thwarting themselves at the crossroads of 1993/94. Some faux-jazzy fills by Colbert propel the song along before it reaches its quiet climax. As album closers go it’s a hauntingly serene end considering what has preceded it, but you know what? It works.

The ambient factor can be heard all throughout Weather Diaries eleven tracks, from the haunting smear that opens Lannoy Point right through to its conclusion, no doubt courtesy of producer Erol Alkan whose electronica influences not only serve as the basis for some of the tracks but ensure that this isn’t just an attempt to avoid sounding outdated but to offer something new. This is, for the most part, the album Ride should have made after Going Blank Again, so much of what is evident here feels like a natural and organic progression on from that point.

Having said that, Weather Diaries is certainly not the sound of a band bent on rehashing the past in any way. This is the sound of four musicians working together in perfect unison. Beautiful and shimmering, all the classic elements that made Ride such a joyous auditory feast back in 1990 are represented here in all their glory but updated, mature.