In late 2014, a giant black banner appeared on the side of a building in Barcelona, Spain, the home of the annual Primavera Sound music festival. In a vaguely familiar heavy white font, it read simply ride. Speculation about a Ride reunion, stoked over the years by smirking “never say never” teases from various members, had been at a fever pitch since the breakup that fall of Liam Gallagher’s post-Oasis group, Beady Eye, in which Ride’s Andy Bell played guitar. The banner confirmed it: the seminal British shoegaze band, almost completely inactive since dissolving in 1996, would finally return.


              Meagan Fredette: Shoegaze has such an obsessive fan base today. And there are two schools within the genre: the original bands from your era and the newer bands going today, who are very much still carrying the torch. Which is a huge testament to its staying power. Why do you think that shoegaze has survived, as compared to other forms of music that cropped up at the time?

When Ride started out, you guys were so young! I think back to when I was that young, and there’s a lot of myopia in terms of how you perceive the present and the future. Did you guys have any idea of what was going to happen? Oh, absolutely not! We weren’t a career band. We were always going to crash the car at some point—that’s what made it exciting. And we were very naive, and wrote very honestly about things that were happening in our lives outside the band. It’s that first baby step into the magnitude of life—relationships, first loves—but everything goes wrong. That’s just the way it works. We kept things going for a good number of years until we crashed in 1996.

And those career bands from back then, it’s like, what are they doing now? If it means that you turn really bland in the process, I just think: What’s the point?

                                   I love hearing Andy sing, and I love singing with him, because those are our harmonies, and I think that’s something we did really well.

Ride’s reunion shows have been so commercially and critically successful. How have you guys been enjoying that? We are really stoked. The mythology of Ride could only be spoiled by playing a [bad] gig. We have to be better and more consistent. We’ve made a lot of little changes to step it up a level. And we’re headlining festivals and shows around the world, so we’ve rehearsed more than we’ve ever rehearsed before. We are taking this very seriously. We want to smash it every time. I don’t have sloppy long hair to hide behind anymore.