“Steve Queralt featuring Emma Anderson” is a little more of a mouthful than, say, “Ride featuring Lush“, but when the first preview of the Ride bassist’s debut solo album comes with vocals from Lush’s co-frontwoman – truly a confluence of OG shoegazers – you pay attention. And when that preview slaps – in the millennial sense and not the bass sense – you get excited.
Queralt isn’t taking the solo opportunity to embark on jazz odysseys or indulge his singer-songwriter dreams; lead preview “Lonely Town” is exactly what you’d hope for from a Ride-Lush collaboration, with driving rhythms, jangling guitars, and vocals pulled straight from your ’90s mixtape. Says Queralt of the song:
I’d been going through another Joy Division stage and so the rhythm and tempo were the starting point and, once they were in place, the bass part followed naturally. Emma follows the synth melody for the chorus, but it’s the bridge part that does it for me. Just after we finished it, Emma came up with more vocal parts which were too good to miss out on, so back to the studio we went.
Steve Queralt
Ride bassist Steve Queralt announces debut solo album, Swallow @ The Line Of Best Fit
And of her contributions, Anderson says:
Emma adds that the lyrics are about “revisiting a familiar place and having your memories jogged and remembering things how they were in reality and not how you thought you remembered them.”
Ride’s Steve Queralt announces debut solo album, shares “Lonely Town” ft Lush’s Emma Anderson @ BrooklynVegan
The album, Swallow, is out on June 13 and features another vocal lead from Anderson, as well as one from Verity Sussman of Electralane and Memorials. Of the whole project, Queralt says:
Swallow has turned out so much better than I had hoped, largely thanks to Emma and Verity’s contributions which sew the tracks together and shape it into an album. I’d fallen out of love with it so many times I was thinking of calling it Loveless. But then, that wouldn’t be the whole story.
Steve Queralt
Ride bassist Steve Queralt announces debut solo album, Swallow @ The Line Of Best Fit
The video features video footage shot from a train in Japan superimposed over footage of both Queralt and Anderson walking around, presumably not in Japan.
