By his own account, Neil Halstead doesn’t look at the tour schedule. “I don’t want to scare myself,” he says, laughing. It’s probably for the best. With Slowdive back on the road behind everything is alive, the band is playing catch-up after years of pandemic delays, delayed studio sessions, and, according to Halstead, “a lot of digital sketches and a slow, sometimes painful process.”
“We started in 2019,” he says, “and I sent the band over 40 instrumental ideas I’d made — all just electronic pieces I’d done over five or six years.” That’s not exactly the traditional band jam session. But it’s how everything is alive took shape: mood-first, heavily curated, and crafted with care not to become “just another pop record.”
“We actually worried ‘Kisses’ was too pop,” he says. “It came really easily, and those are always the ones you second-guess.” He even sent it to the band asking if it sounded like a New Order song or something already written. “It felt so familiar I thought I’d stolen it.”
Slowdive’s process, as it turns out, is as atmospheric as their sound. Halstead talks about the band always working from “mood” more than narrative. “With my acoustic stuff, the lyrics are the center. But with Slowdive, we start with atmosphere. That’s what carries the song.”
That doesn’t mean they’re anti-structure. In fact, Halstead says the band avoids bloat by design. “I don’t like long albums,” he shrugs. “Forty minutes. Maybe nine songs. Anything more, and I just lose interest.” Their analog upbringing shows — vinyl sides, short attention spans, and deliberate pacing are baked into the DNA.
Even their studio setup hasn’t changed. “We still record at Chris Hufford’s studio near Oxford — same place we’ve always used,” he says. “Same leather sofa too. That thing’s older than some of our fans.”
When asked if they ever considered loading up a deluxe edition with demos, outtakes, or extended versions, Halstead shuts it down with a shrug: “We’ve always been overly curated. Even our first album, we didn’t want to include any EP tracks. Alan McGee had to beg us to put ‘Catch the Breeze’ on there.”
Still, there’s a lot in the vault — he admits he has old hard drives filled with unused ideas. “Most of them I forget even exist. Then the cables go missing, and that’s that.”
Despite the analog leanings, Halstead says working digitally has brought new advantages — especially for happy accidents. “Back in the ’90s, we had a song that ended up backwards on tape by mistake, and we liked it so much we built a track around it. Now you can do stuff like that on purpose.”
A track like “a life (a lily’s prime)” — a standout on everything is alive — had its own nonlinear origin. The lyrics were written by Halstead’s partner Ingrid, sung first as a demo at home, and later recorded by Rachel Goswell. “It’s a mood piece,” he says, with a story rooted in rivers — literal and emotional — from the town where he and Goswell grew up.
He also contributed music to Lily Gladstone’s 2022 film The Unknown Country after the director asked to use a couple of Slowdive tracks. “I ended up doing some scoring as well,” he says. “It’s not quite a documentary, not quite a scripted film. Lily’s acting, but she’s also just… being real. Beautiful cinematography too.”
He’s also got thoughts on that long-rumored Cure album. “We just did some shows with them. Nick’s our resident Cure expert — he always brings updates. I hope we hear it. The new songs they’re playing live are amazing.”
So what's next for Slowdive? Halstead won’t say. But he’s got the mood. He’s got the sketches. He’s got the hard drives (probably). And if nothing else, he’s got that old studio sofa — creaky, cracked, but still reliable.
Watch the interview above and then check out the video below.
