MOJAVE (SINGLE OF THE WEEK)
3 - Who Do You Love (4AD)
The first in our series of 'Where are they
now, so we can still tease them mercilessly and
chase them down the street with sticks after all
these years?' shoegazing revival reviews (see
also Swervedriver) finds Neil Halstead and Rachel
Gosling, once of Slowdive, involved in a quite
shockingly fine record. The chief reason for this
is that they've written songs rather than a
series of 'soundscapes' with vague sentiments
about drowning in the sky. 'Who Do You Love' is
the kind of honest, heartfelt, laid-bare love
song men are too scared or too cool to write
these days, romantic without being sentimental,
unafraid to be plain-spoken and emotional.
It's like sonic cathedrals never happened -
an acoustic guitar surrounded by lazy organ and a
distant trumpet. And then, almost as good is
'This Road I'm Travelling' which is truly
sublime, all country-inflected harmonies and hazy
sunset acoustics like Nick Drake on holiday in
New Mexico. OK, then, we forgive you. Just this
once.
Johnny Cigarettes
MOJAVE 3 - Some
Kinda Angel (4AD)
Kinda, hey, y'know, kinda, well, kinda...
dull, is probably the word we're after, fine for
brown corduroy fetishists who chew tobacco, but a
step too far in the direction of earnest country
rock for anyone else. This is the humourless big
brother to Delakota's buoyant, bubble-gum card
collecting fascination with the USofA, a song
that aims for a romantically dusty Three Dog
Night vibe and ends up merely dusty, more
car-boot sale than road movie. It's got all there
should be - brass and Hammond organ and
references to moonshine - but unless you secretly
dream of being friends with the characters in The
Big Chill, you'll find yourself slowly slipping
into sleep.
Victoria Segal
MOJAVE 3 - Out Of Tune (4 AD)
OLD SHOEGAZERS NEVER DIE, THEY JUST GET
progressively more down-at-heel. And so the
scuffed-out career of Mojave 3 (ex-Slowdive, but
don't hold that against them forever) is getting
more interesting by the day.
Because this, their second album, is
quietly cool. Nine tastefully clipped tunes, less
than 40 minutes altogether. A bit of strumming,
some bleary, countrified licks and a facility for
framing the saddest of times.
Plainly, Mojave 3 know their Dylan and
their Nick Drake - 'All Your Tears' and 'To Whom
Should I Write' reek heavily of the latter - and,
accordingly, 'Out Of Tune' is one thin-lipped,
introverted and desperately blue album.
The lap steels may swoon and the harmonies
may be high and lonesome - evoking a 4am
Nashville skyline - but their author Neil
Halstead remains a morose English boy through and
through. Highlight 'Caught Beneath Your Heel'
catches him in a romantic bind, trying to restore
some personal dignity as organs wheeze plenty and
the hard questions stay unanswered.
And when Rachel Goswell lends her voice to
proceedings, the woozy, lovesick mood is only
heightened. On 'Baby's Coming Home', she and
Halstead bend and bewail like the indie answer to
George Jones and Tammy Wynette.
The recent single 'Some Kinda Angel' - an
enthused homage to Dylan's 'Visions Of Johanna' -
provides a momentary escape from the doleful
business at hand, but in the main, 'Out Of Tune'
is a beautifully downcast affair. With 3, of
course, as the tragic number. 7/10
Stuart Bailie
Mojave 3 - Out of tune
(4AD/MNW) Country/Rock
This is really not possible.
Gloomy brits, with a background in
goth-constellations as Slowdive, shall not be
doing soft, warm, sincere country- and folkrock
that makes the world think about a desillusioned
Nick Drake, travelling through that part of
America where Gram Parsonīs hickory wind still
blows through the fields.
But Neil Halstead and the others in Mojave
3 has done it anyway. Confusing. But nonetheless
less convincing.
On this album, there are songs that makes
me reconsider my list of the best albums of the
year.
Per Bjurman
New Musical Express (UK) 15 July 1998 p36
MOJAVE 3 live review
LONDON King's Cross Water Rats
For Mojave 3's Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell, sonic experimentation is
nothing new. Their first incarnation as Slowdive saw them dabbling with hazy
atmospherics before venturing, less successfully, into ambient electronica.
Now, with new single 'Who Do You Love', they turn up a more traditional card
with floaty multi-layered harmonies and somnolent strummings.
Although vaguely reminiscent of the footware-ogling days of yore, the emphasis
has shifted from feedback to emotionally-charged, pastoral semi-acoustics.
To contribute a melancholic country-tinged twang to the proceedings, they've
even recuited steel pedal guitarist BJ Cole, who ambles in halfway through the
lovely 'Baby's Coming Home'. As it ends, Halstead spots Bernard Butler in the
front row and smiles. Welcome to Mojave 3. Not so much shoe-gazing as star-
gazing.
April Long
NME 24 October 1998
Mojave 3
London Highbury Garage
It's a dry, long and dusty road from Reading via Slowdive, to this
roadhouse in north London. Along the way, some eminent hitchhikers have shared
bourbon with Neil Halstead and Rachel Gosling in the back of their
Cadillac: Nick Drake, the Eagles, Gram Parsons, maybe even a stray hobo Bee Gee
or two.
Tonight Mojave 3 can't help but enchant with their dubious eclecticism.
It's only mid-evening yet it's already that golden hour after intoxication
but before the guilt and regret that inevitably follow. With a bad liver
and a broken heart Neil regales us with 'Yer Feet' and 'All your Tears',
tales of troubled love which fall from a desert's indigo sky. These are
entirely convincing and elegant songs, thousands of intersections ahead of
the more studious and practiced pastiche of some of their contemporaries.
With the air miles provided by his record collection, Halstead ruefully
travels across a musical geography resplendent in the colour and tone
gleaned from his heroes.
Pedal-steel guitar hero and recent Verve recruit BJ Cole thumbs a ride
halfway through tonight's set, blending in comfortably, without the aplomb
and bombast of Ashcroft and co. A slow-down rather than a showdown, then.
Meet the grown-up Gomez.
Neil Thomson
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