Slowdive - Sugar for the pill

It's amazing that 22 years after their separation, Slowdive managed to create such beautiful compositions that kept intact the core of the band while also showing that they matured on all those years apart. Sugar For The Pill is a soft shoegaze ballad that deals with a fading love story, rich in textures and dreamy ambiences, showing that they hadn't lost the smart writing and the perfect execution.

What surprises in Sugar of the Pill is the pop structure it gets, something that the band heavily avoided in the past, but the chorus, far from damaging it, gives it cadence and elegance, because a song that constricts emotions as much as this one, could have easily headed towards flatness, so when they realize that love is going nowhere, they are able to let it go in a mature way, stripped from resent or bitterness, and still holding our full attention.

Perhaps our biggest fear when a band has parted way might not be that they'll never gather again, but that they make a reunion for the money that will blur their legacy. But Slowdive sets the bar high by saying us that is not only possible to come back, you can add graceful new life to a cult band at crafting something that feels familiar and innovative. If those 22 years without them were the pill, this track is the sugar that calms our need to keep intact the heaven of shoegaze bands.