Slowdive @ Albert Hall, Manchester, 10 Oct

In our age of ‘retro’ obsessiveness, you need a clear head and a steady aim to defeat nostalgia. Against the flimsy utopia of ‘then’, poor old ‘now’ withers as we fawn over the tastefully aged and distressed. If the artists we mooned over when we could only just feed ourselves deserve our love now that we can barely manage the mortgage and get the kids to school on time, they really need to take their worn DM’s to the past’s allegedly rosy glow.

Slowdive, more than perhaps any re-emerging survivor of the early 90s Brit indie scene, have caught the bouquets and dodged the brickbats. During their short-lived heyday, when every gushing Melody Maker piece celebrating ‘The Scene That Celebrates Itself’ became diluted with bitter rejoinders from other sections of the press, you could forgive the Reading five-piece for feeling confused. 'They say we’re great!' 'Oh, hang on – no, we’re not...'

God only knows what they made of the critical re-evaluation, two decades on, that saw a host of savvy acts namecheck them for their legwork and hold up their 1993 second album Souvlaki as an under-appreciated masterpiece. Still, here they are, three years after reforming, with an album – Slowdive – worthy of their legacy and a live show that ups the production values but maintains the irrefutable force of their original performances.

Like their peers Lush (who managed one year back in the limelight before realising that being in a band is actually nowhere near as much fun as it should be), Slowdive were always a deeply capable live act. Their 2017 variant benefits from a stealthy re-introduction: on-and-off touring while piecing together enough new material to eventually justify these high profile headline shows.  

The Albert Hall bulges tonight: this is Slowdive’s biggest Manchester show by some distance. The band matches the crowd’s generosity: five songs in and we’ve already had Slowdive (that mournful, droning intro forever a wonder), Catch the Breeze and a bruising Crazy For You. Star Roving, the epic trailer for the new album, signals a gear shift and bridges into an atmospheric mid-section that includes Souvlaki Space Station, Avalyn and Don’t Know Why, and (via song selection that ultimately works as crafty sleight of hand) overtures the main set’s devastating final third. 

As Neil Halstead teases out the intro to When the Sun Hits, Manchester roars. Its hook, a peerless showcase for Halstead and Rachel Goswell’s harmonies, is dark magic once again. Alison. Sugar For the Pill. Golden Hair, opened out to a heart-seizing ten minutes, closes the main set, its booming crescendo an intense, riveting confirmation that the middle-aged Slowdive play with even more fire than their teen equivalent did. 

A three-song-encore nixes the accepted wisdom that the Slowdive palette was restricted to a single hue. The clean lines of No Longer Making Time make way for a closing brace from Souvlaki. The delicate Dagger and a pounding, exultant 40 Days have developed a weathered toughness with time. Written by Halstead in isolation after he and Goswell split all those years ago, the songs are a compelling reminder of the deep-seated soulfulness of an act too often written off as texture-obsessed tinkerers, too easily dismissed as sonic sculptors.

The pair sing them together – and their bandmates support them – with commitment, and with love. Tonight, in a performance that lets the songs breathe and the musicians play with a thrilling freedom, Slowdive set a course for something that looks suspiciously like the(ir) future.