Slowdive may occupy an odd zone in the music industry, but they're in good company. Like Dinosaur Jr. and Pixies, Slowdive arrived during the golden age of alternative music, semi-chaotically broke up, reunited in the 21st century, and then stayed together.

During their time away, Slowdive's celestial, tempestuous brand of rock music had been codified as a genre unto itself: shoegaze. Which used to be a pejorative, and was now a badge of honor.

When they returned to the game in 2014 — thinking they'd play a festival or two — they realized the world was more primed than ever to embrace them.

"I think it took us a moment to feel like we're not just the heritage band," their founding guitarist and vocalist, Neil Halstead, admits to GRAMMY.com. "We felt a bit awkward... people wanted to hear songs that we wrote 20 years ago."

For a minute, Slowdive gracefully assumed the "heritage band" role, playing beloved oldies like "Catch the Breeze," "Machine Gun" and "Dagger" for old heads and a zealous new generation. Soon, they realized their creative synergy was intact: they could be not only back, but here.

In 2017, they dropped the acclaimed Slowdive; now, they're out with everything is alive, a continuation of their long-delayed evolution that hews closely to what made them special, with a few aesthetic twists.

Diaphanous tracks like "prayer remembered," "kisses" and "the slab" could have been released in 1993, but they sound right at home in 2023.

Read on for a full interview with Halstead about the journey to everything is alive and his ripening dynamic with vocalist Rachel Goswell, guitarist Christian Savill, bassist Nick Chaplin, and drummer Simon Scott.

*Slowdive (L-R, clockwise from bottom left: Neil Halstead, Simon Scott, Nick Chaplin, Christian Savill, Rachel Goswell)*

This interview has been edited for clarity.

**What was the germ of everything is alive? What did the band primarily wish to communicate?**

Approaching any record, I think you  just want to enjoy the creative process. You always hope that you're gonna try and do something a little different than maybe what you've done before.

When we decided we were going to do this record I brought a bunch of stuff in for the band — electronic music I'd been working on for a couple of years;' it was no guitars — just sort of modular and kind of synth bass, minimal electronic music.

The most important thing for me is that it's a valid creative exercise. That it's fun and it's enjoyable. I never really think about where it's going to end.

What's your relationship with electronic music been like over the years?

I suppose my interest in electronic music dates back to when we were doing [1995's] Pygmalion. Up to that point, I was an indie kid, into my guitar music and stuff.

I sort of started getting into more sort of techno — Aphex Twin, Warp Records, bands like LFO. Exploring stuff like John Cage, and Stockhausen, and that more experimental side of music, opens up all those areas.

In the last, I guess, 10 years, I've sort of got much more into modular kinds of systems. Which is just really good fun. I make a lot of music that doesn't really have any outlet, you know. I really just enjoy making it. It doesn't really involve guitars.

Slowdive's drummer, Simon [Scott], is in the U.S.; all his solo stuff is sort of field music, and much more ambient kind of bass music. It's kind of granular. He likes to really explore different textures.

I think there's always been a side side of Slowdive that is more interested in the instrumentals, rather than making songs — the side that enjoys just creating textures.

After Pygmalion, certainly, my interest was more electronic music, and then it reverted to acoustic music and folk music. [Electronic music] is certainly where my head's at these days. 

[everything is alive] was really enjoyable because it kind of brought those electronic things into Slowdive world as well.

Regarding modular synths, what are you nerding out about lately? It seems like it could be a bottomless rabbit hole.

Yeah, it's a bit like guitar pedals, because you can collect these things and continue to collect them. There are always new modules coming out.

It is a massive rabbit hole and a massive waste of money, but it keeps me entertained and happy. I can lose so much time just messing around with them, and then realize I haven't actually recorded anything.

But there's something quite nice about that as well. It's very in the moment; it's very present working with that kind of technology.

Souvlaki was released when I was a year old; you guys were barely in your twenties. How would you characterize your working relationship with Slowdive as grown-ups, without the rough edges of youth? It seems like it'd be much saner.

It's definitely less hysterical. You got it right with the rough edges of youth, but some of that angst was really helpful in creating music. Souvlaki, Just For a Day — it's kind of teenage music.

That was an important part of what we did. We wouldn't have made those records if we'd not been teenagers. So, it's a different thing now, trying to make Slowdive records.

I don't know if it's a more sane experience, but it's more measured. I couldn't really conceive of making a record like Pygmalion now, because to make that record, I almost had to alienate the rest of the band. No one else was really into electronic music; I had to force my hand with that.

To their credit, they let me do it, but I think it probably broke the band up; we split up after that record. I wouldn't want to put everyone in that position. Now, I'm much more willing to compromise, and they're much more willing to find a way through, where everyone's happy with the record.

Which is probably a better way to make Slowdive records, but it does mean it takes longer to make them.For it to go on a Slowdive record, everyone has to love it. That means you lose a lot of material [chuckles] but that's just the process.

How did the material germinate past the point of electronic experiments, and bloom into a proper Slowdive album?

Purely by just taking them to the band. A lot of them we would use as the basis for a track, so we'd literally have the band play along to what was there.

Then, we started taking bits and pieces out, and seeing what we were left with — thinking Well, maybe we can record this in a different way, you know. With every track, we would approach it quite organically and just see where it went.

Maybe we would try adding a few guitars, or maybe I'd just say to Simon, "Can you try drumming along to this one." And things started to take shape, where we were kind of like, OK, that sounds cool. That's kind of interesting.

For my part, I remained really detached from the original ideas, because it had to be a Slowdive record. So, everyone had to feel like they were part of the process.

Tell me about a part of everything is alive that benefited greatly from your bandmates' touch.

There are so many moments like that. "prayer remembered" was a really nice one. It was literally just this one arpeggiating synth that I played, that created the melody and the tune. I had Simon and [guitarist] Christian [Savill] play along to this thing.

Then, we took the original modular away from the track, which sort of left this space. Simon ended up taking some of Christian's guitars and feeding them through a Max patch system — you can granulate and change the sounds.

There's this kind of choral component that flips in and out, which is this Match patch stuff that Simon worked from. It's really lovely, and it adds so much to the track. 

When Simon figured out the drums for "the slab," that was a big moment for us. I think with the track "chained to a cloud," that was a big moment as well, because originally, that had a load of choruses. Once we took the choruses away, it really simplified the whole thing, and it became this very linear journey.

It's just little moments where suddenly, things start to make sense. You start to feel like the tracks are creating their own endpoints, as they go into their own special places.

Can you speak to the production aesthetic — how you wanted the sound to impact people?

We had Shawn Everett mix the record; I went out to L.A. to mix the record with Shawn. Having him take raw stems and make them fit together really well was a big moment for us.

It definitely brought a lot of attitude to the records, particularly in terms of the drums. Making them a bit dirtier sounding and stuff like that was really important to the finished record.

When Slowdive reunited in the 2010s, what was it like to see the aesthetic of Slowdive and your contemporaries become a lodestar to aspire to?

To be honest, I wasn't really aware that shoegaze had kind of become a thing. 

There was a moment in the early 2000s, when a German label did a compilation where they had all their bands do cover versions of Slowdive songs; it was an electronic label that you really wouldn't associate with guitar music at all. 

I remember hearing that and being like, Oh, this is kind of interesting! It was weird that they'd even heard of us, let alone decided to do a whole record of Slowdive songs, coming from a completely different genre.

But it wasn't until we got back together in 2014 [to play Primavera Sound in Barcelona that] we were like, "OK, maybe we could do that." We'd been seeing each other a little bit. It was quite good timing, in terms of people feeling like they could put in a bit of time and do a festival or two.

But once we started doing the festivals, and then a few shows of our own, we realized that this shoegaze thing had taken on its own life; a whole generation of kids had found this music through the internet. I wasn't aware of that until that point. I don't think anyone else in the band was either.

It's great that shoegaze has taken ahold of its own name, and affirmed that, in a way. When the term was coined, it was obviously not meant in a particularly nice way. It's great that that term has been regained, and it's a proper genre now, which I think is kind of cool.

My hunch is that neither Slowdive nor your contemporaries thought you were making any codified style of music. Rather, it seems like you all were just trying to make rock music with dreaminess and beauty to it.

I think you're right. Originally, it was just a bunch of bands that wanted to make guitar music that sounded different — that wasn't necessarily going to sound right on the radio.

That wasn't the thing anyone was really thinking about. It was more like, I want to make a record as beautiful as Cocteau Twins, or as massive-sounding as My Bloody Valentine, or as ridiculous as Loop.

I think they didn't just want to make a pop song that sounds decent on the radio. There was something else going on there.

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Indie band Mercury Rev have announced their next album, a tribute to Bobbie Gentry's The Delta Sweete Revisited, will be available on Feb. 8.

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The album features an array of guest voices. Mercury Rev's incredible selection of guest vocalists on the tracks kicks off with Norah Jones performing "Okolona River Bottom Band." Others lending their voices to the effort are Phoebe Bridgers, Vashti Bunyan, Rachel Goswell, Marissa Nadler, Beth Orton, Lætitia Sadier, Hope Sandoval, Kaela Sinclair, Susanne Sundfør, Carice van Houten, and Lucinda Williams, whose rendition of "Ode To Billie Joe" was added to the original album's tracklist.

"Bobbie is iconic, original, eloquent and timeless," said singer Margo Price, whose guest vocals are featured on "Sermon." "She has remained a strong voice and an eternal spirit of the delta, wrapped in mystery, yet forever here."

The Delta Sweete was Gentry's 1968 follow up to her debut Ode To Billie Joe, for which she won three GRAMMYs at the 10th GRAMMY Awards.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">NEWS: <a href="https://twitter.com/mercuryrevvd?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@mercuryrevvd</a> have announced the release of Bobbie Gentry’s The Delta Sweete Revisited! The album is a re-imagining of Bobbie Gentry’s forgotten masterpiece and features an incredible cast list of guest vocalists. More info here... <a href="https://t.co/ctfOtZ9kGb">https://t.co/ctfOtZ9kGb</a> <a href="https://t.co/TFfyaYdSVa">pic.twitter.com/TFfyaYdSVa</a></p>&mdash; bella union (@bellaunion) <a href="https://twitter.com/bellaunion/status/1062726053943300096?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 14, 2018</a></blockquote>

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For the full track list and additional details see Bella Union's announcement and Pitchfork. Mercury Rev recently concluded their 2018 U.S. tour and will be playing across Britain in Dec.

Lucinda Williams Plots 'Car Wheels On A Gravel Road' 20th Anniversary Tour

Next year, the Cure will celebrate 40 years as a band with a celebration concert at London's BST Hyde Park on July 7, 2018, and they're bringing along some very talented friends.

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Interpol, Goldfrapp, Slowdive, Editors, Twilight Sad, and Ride will join the Cure, along with additional performers to be announced at a later date, according to Rolling Stone.

Led by emotive frontman Robert Smith, the Cure have provided the soundtrack for a generation with their dreamy rock sound and impassioned, crafty songwriting. From the refreshingly melancholic anthems of the 1980s on such landmark albums as Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me and Disintegration, to their chart-topping GRAMMY-nominated 1992 album Wish, to their pair of solid releases in the 2000s, including 2004's The Cure and 2008's 4:13 Dream, the Cure have continued to influence new bands and win new fans. Last year, they played a string of U.S. tour dates and even debuted two new songs live in New Orleans.

Presale for the 40th-anniversary celebration show starts Dec. 12 with tickets going on-sale to the general public starting Dec. 15. More information is available via the Cure's website.

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Since Mike Piacentini’s switch from computer science to audio engineering in college, his family has been his biggest champions. So, when he received his nomination for Best Immersive Album for Madison Beer's pop album Silence Between Songs, at the 2024 GRAMMYs, it was a no-brainer to invite his parents and wife.

“He’s always been into music. He had his own band, so [the shift] wasn’t surprising at all,” Piacentini’s mother says in the newest episode of Family Matters. “He’s very talented. I knew one day he would be here. It’s great to see it actually happen.”

In homage to his parents’ support, Piacentini offered to let his father write a short but simple acceptance in case he won: “Thank you, Mom and Dad,” he jokes.

Alongside his blood relatives, Piacentini also had support from his colleague Sean Brennan. "It's a tremendous honor, especially to be here with [Piacentini]. We work day in and day out in the studio," Brennan explains. "He's someone who's always there."

Press play on the video above to learn more about Mike Piacentini's support system, and remember to check back to GRAMMY.com for more new episodes of Family Matters.

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It's fair to say that the 1980s hadn't been particularly kind to country legend Johnny Cash. Once considered the Don of the Nashville scene, the singer/songwriter suddenly found himself dropped by Columbia Records, recording terrible parody songs (remember "The Chicken in Black"?), and addicted to painkillers after a bizarre accident in which he was kicked by an ostrich.

But as the new decade approached, Cash's reputation gradually started to recover. A 1988 tribute album, 'Til Things Are Brighter, alerted a much younger indie generation of his catalog of classics. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992. And then arguably the biggest band in the world at the time, U2, invited him to take lead vocals on Zooropa's post-apocalyptic closer "The Wanderer." The scene was set for a triumphant comeback, and on 1994's American Recordings, the Man in Black duly obliged.

The Rick Rubin-produced album was far from a one-off. Cash delivered three American follow-ups in his lifetime (1996's Unchained, 2000's Solitary Man, and 2002's The Man Comes Around). And two posthumous volumes (2006's A Hundred Highways, 2010's Ain't No Grave)  further bridged the gap between his statuses as country outlaw and elder statesman — and helped further his legacy as one of country's all-time greats.

As the first American Recordings installment celebrates its 30th anniversary, here's a look at how the series deservedly rejuvenated the career of an American recording legend.

It United Him With A New Muse 

Best known for his pioneering work with Run-D.M.C., Beastie Boys, and Public Enemy, Rick Rubin seemed an unusual fit for a sixty-something country singer whose glory days were considered decades behind him. But left spellbound by Cash's performance at a Bob Dylan anniversary gig in 1992, the superproducer offered to make the Nashville legend a superstar once more.

Cash took some persuading, but eventually agreed to join forces on the assurance he'd be in the creative driving seat, and a new unlikely dream team was born. Rubin lent his talents to all six volumes of American Recordings — co-producing the middle two with Cash's son John Carter Cash – and won the first GRAMMY of his career for his efforts. The Def Jam co-founder would also later work his magic with several other '60s heroes including Neil Diamond, Yusuf and Neil Young.

It Saw Cash Lean Into Contemporary Music More Than Ever

Cash had never been averse to tackling contemporary material. He covered Bruce Springsteen's "Highway Patrolman" in 1983, just a year after it appeared on The Boss' Nebraska. But the American Recordings series saw the Man in Black embrace the sounds du jour like never before, whether the grunge of Soundgarden's "Rusty Cage," electro-blues of Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus," or most famously, industrial rock of Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt."

On paper, this could have been nothing short of a disaster, the sign of an aging artist desperately latching onto a much younger musical generation in a transparent bid for relevancy. But instead, Cash elevates the Gen X classics into modern hymns, his sonorous voice injecting a sense of gravitas and Rubin's production stripping things back to their bare but compelling essentials. Far from an embarrassing grandad act, this was the sound of a man respectfully making the source material his own.

It Returned Cash To The Charts 

Cash had reached the lower end of the Billboard 200 in the '80s as part of supergroups The Highwaymen and Class of '55. But you had to go all the way back to 1976's One Piece at a Time to find his last entry as a solo artist. The American Recordings series, however, slowly but surely restored the Man in Black to his former chart glories.

Indeed, while its first two volumes charted at numbers 110 and 170 respectively, the third peaked at a slightly more impressive 88 and the fourth at 22, his highest position since 1970's Hello, I'm Johnny Cash. The posthumous fifth entry, meanwhile, went all the way to No. 1, remarkably the first time ever the country legend had achieved such a feat with a studio effort (live album At San Quentin had previously topped the charts in 1971).

"Hurt" also became Cash's first solo US country hit in 14 years in 2003. And while it only landed at No. 56 on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart, it remains Cash's most-streamed song to date with over 600 million streams on Spotify alone.

It Included Masterful Collaborators 

As well as handing over the producer reins to Rubin, Cash also surrounded himself with some of the rock world's finest musicians. Tom Petty, Red Hot Chili Peppers' Flea, and Fleetwood Mac's Lindsey Buckingham and Mick Fleetwood all lent their considerable talents to Unchained. Sheryl Crow and Will Oldham did the same on Solitary Man, while Nick Cave, Fiona Apple and Don Henley joined him in the studio on The Man Comes Around.

But Cash also kept things more traditional by recruiting fellow country legend Merle Haggard, 'fifth Beatle'Billy Preston, and "Ballad of a Teenage Queen" songwriter Jack Clement, while the presence of wifeJune Carter Cash and son John made the third American Recordings something of a family affair.

It Went Back To Basics 

While American Recordings was, in many respects, Cash's most forward-thinking album, it wasn't afraid to keep one foot in the past, either. For one, the star recorded most of its first volume in his Tennessee cabin armed with only a guitar, a throwback to his 1950s beginnings with first producer Sam Phillips.

Cash also trawled through his own back catalog for inspiration, re-recording several tracks he believed had unfairly gone under the radar including 1955 single "Mean Eyed Cat," murder ballad "Delia's Gone" from 1962's The Sound of Johnny Cash, and "I'm Leaving Now" from 1985's Rainbow.

It Proved He Was Still A Masterful Songwriter…

Although Cash's unlikely covers grabbed most of the attention, the American Recordings series showed that his stellar songwriting skills remained intact throughout his later years, too. "Meet Me in Heaven," for example, is a beautifully poignant tribute to the older brother who died at just 15, while the folksy "Let the Train Blow the Whistle" added to Cash's arsenal of railroad anthems.

"Drive On," meanwhile, is worthy of gracing any Best Of compilation, a powerful lament to those who came back from the Vietnam War with both emotional and physical scars ("And even now, every time I dream/ I hear the men and the monkeys in the jungle scream").

…And Still A Master Interpreter 

As well as putting new spins on his own songs and various contemporary rock favorites, Cash further displayed both his interpretive and curatorial skills by covering a variety of spirituals, standards and pop hits first released during his commercial heyday.

The likes of early 19th century gospel "Wayfaring Stranger," wartime favorite "We'll Meet Again," and Simon and Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water" may have been firmly in Cash's wheelhouse. But more leftfield choices such as Loudon Wainwright III's offbeat morality tale "The Man Who Couldn't Cry" proved that even when outside his comfort zone, he could stamp his own identity with aplomb.

It Made Him An Unlikely MTV Star 

Cash was 62 years old when American Recordings hit the shelves — not exactly a prime age for MTV play. Yet thanks to some inspired creative decisions, the career-reviving series spawned two videos that received regular rotation on the network. Firstly, "Delia's Gone" caught attention for two major reasons: it was directed by Anton Corbijn, the man renowned for his long-running creative partnership with Depeche Mode, and it starred Kate Moss, the world's biggest supermodel at the time, as the titular victim.  

Then nine years later, Cash picked up six nominations — winning Best Cinematography — at the MTV Video Music Awards thanks to Mark Romanek's emotionally devastating treatment for "Hurt." Interspersing clips of the clearly fragile country singer at the rundown Museum of Cash with footage from his earlier days and artistic shots of decaying fruits and flowers, the promo perfectly embodied the transient nature of life. And it had the capacity to reduce even the hardest of hearts to tears.

It Added To His GRAMMY Haul 

Cash won almost as many GRAMMYs with his American Recordings series as he had during the previous 40 years of his career. The Man in Black first added to his trophy collection in 1995 when the first volume won Best Contemporary Folk Album. This was the first time he'd been recognized at the ceremony for his musical talents since the June Carter Cash duet "If I Were A Carpenter" won Best Country Performance for a Duo or Group with Vocal back in 1971  

Three years later, Unchained was crowned Best Country Album. And after picking up a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999, Cash won 2001's Best Male Country Vocal Performance for "Solitary Man," then again in the same Category for "Give My Love to Rose"in 2003. He posthumously won two more GRAMMYs for Best Short Form Video, in 2004 for "Hurt" and in 2008 for "God's Gonna Cut You Down." In total, the American Recordings series won Cash six more GRAMMYs, bringing his overall count to 13. 

It Was A Powerful Epitaph

In 1997, Cash was told he'd just 18 months to live after being misdiagnosed with neurodegenerative condition Shy-Drager syndrome (later changed to autonomic neuropathy). He ended up outliving this prognosis by a good four years, but during this period, he lost the love of his life and was forced to record his swansong in-between lengthy stints in the hospital.  

Little wonder, therefore, that the American Recordings series is defined by the theme of mortality: see "The Man Comes Around," a biblical ode to the Grim Reaper ("And I looked, and behold a pale horse/ And his name that sat on him was death, and hell followed with him"), Death Row anthem "The Mercy Seat," and funeral favorite "Danny Boy." As with David Bowie's Blackstar, Cash was able to reflect on his impermanence in his own terms in a sobering, yet compelling manner that continues to resonate decades on. 

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