Album Review: Ride – This Is Not A Safe Place

Oh Ride. Hard to think of another band who went so high (Nowhere) only to sink so low (*shudder* Tarantula). After that unmitigated disaster in ’96, the group broke up, laying low for 20 years before stoking the embers with Weather Diaries, produced by Erol Alkan of all people. It came and went and really only served to introduce the band to a new crowd and lead them by the nose back to Nowhere, an unimpeachable masterpiece. 

And so, we come to This Is Not A Safe Place, an album shot out of a cannon onto a wall, creating a bit of a mess, Jackson Pollock style. It flippantly drifts from brittle early '00s electro/guitar-pop (Repetition, sounding like it belongs with Gruff Rhys’ Neon Neon project), chillwave (Future Love), to bombastic “hard edge” dirges like Kill Switch, and slides towards more familiar Ride territory with the gorgeous Clouds Of Saint Marie, a pillowy delight just before the halfway mark.

The strong, MBV-indebted Eternal Recurrence makes an impression, but then the record loses steam, limping to the finish, with a brooding collection of closing tracks shuffling off into oblivion. 

Look, we love that Ride is still kicking, but this is surely their last with Alkan. His fingerprints are all over their material, and it’s just not a good match.