Backwards guitar! Swirling sounds! Youth and energy, supposedly! And some not bad drums at that. See, this is all good.
At least it especially was to me at the time -- as I mentioned in my earlier Ride piece, they were one of my all-time fave great bands in them early nineties days, and while they turned classic rock and crap with alarming alacrity, at the start they were grooving on far more interesting touchstones and deciding to see what could happen. The scope may have comparatively limited -- how much distance is there between the Jesus and Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine, one can argue -- but what was neat was giving it a sex appeal dollop, to the point where the words "Mark Gardener" and "luscious, pouting" could never be seen out of the context of each other.
I think Simon Reynolds, who liked them not at all, made a general comparison/division between the thug life of Happy Mondays et al and the more middle-class pale and interesting aspirations of the post-MBV crowd that Ride found themselves in for a variety of different reasons. Well, I've heard weirder. Maybe he was even right. Strip away the attempt at general explication and you've got a remarkably good post-everything at the time record.
"Seagull" and "Kaleidoscope" both had a great rush to them, a nice way around stop-start, harmonies and effects pedals and everything like that. I think it was "In a Different Place" which really signaled that something was afoot, though, the way it has a very slow build, Mark's 'lo, I am blank and you are too and ain't it great' lyric and singing, it's a very comforting way around personal apocalypse, and the way it ends is just gorgeous. Just not as gorgeous as "Polar Bear," which redefines tremolo action in the simplest of ways, a little bit of Kraftwerk's maximal minimalism on guitar (and they would know, seeing as they ended up covering "The Model" a year or two later).
And from there, on. "Dreams Burn Down" has the closest the band would ever get to an epic Jane's Addiction/Led Zeppelin whomp to it, and does pretty good at that, lines about being "effortlessly cool" and "filling the gaps in our empty little lives," "Decay" and "Paralyzed" frazzle out in their own ways, and at times rather prettily at that, and the American edition tacked on various EP tracks like "Taste," all explosive rush and gorgeous vocals, and "Nowhere" itself, actually a pretty intense zoneout.
And then there's "Vapour Trail," which is perhaps the greatest straight up pop song from the whole shoegaze experience, a lovely chiming guitar line start, a neat opening bit -- "First you look so strong, then you fade away" -- and off we go, over and over and again aiming for that just-over-the-horizon final blissout, until it's nothing but a simple string arrangement, one last flourish, and that's that. SIGH.