Search - Ride :: Ox4 the Best of Ride (Bonus CD)

A solid best of a band that people seem to have forgotten...

Jason Parkes | Worcester, UK | 07/30/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"OX4 is a fairly standard best of Ride- taking in all the singles, alongside a few choice album tracks (Vapour Trail, OX4, From Time to Time); this version comes with a pleasant four-track bonus from the Firing Blanks-collection found on 2001's Box-Set. The first seven tracks show the arrival & development of Ride from 1989's Ride ep to 1991's Today Forever ep. Here the band were a slightly more poppy advance on The House of Love & MBV- opening track Chelsea Girl is filled with euphoria and reasonably could be described as MBV do Buffalo Springfield. The feedback wasn't far away & was evident on early classic Drive Blind- a blend of MaryChain/MBV feedback, a monster Black Sabbath riff, lyrics redolent of Kraftwerk's Autobahn, the controlled maelstrom of Joy Division, & even a hint of StatusQuo's psychedelic classic Pictures of Matchstick Men! Unbelievable that two-thirds of the band were still in their teens!- in the UK, Ride had a definite buzz- which was advanced on with the Play ep, from which Like a Daydream stems. Here Ride aligned themselves with Eight Miles High-era Husker Du & Younger Than Yesterday-Byrds: perfect tight feedback drenched pop! Their final ep release of 1990 was Fall, which preceded debut LP Nowhere, & from which we have two tracks, jangly-lead track Taste & the epic-sonicdowner that was Dreams Burn Down (which also turned up on the debut). DBD offers up a LedZep'Levee Breaks'-style drumbeat and instead of a chorus, descended into further Sonic Youth-inflected guitar assaults. But for anyone who doubts the quality of the song- check out the new version released by Mark Gardener&Goldrush on this months'Falling Out Into the Night'ep on Truck Records! Even better is Bell's euphoric Vapour Trail, which used a string-section to great effect and is one of the great "La,la,la" songs! 1991 saw Ride return, this time surrounded by the shoegazing scene the media had created around bands like Chapterhouse, Lush & Slowdive. To be fair, the Today Forever ep was patchy- its best track Sennen would have been preferable (& Gardener would perfect the kind of song Unfamiliar would be on 94's From Time to Time- also included here). Ride then went off & got to work on their more experimental second album- from which brilliant bonus track Tongue Tied emanated. How could this not have made the cut!!! Leave Them All Behind was Ride's biggest UK hit, which is odd for a track infuenced by The Who's Baba O'Riley & The Cure's Disintegration-era & goes further out there, beyond the 9-minute mark with definitive waves of feedback! Second album Going Blank Again (1992) also saw them become outwardly more pop- especially on the lovely melancholy of Twisterella, which easily ranks next to The Cure's Friday I'm in Love! There is also a truncated take of OX4- the intro nixed due to time constraints- which is still a lovely song & captures a seeming awareness within euphoria & hedonism...Too much touring lead to the atypical 'difficult third album'- Ride popping up in 1993 to tour with The Charlatans- the new Waves-collection shows some of the work in progress, offering far superior takes of tracks that would surface on Carnival of Light. Birdman is still quite wonderful- if very derivative- & less appealing than the more minimally produced version on Waves. Gardener/Queralt's From Time to Time was one of the key tracks from the album- like Only Now a highlight from the stronger first half. How Does it Feel to Feel? sounds like a screaming b-side, while I Don't Know Where It Comes From (with You Can't Always Get What You Want intro removed- thank god!) is an example of why Britpop was generally dire and for the most part pointless retro. It's a pity that Ride got lost in epic productions and retro sounds- as the demo of Something's Burning shows here, the band from the early eps still existed!Tensions in the band and the success of Oasis eclipsed them as Creation's biggest band lead to the dull Dylan-inspired Tarantula (1996)- which saw Andy Bell, Ride's weakest lyricist and singer take control. The sole track from this is single Black Nite Crash, which is actually quite good- somewhere between Highway61 Revisited & Julian Cope's Spacehopper. Pity other tracks from this era aren't featured- notably Deep Inside My Pocket, Nothing Lasts Forever, Ride the Wind & Slave. This collection is very good- though I think that the bonus CD could have been a bit longer; tracks like Blue, Everybody Knows &King Bull**** would have been preferable to the average She's So Fine! But Ox4 is a reminder of what a great band Ride were- though longtime fans will probably prefer the 2001 reissues/boxset (with many extra-tracks/alt-versions) & 2003's collection of BBC Sessions, Waves. Ride kind of reformed earlier this year- MG with Andy Bell (now in Oasis/Sweden) & Loz Colbert (who was also in the dire Animal House with MG) got together in Oxford to play together. Not sure if they'll reform properly- the state of the UK music scene is probably not healthy enough for them to return & they appear to have been written out of recent music history- gone blank again between MBV and Radiohead? The new solo material from Mark Gardener with Goldrush is as great- upcoming live eps will see further reworkings of Ride classics, as well as great new songs like Snow in Mexico & Time. So, Ride fans have something to look forward to, as well as back to!"