This Is Not a Safe Place (2019), Ride
What happens when seashell resonance is run through Trent Reznor’s spookiest effects unit, guitar tremolo is passed through blown speakers, bass buzz and kick drum burst your eardrums, and grandpa tries-real-hard to relive The Glory Days but also strongly insists that he’s not? You get a track called “R.I.D.E” by the band Ride that features a woman occasionally whispering the word “ride” meaning we are three levels of “ride” deep into an incantation meant to summon something that died in the mid ‘90s, and what we got instead was Ride’s 2019 album “This Is Not a Safe Place” and a bolt to the brain.
Ride, sometimes stylized as RIDE, or as seen on the album art as “RIDE ///” (the slashes representing the historical hobo graffiti meme used to indicate an “unsafe place,” reinforcing that this album Is, in fact, Not a Safe Place), is composed of five parts return-to-form and seven parts annoying-and-repetitive, which is unwittingly acknowledged by the band on their electronically-tinged Devo-like “Repetition,” in which the title is chanted in a fraternity-hazing interrupted only by verses analyzing how “repetition is a form of change,” a line spoken by the ambient pioneer Brian Eno which is either Too Smart or Too Stupid for this writer’s small brain. One can’t help but think this track, with references to Jean-Michel Basquiat (‘80s neo-expressionist graffiti artist), is a callback to the hobo-graffiti trope but also a statement on the band’s experimentation with new styles across the album.
Unfortunately for Ride, there is no causal link between “new styles” and “worth listening to,” and the whole package is an immature reminder of that one time I did mushrooms in college with my friend and he insisted that he urinated himself but his pants were completely dry, much like the majority of this record.
I’m probably being too harsh, but that’s only because “This Is Not a Safe Place” is a frustrating experience. On one hand, it contains at least two of Ride’s Best Tracks Ever. On the other hand, it’s a collection of sterile potions brewed using a mixture of Nine Inch Nails’ 1994 “Downward Spiral,” Sonic Youth’s 1987 “Sister,” and grape cough syrup (the really gross non-children-kind that doesn’t even get you drunk).
But let’s try to stay positive.
From a single opening strum that invokes Yes’ genius minimalist build-up before the gut-punch “Roundabout,” Ride’s “Future Love” shows that they are still a force to be reckoned with. The jangling, dream essence which produced 1991’s “Vapour Trail” is still there and emerges with renewed vigor in one of the most infectious lead guitar lines to ever grace the world of shoegaze, all backed with a dreamy fuzz that makes it sound like Really Fast Birds zipping through Dark Storm Clouds leaving only Sunlight in their wake. You could strip the entire track down to only the lead guitar and still have a song that, according to Last.fm, I have listened to 43 times within the last week.
“Future Love” is Ride throwing their dedicated fans a bone that perfectly captures what made Ride a standout band among the litter of ’90s shoegaze copy-cats: the ability to successfully run hyper-melodic jangle pop through a vacuum cleaner. If you take anything away from this article, hopefully, it’s the immediate urge to listen to “Future Love” and discover a sliver of lost Arcadia in music.
“Clouds of Saint Marie” and “Jump Jet” are close spiritual successors, channeling that same floaty “Nowhere” energy but favoring prettiness and repetition (there’s that word again) over hooks. All three “shoegaze-revival” tracks must have been challenging for Ride to produce, as the often forced need to change the formula is present throughout the album, and all three songs very much “don’t fuck with the formula,” as famed Beach Boy Mike Love once said to a very mentally-ill Brian Wilson. One could describe these tracks as cash grabs capitalizing on ‘90s nostalgia, and that may or may not be the case, but Ride manages to relive their Glory Days better than most, and the result is some of their best music ever.
Andy Bell sings “you can’t go back in time” on the Sonic-Youthian “Fifteen Minutes,” which is ironic considering Ride has already shown us that they can time-travel, at least sonically, and do it very well.
Yet, “Fifteen Minutes” covers completely new ground with an oddly tuned, sharp chord progression that accentuates vocals exuding an apathy-so-cool that makes you want to be the one behind the microphone. “Fifteen Minutes” is easily the most aurally interesting track on the record, mixing classic fuzz in the chorus over lyrics that read and sound like Dad telling you that you’ve done “something totally fucked” and “you’ve got to live with it,” making you wonder what Andy Bell is even talking about; what happened?
“Fifteen Minutes” is one of two Golden Greats, a hook line and sinker leaving you wanting more, which we do get with the precursor track “Kill Switch,” sung in the same apathetic cadence but not as melodically powerful and more (again) repetitive, with a chorus that repeats the line “hit the kill switch” and makes me want to, literally, hit the kill switch.
“This Is Not A Safe Place” ends with the somber “In This Room,” one of the floatier, ambient tracks on the album that manages to reign in the noise just enough to sound heavy and soft simultaneously. “In This Room” is a highlight that not only highlights the depressing reality that this album only contains five songs worth listening to but also Ride’s ability to weave catchy pop melodies into this depressing reality where the landscapes often favors texture over Real Song Stuff.
Imagine that you hate the rain. Now, imagine that you live in Sequim, Washington, where there are 143 rainy days a year. The rain keeps you inside, which Is Not a Safe Place, leaving you alone with your thoughts and all the doomed fiction that goes along with that. This is a place where there’s so much rain that the sunny days feel like Heaven on Earth.
That’s “This Is Not a Safe Place,” stingy like the weather in Sequim, but when the sun shines, damn, it’s bright.
