Neil Halstead, singer/songwriter behind the bands Slowdive and Mojave 3, will stop by the WUTC studios on Monday July 15th at 2:00pm for an interview with Richard Winham.Chattanooga, TN – Rising to the fore as one fifth of Slowdive before going on to form his current band, Mojave 3, Neil recorded his first solo album last summer back at his Cornish retreat (while the band took a break from their gruelling schedule). Whether intentional or not, Neil pieced together an album that captured the mood perfectly and got the critics raving. All nine tracks shone with a laid back quality that helped confirm not only Neil's songwriting prowess but also his place on the musical map.
Time Out has called Neil Halstead "one of Britain's greatest songwriters"; NME said he wrote "the kind of honest, heartfelt love songs men are too scared or too cool to write these days". The six albums he has made - three apiece with Slowdive and Mojave 3 - have been universally hailed as "sublime". Two years in the making, Sleeping On Roads is the singer-writer-guitar player's debut solo record.
Sleeping On Roads retains Halstead's trademark mix of exquisite, quasi-folk melodies and fragile, intimate vocals - he's one of the very few singer-writers who actually deserves the Nick Drake comparisons - but this time they're intricately wedded to gently swaying rhythms and an atmospheric groove. "With this record in many ways I was trying to get away from song structures a little bit in terms of it being just verses and choruses. I was more interested in the way the record *sounded*."
" With Mojave, we sit in a room and play the songs, we don't spend a lot of time thinking 'What can we do production-wise to make this sound really different?' I wanted to take the songs and make them into something a little more rhythmic. I liked the idea of doing something like Bert Jansch - sort of folk songs. but recording them in a more Spiritualised sort of way."
Neil will stop by the WUTC studios for an interview with Richard Winham on Monday 15th at 2:00pm, be sure to listen. Also, check out Neil's debut solo album 'Sleeping On Roads' on 4ad records. See the WUTC events calender for Neils's shows in the region.