At the end of the summer, reunited UK favorites of Ride will release their new album, This Is Not a Safe Place. Their sixth full-length record overall is due out on August 16th, and today the pioneering shoegazers have dropped its second song, “Repetition”.
Following up lead single “Future Love”, which got a voyeuristic music video back in May, “Repetition” takes a semi-philosophical approach in examining change and routine. Layered over distorted guitar and dramatic swells, the dream-pop band advises, “It’s funny, people hate you to change/ They want you just to repeat and stay the same, same, same/ Even though repetition is a form of change.”
(Read: 10 Other Shoegaze Bands You Should Know)
As lead singer Andy Bell noted in a statement,
“I haven’t got tired yet of blasting this track. ‘Repetition’ is at the absolute heart of This Is Not A Safe Place. It was one of the very first songs written for the album and has always felt to me like one of the best songs I’ve written. It has a great dual harmony vocal from myself and Mark. Steve came up with the brilliant Juno 6 bassline that starts the song, which he overdubbed on our last day of recording for the album. Loz puts down a monster of a drum track. It’s both very experimental and very pop in approach, and that’s what Ride always tried to do in the early days. For me, it succeeds in bringing me back to all of the things we were into and talked about when we were 18, but also being of the moment, in 2019.”
Hear Ride’s “Repetition” below.
After This Is Not a Safe Place drops next month, Ride will embark on a 21-date US tour across September and October. The group also plans to play a series of UK shows from the end of November through December. Get tickets to all their upcoming gigs here.