Wine and Cheese: Slowdive and Fleetwood Mac
Combining Fleetwood Mac’s liberated sounds with Slowdive’s tearjerkers makes for the perfect post-heartbreak listening experience.
It’s your dream collab. The artists you add back-to-back to the queue. The pairing you can’t get enough of. You know they sound good together, but why? Welcome to Wine and Cheese, a series investigating the why and telling you all about it.
Written by Victoria Canales
Photos courtesy of Fin Costello and Greg Neate
Breakups are never easy, but the crushing experience increases tenfold when you’re in a band with your ex and on the precipice of writing your next album. How do you get away from the drama and pain when the drama and pain are standing at the mic next to you? Do you spend two weeks alone in a cottage in the middle of nowhere? Spiral deeper into substance abuse? These coping mechanisms may seem exaggerated and unwise, but those were the options the ex-lovers and bandmates of Fleetwood Mac and Slowdive considered. The ’70s British American rock band and the ’90s English indie group, respectively, may approach feelings of heartbreak from differing angles, but both offer raw and intense songs that blend perfectly with one another.
Fleetwood Mac's 1977 album Rumours has been described, in quite a tongue-in-cheek manner, as "an album written by and for people cheating on each other." When its production began in 1976, tambourine player and vocalist Stevie Nicks and guitarist Lindsey Buckingham were in an on/off relationship, keyboardist Christine McVie and bassist John were getting a divorce, and drummer Mick Fleetwood was separating from his cheating wife. Add excessive amounts of cocaine to the mix, and you start to see the root of the dysfunction running rampant in the band during this period. Exhausted and drug-addled, the band would record after hours of bingeing and partying, followed by silent treatment toward each other as soon as they exited the studio.
In contrast to the tumultuous mood of the recording sessions, Rumours is sunny, upbeat, and folksy, interweaving lush three-part harmonies through the fabric of the album. If it weren’t for the scathing lyrics, listeners would miss the underlying anguish that makes it a breakup album. Buckingham penned “Go Your Own Way” to vent about his relationship with Stevie Nicks, with harm-inflicting lyrics like “Packin’ up / Shackin’ up is all you want to do” aimed at Nicks. The song itself is bubbly; jangly acoustic guitars and a moving bass line create a classic. “Dreams” is Nicks’ fiery response to Buckingham. Made up of only three chords, this standout single is written from the perspective of someone fed up with their lover. Nicks lilts with a tired voice, “Well, here you go again, you say you want your freedom / Well, who am I to bring you down?” Perhaps the most enigmatic and defensive line in the album, she promises Buckingham, “When the rain washes you clean, you’ll know.”
In the early '90s, another group was facing romantic troubles. Slowdive — a band of British teenagers making beautiful noise with every delay pedal imaginable — was supposed to record their sophomore album when guitarists and vocalists Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell broke up after several years of friendship and musicianship. The breakup distracted the band, and its members didn’t feel confident in the material they were writing, prompting their manager to ask Halstead to take two weeks off and stay at an isolated cottage in the English moors. Brokenhearted and isolated, Slowdive's primary lyricist wrote some of his best work while at the cottage.
When one-half of the band's singers returned, the group recorded its iconic album Souvlaki. The opener, “Alison,” is an ode to a new girl Halstead began seeing. Reverb-drenched guitars and ethereal vocals mesh together as he mutters, “With your talking and your pills / Your messed-up world will thrill me / Alison, I’m lost.” “Alison” is now considered a classic and a defining moment of the shoegaze genre. Goswell had her own chance to express her resentment towards her ex when she wrote, “And I curse your soul, I don't wanna know you,” in “Souvlaki Space Station.” The album closer is perhaps the most vulnerable song on Souvlaki. Written during Halstead's stay in the cottage, “Dagger” reminisces over the girl he loved and lost: “And me I am your dagger / You know I am your wound.” It’s slow and painstakingly tender — sadness permeates through every lonely chord. Ultimately, the album received little recognition and garnered bad reviews, as shoegaze didn’t have the leg to stand on when grunge and Britpop were the big musical trends at the time. Unable to brave the negative attention, Slowdive broke up for more than two decades before returning in 2017 with their critically acclaimed self-titled album.
Slowdive's disbandment was something of a blessing in disguise. In 1995, Goswell and Halstead put their differences aside and formedMojave 3, a soft folk supergroup. Slide guitars and gentle harmonies created dream pop lullabies and allowed them to explore their creative ideas before reforming with Slowdive so many years later. Fleetwood Mac continued writing music together throughout the '70s and '80s, but the classic lineup broke up in 1987 when Lindsey Buckingham expressed that he felt he was being creatively limited. The band briefly reformed in 1993 for Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign, but they never created new music or reformed again.
Sonically different but thematically similar, pairing Slowdive and Fleetwood Mac brings mood shifting music that consistently illuminates the difficulties that come with loving and losing somebody in the midst of balancing increasingly fragile dynamics. Whether through cheery tambourines or moody guitar effects, different parts of breakups come through on both albums: the guilt, the anger, the arguments, the resignation. Fleetwood Mac is the fire in your eyes and the dust before it settles; Slowdive, the tears you’re submerged in and the air you rise with.