Excuses For Travellers

Description

After the release of Pygmalion in 1995, the British shoegaze band Slowdive entered a long hiatus of nearly twenty years. From this hiatus was born Mojave 3, formed by Neil Halstead (vocals, guitar), Rachel Goswell (bass, vocals), and Ian McCutcheon (drums). Between 1995 and 2006, the trio released five remarkable albums on 4AD, developing delicate music at the crossroads of dream pop with desert accents and alt-country inspired by the 1960s and 1970s. Today, 4AD reissues for the first time the entire catalog of Mojave 3, celebrating the timelessness and quality of this discography, and undoubtedly offering a new generation the opportunity to (re)discover these albums, as was the case for Slowdive about ten years ago. Back in London, Mojave 3 settled at Fortress Studios to record Excuses for Travellers, released in 2000, in collaboration with their friend and electronic artist Mark Van Hoen. The album elegantly synthesizes the minimalist melancholy of Ask Me Tomorrow and the soul influences inherited from the Laurel Canyon of Out of Tune, further refining the band's songwriting to deliver their most accomplished and coherent record. Richly textured (guitars, drums, pedal steel, winds, and piano), Excuses for Travellers is an introspective, warm, almost twilight album that places Neil Halstead's voice in the foreground, while allowing Rachel Goswell and Ian McCutcheon, the respective authors of the last two tracks of the album, Bringing Me Home and Got My Sunshine, to express themselves.