Rachel Goswell

I was perusing the 4AD website the other day, when I came across this little golden nugget… Rachel Goswell will be releasing The Sleep Shelter EP into stores next week.  However, if you can’t wait a couple of days, you can buy the EP in ye olde digital format right now for only £3.00 (or roughly $5.25 for us Yanks).  After that, she’ll be releasing her debut album, Waves Are Universal, on June 14th.

And just who is Rachel Goswell?  Well, for the uninitiated, Goswell once lent her heavenly voice to Slowdive, easily one of the finest bands to have ever graced God’s green earth.  After Slowdive broke up, she and Slowdive cohorts Neil Halstead and Ian McCutcheon went on to form the more folk/acoustic-oriented Mojave 3, which released one stellar album (Ask Me Tomorrow) before giving into their desire to be a Bob Dylan/Nick Drake cover band.

Sadly, recent Mojave 3 albums have featured fewer appearances of Goswell’s lovely voice.  But these upcoming solo albums will hopefully make up for that.  You can listen to one cut off the album via RealPlayer, and it’s a real beauty.  Like her bandmate Halstead, Goswell appears to have left behind the billowy, ethereal sounds that were Slowdive’s hallmark, and instead opted for a more stripped down, acoustic-based sound.  Which just means that her voice is highlighted all the more, and that’s by no means a bad thing.

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• May 15, 2004, 12:00am