This Is Not A Safe Place
The opening songs of This Is Not A Safe Place reveal very different sides of Ride. Instrumental opener "R.I.D.E." is dark and rhythmic, with scraping bass beneath swirling guitar layers. "Future Love" then enters a much lighter pop song. The guitar is clear, the voice gentle and the melody easy to remember. Both tracks work individually, but their transition quickly reveals one of the album's problems.
Ride have enough ideas; those ideas simply do not always find logical places beside each other. The opening tension disappears almost immediately, and later changes interrupt the momentum again. The record therefore feels less coherent than its separate moments suggest. Shifting styles could create tension, but sometimes removes it instead.
There are clear highlights. "Repetition" connects guitar pop with a steadier, almost electronic movement. It finds a different way to sound familiar. "Eternal Recurrence" allows more time and space, using an unhurried movement that suits the singing. "Shadows Behind the Sun" also finds something useful in combining a small song with a larger arrangement. It starts from an intimate feeling and lets the sound grow around it.
The downside is that the record wants to sound large more often than the songs require. Some passages drag instead of moving forward, and the words offer little additional support. Even so, the musicians clearly work well together, and the strongest melodies provide reasons to return. This Is Not A Safe Place is uneven, with an intriguing opening and a few lovely peaks. A clearer line through the album would have helped those ideas make a stronger impression.
