These days Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell are known for Slowdive. Up until that band’s reunion in 2014, though, they had spent more time making music with Mojave 3. After Alan McGee unceremoniously dropped Slowdive from his Creation Records label in 1995, vocalist/guitarist Halstead, vocalist Goswell, and latter-day Slowdive drummer McCutcheon quickly regrouped and recorded some demos. Those demos made their way to Ivo Watts-Russell, who immediately signed Mojave 3 to a multi-album contract with his label, 4AD. Within a matter of months, Halsted, Goswell, and McCutcheon had gone from one iconic British indie imprint to another.
Between 1995 and 2006, Mojave 3 released five albums for 4AD. They failed to attain even the modest level of chart success Slowdive had, although they maintained a following and made some inroads with American college radio. Even amidst the astounding, phoenix-like resurgence of the reformed Slowdive, the Mojave 3 catalog has remained out of print. With Slowdive having finished a second post-reunion album-tour cycle, the time seems ripe to revisit Mojave 3.
Still, the Slowdive revival makes it difficult to put the Mojave 3 catalog into proper context. Especially after the first album, the material offers very little trace of the sound Halstead and Goswell left behind, nor does it portend where they would eventually find themselves again. In a recent interview, Halstead said he appreciated Mojave 3 because, removed from commercial pressures and expectations, the band were able to operate in their own universe of sorts, making music at their own leisure and for their own pleasure.
Ultimately, across the five albums, that’s how they come across, for better or worse. Even within individual songs, Mojave 3 are doing things at their own pace. They’re indulging their influences, and clearly, those influences have moved well beyond effects pedals and the ashes of the shoegaze scene that famously “celebrated itself”.
You wouldn’t necessarily intuit all this, though, from listening to debut album Ask Me Tomorrow. Released only eight months after Slowdive’s swansong Pygmalion, it bears enough stylistic resemblance to Halstead, Goswell, and McCutcheon’s former band that they considered releasing it under the Slowdive name. Ask Me Tomorrow is, like Pygmalion, hushed and minimalistic. However, it removes the stark, often cold electronics of the latter and instead wallows in a candlelit, romantic melancholy that is woven together with languid slide guitar and barely-there brushed drums.
With a title that basically describes the feel of the entire album, “Love Songs on the Radio” is an ideal setting for Goswell’s unaffected, angelic voice. Once the album settles into its sparse, hypnotic groove, some songs begin to bleed together, and this tendency toward sameness dogs every Mojave 3 album. Still, this doesn’t detract from the delicate poignancy of the melodies.
At the time, Ask Me Tomorrow garnered comparisons to an American band—Mazzy Star, who were enjoying massive success thanks to their similarly languid, sensual hit “Fade Into You”. There would be no such comparisons, though, from there on.
When sophomore album Out of Tune finally appeared in 1998, it represented a huge left turn for Mojave 3. Halstead, whose writing with Slowdive had been tied to electric guitar effects, decided that for Mojave 3 he wanted a more traditional approach. He ditched his electric, passing those duties to Simon Rowe, a refugee from another casualty of shoegaze backlash, Chapterhouse. For inspiration, he looked to classic singer-songwriters, primarily Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Gram Parsons/Chris Hillman, and cult British folkie Nick Drake.
The result was a somewhat fey, British take on Americana-tinged indie music. Halstead began relying more heavily on the upper register of his voice, the better to approximate the earnest croon of his heroes. Pedal steel and an occasional horn section made appearances. Keyboardist Alan Forrester joined the band, and his Hammond organ helps give the rather wonderful “Some Kinda’ Angel” a loose, lived-in groove that isn’t far removed from what the Charlatans were up to at the time.
Out of Tune and its follow-up, Excuses for Travelers (2000) both trade in this dusty, country-flavored sound. Establishing a more consistent identity for the band, they’re the best starting points for newcomers. Windswept tales of romance like “Who Do You Love” and “In Love With a View” are pleasingly assured, while plaintive numbers like “Prayer for the Paranoid” and the gospel-infused “Caught Beneath Your Heel” are among the most poignant moments in the Mojave 3 catalog. However, the high points are tempered by clunkers like “Give What You Take”, the title of which hints at some of the Laurel Canyon/country clichés Halstead has fallen prey to: There is a lot of talk of drifting, finding one’s way back home, feelin’ free, and the like.
In 2002, Halstead released his first solo album, Sleeping on Roads. It featured input from McCutcheon, Forrester, and Mojave 3 co-producer Mark Van Hoen. Spoon and Rafter appeared in 2003 under the Mojave 3 name, but fans immediately bemoaned the underuse of Goswell’s voice. Her beguiling “Bringin’ Me Home”, from Excuses For Travelers, was as close as Mojave 3 had come to the ethereal sound of Slowdive—or, for that matter, Ask Me Tomorrow. From Spoon and Rafter on, though, she was the bass player and backing vocalist, whose voice was oddly buried in the mix.
In interviews around this time, Halstead and Goswell were just as likely to talk about the prodigious amount of weed they smoked as they were their music, and maybe this explains the relative lack of focus that befell the group. Nearly every song on Spoon and Rafter features a twinkling glockenspiel, and several fall into jaunty 2/4 time. These are evidence of the quirkier, cosmic-rock influence at play, a sound that works well on the nine-minute opener “Bluebird of Happiness” but soon begins to drag. When Halstead and company get back to aping Neil Young on the album’s final third, the results are more satisfying.
The title track of Puzzles Like You (2006) begins with a reference to “white lines on the table between us”. That seems like a tip-off to the album’s almost shockingly frenetic sound. Now minus Rowe, Mojave 3 leave their Americana tendencies in the dust, replacing them with whimsical chamber/indie pop that comes across like Pernice Brothers or Belle and Sebastian on laughing gas. It’s perfectly charming on songs like “Breaking the Ice” and “Running With Your Eyes Closed”, about “Jenny” and “Judy” respectively. However, the giddiness is soon revealed as the only trick up the album’s sleeve, making the final, moody ballad “The Mutineer” come across as a bit desperate.
That was it for Mojave 3—almost. They resurfaced for some live dates in 2011, and there was talk of new material. Instead, Halstead re-discovered his effects pedals and made an album with Van Hoen under the name Black Hearted Brother. That album is where the sonic seeds of the Slowdive revival were sown.
The five Mojave 3 albums have been remastered for these reissues. They sound clear but with a sharpness that is sadly at odds with the natural warmth of the music. There are no B-sides, live tracks, or outtakes, which befits the band’s no-frills, classicist aesthetic. Ironically, it’s that stripped-back, homey approach that limits the music’s emotional effect; the transparently painstaking concentration on recreating authentic sounds and moods from the past keeps the listener just at arm’s length. Mojave 3 may always be remembered as a lengthy diversion between phases of Slowdive. That doesn’t mean they were without plenty of winning moments of their own.