RACHEL GOSWELL appears to have stumbled through a strange career, almost in reverse. With Slowdive and more recently the under-rated Mojave 3, she's been involved in this scummy business for well over a decade, yet it's only now she's making her debut album. Curiously, much of her work has also attracted plaudits after the fact: not least the work she and long-time musical partner Neil Halstead forged with Slowdive, whose FX-fuelled, shoe-gazey artiness often attracted critical revulsion (and that infamous quote from the Manics about "hating Slowdive more than Hitler") back in the early nineties.
Of course, these things have a way of turning back around in time and Rachel's stock is much higher these days thanks to both some fine records with Mojave 3 and Slowdive's burgeoning posthumous rep: not least thanks to a tribute album from German electronica label Morr Music.
So, as good a time as any to dip those tentative toes in the solo waters, then? Yeah, and recent debut EP "The Sleep Shelter" suggested Rachel would be swimming comfortably when the full-length introduction came around.
"Waves Are Universal" doesn't disappoint, either. It deviates little from the EP's gentle acoustic premise, but occasionally encourages flashes of full band heaviosity to ensure it doesn't get TOO light and fluffy. The occasional unlikely texture (such as uillean piper Jerome Farrell's folk-flecked Celtic swirls on opener "Warm Summer Sun") also ensures your attention span remains tethered.
There's precious little to quibble about actually. Neat ambient tricks (the distant peals of Church bells and birdsong and Rachel's own ambient field recordings from a holiday in Thailand) sympathetically weave in and out of tunes such as "Gather Me Up" and "Shoulder The Blame", but are never obtrusive, and when Rachel is largely unadorned, like on the discreet, but hugely attractive "Beautiful Feeling", then she's simply left to her own lovely, breathy vocal devices.
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And when the band do enter the equation, their playing adds a robust layer or three, which is no harm either. To this end, try the lovelorn urgency of "Coastline", the plangent "No Substitute" and the dense, murky "Save Yourself", where the band come on like a lazily effective English Crazy Horse and goad Rachel into getting animated lyrically, spitting out the likes of "stop trying to break me with your sorrow and pain/ take a look at yourself, you're only to blame." Blimey. Wonder if she's addressing Nicky Wire here?
Whatever, she's happily afloat in these warm solo waters and demonstrates she's in full control by floating into the poppy whirlpool of the optimistic "Sleeping & Tooting": a resolutely upbeat way to drift off after a bilssful 40 minutes or so.
Temporarily adrift from the haven of her regular band, Rachel Goswell never once threatens to drown on this solo debut. "Waves Are Universal" comes from a comforting ocean where the bathing is safe and there's always crystalline beauty beneath the surface.
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