Slowdive broke up in 1995, shortly following the release of the challenging Pygmalion, and most of the members' projects since have leaned toward more accessible sounds. Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell formed the now-on-hiatus Mojave 3, and Halstead himself has made a few quiet acoustic albums on his own. Guitarist Christian Savill, when working with friend and former Eternal bandmate Sean Hewson in Monster Movie (a project that pre-dates his involvement in Slowdive), hews more closely to Slowdive's later aesthetic.
Up to this point, however, the duo's albums have been spotty at best, with momentum-draining tempos and a weakness for maudlin melodies. The timid pallor obscured prime slices of buzzy alt-rock like "1950da", from 2004's To the Moon, or "Winter Is Coming", from 2002's Last Night Something Happened. Both were tacked onto the end of their respective albums, as if not to disrupt the otherwise downcast mood.
On Monster Movie's first album in four years, Everyone Is a Ghost, the obligatory alt-rock cut, "Bored Beyond Oblivion", is right in the center of the 10-track collection. The programming change-up comes with a shift in focus. The songs here feel brighter and more energized, at times recalling jagged pop of Brian Eno's early song-oriented records. The sharply melodic guitar lines of opener "The World Collapsed" and "Fall", for example, recall Robert Fripp's contributions to Here Come the Warm Jets. The bulk of the record is split between moderately fuzzy shoegaze and bleary-eyed folk-pop, and the former fares slightly better, especially during the anthemic burn of "Silver Knife" and "Fall" and "Bored Beyond Oblivion"'s sugary distortion. Even midtempo songs like "How the Dead Live" and "In the Morning" carry a certain shine.
There are a few clunkers here-- the worn-out, blaring beats of the title track and the overproduced "Help Me Make It Right", specifically-- but Everyone Is a Ghost is, ironically, more full of life than Monster Movie's previous output. It suggests a revitalization within the duo's songwriting, if not simply a necessary change in outlook. It's as if after two decades together, Savill and Hewson are finally enjoying themselves.
