Brit rock icons Ride bring Weather Diaries to the TLA in a dazzling set

Ride | photo by Josh Pelta-Heller for WXPN

It must be some sort of testimony to a band’s draw when a guy with a Sonic Youth t-shirt is standing in the front row at the TLA the same night Thurston Moore is playing a set at another club across town.

Ride would be the first to profess their debt of gratitude to the 1980s’ noise-rockers. Vocalist Mark Gardener has also be the first to shrug off similar genre labels and pigeonholes, especially the “shoegaze” stuff to which they’ve been inextricably tethered since they debuted with genre-defining Nowhere in 1990, at turns proving both blessing and curse. Reportedly mired in conflict over creative direction, the band failed to mend fences, and with the inherent strains of extensive tours Ride ultimately split just six years later.

Back now with a reunion tour and a new studio album out last month — the first since their ‘90s heyday — a cohesive South Street set with no trace of any former fractures featured. On the contrary: Gardener, Andy Bell and co seemed as though they couldn’t be more comfortable up there, and led a wildly warm Friday night crowd through a generous 17-song set, including two encores. Notably, though, the band split the material equally between their earliest albums and EPs, and their latest, Weather Diaries, and dispensed with their mid-nineties catalog entirely.

Los Angeles noisepop band Froth opened the show; earlier this year, they recorded an Indie Rock Hit Parade session at WXPN, which you can listen to here. Below, check out a gallery of photos from the concert and peruse the setlist.

Setlist
Lannoy Point
Seagull
Unfamiliar
Cali
Weather Diaries
Twisterella
Lateral Alice
OX4
All I Want
Taste
Vapour Trail
Drive Blind

Encore 1:
White Sands
Leave Them All Behind

Encore 2:
Dreams Burn Down
Chelsea Girl