Ride’s Andy Bell tells us about every song on his new solo album ‘pinball wanderer’

Ride‘s Andy Bell just released his third solo album, pinball wanderer, which almost plays like a guided tour through his favorite records, from krautrock to baggy Madchester beats to gauzy dreampop and even a cover of The Passions’ early-’80s cult classic “I’m in Love With a German Filmstar.” None of it sounds like his other bands and it’s a lot of fun. Read our review of the album and listen below.

For more on the album, Andy was nice enough to offer a track-by-track guide through pinball wanderer, which includes getting former One Dove singer Dot Allison and Neu!’s Michael Rother on the same song. You can read that below.

Andy will be busy with Ride through the spring. Still no word whether he will be a part of the upcoming Oasis reunion, though (he was the band’s bassist from 1999-2009). Stay tuned.

pinball wanderer by Andy Bell

ANDY BELL – PINBALL WANDERER TRACK-BY-TRACK

“panic attack”
My idea was to do The Byrds meets Neu! I guess like a ’60s DIIV or something. It’s a song born out of that concept. It might have been even better if I’d dared to leave off the lyrics! I can’t decide if I tamed it too much. Maybe I’ll rework it later.

“i’m in love…”
I am so delighted that I finally managed to get a version of this song out. The original is such a seminal record, every element of it is iconic – drums, bass, guitar, vocals – and my version is very much in its shadow, except that it has these two amazing collaborators who just lift it into something extra. Thank you, Dot Allison and Michael Rother!

“madder lake deep”
Liquid music, a Cocteau Twins-ish watercolour portrait of a dream. My grandad used to paint watercolours, and he showed me once how he did it, I love the way the water kind of floods the paper, and the paint sits for a second in a drop within the water and then spreads and kind of sets as the water soaks in and dries.

“apple green ufo”
The riff that built this – I only just realised – it never made it to the song! I minimalism-ised myself off the track! Again, I feel a second version will be in order at some point. I want people to hear the acoustic riff (the Jimmy Page folk banger) because it is actually really cool.

“pinball wanderer”
This song made it to the album because Nat Cramp (Sonic Cathedral) liked it. I played him an early version of the album in my car, and this was the one he liked. I had said it was probably not going to make it and he had said, ‘Oh no, that’s my favourite!’. So, then I made it the title track, and as soon as it had the new title, it seemed to assume a bigger place on the record. It’s somewhere between country rock and Serge Gainsbourg.

“music concrete”
This is a twin song to ‘apple green ufo.’ While I was making the record, these were the two central tracks. Each has a kind of time-based riddle at the centre, on ‘apple green…’ it’s the way the riff turns around, on ‘music concrete’ it’s that the two bass lines are different lengths so, as they come and go, the song regenerates in new ways, like a fern plant.

“the notes you never hear”
This is me self-soothing… set to music. This one also has a twin, ‘madder lake deep’; both are intentionally too short, the reasons for this are different in each case. With ‘madder lake…’ it’s to recreate the feeling of waking up from a dream you half remember, with this one it’s because it’s not so much of a song as a little moment to myself in between songs.

“space station mantra”
When I visited the La Monte Young Dream House in Manhattan, it was early in the morning of a Ride gig. I had to either be there when it opened or not go at all. I went in the wrong door at first and some people looked at me really strangely, they were viewing a dilapidated old bar to make it into flats or something. Then I found the right door and headed up the stairs and had the most meditative hour of the last few years. If I lived in NY I would go at least once a week.

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