Customer Reviews

Tarantula

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Well I shall say, music evolves and so do groups. So what if it was produced for the labels own interest, it still rocks! I would buy this purely because it is just a quality group having fun producing something that has managed to stay in my player for 5 months now. It is definately not their original sound, such as the likes of "My Bloody Valentine" but let's move on and enjoy a quality piece of music. It is fun and every song moves!

Yeah, Ride ditched the atmosphere for this record, and I was plenty disappointed but, just as I managed to get over the dry (yet lush) production of Carnival of Light, I got over it here, too. The songs are great, catchy and rockin'. Amazing riffs abound and, while I don't know if I'd've been interested in another record like this from Ride, I'm glad they made Tarantula.

You either get the message or you don't. I'm tired of all the crybabies who wail, "It's not shoegaze. Boo hoo!" It's no mistake the CD shares the name of Bob Dylan's book . The same people who dismiss this CD are the same sort of people who were ready to lynch Bob when he traded his acoustic guitar for an electric.

While not the most accessible CD, Tarantula is still an essential purchase. Fans of Ride can be divided into three groups: those who love the shoegaze drone and submerged vocals of their early records; those seduced by the pure pop, summer of love pastiche 'Carnival of Light'; and those who recognize 'Tarantula' as a truly brilliant album. It's a mystery to me when I find copies in the used bin. I console myself with the knowledge that the former owners were simply not ready.

as someone who found tarantula before he found ride, let me tell you, the album is a pure brit-pop masterpiece. many ride fans, who have followed the band from their shoegazer days, perhaps felt betrayed by the band's change in directions and dislike the album out of spite (whether they'll admit it or not is another story). personally, i don't care. the album is as good as anything on the shelves and worthy of atleast a listen and an openmind.

When I bought Tarantula I really hated it. I couldn't figure out why they did a record like this when they had a unique style of their own. That can never be said about Tarantula. There's nothing original, or any Ride-feeling on this one. Just old school rock'n roll. The guitarplaying is completely different to the first records. Instead of trippy melodic lines Bell pushes out some blues riffs in Noel Gallegher style,, though it sounds better. Anyhow, this is NOT a crappy record, not at all. If you just can accept it for what it is it's really good wiht some great songs on it but there are fillers as well.
The better ones are: Mary Anne, Dead Man, Walk on Water and the Dawn Patrol. Black Night Crash, Gonna be alright and Burnin' are good as well. The rest is pretty boring. Some people seems to like Deep inside my pocket but thats just a boring filler to me. Tarantula is good but not good enogh to reach four stars.

Nice album. Pay no attention to the negative reviews here as they appear to be written by the same person, no doubt crestfallen over the band's change of direction from their "shoegazer" days.

Take the album for what it's worth, the music. And dammit, this album rocks.

I give this four stars and not five because I am a die-hard fan (I have a Ride t-shirt, the one with the wave on it, for example) and I know what these guys are capable of. And quite frankly in the 1990s I didn't care what these guys recorded - it could have been literally anything. I would have paid good money for it. Now Tarantula, as you may have heard, was made under threat of litigation by the record label - circumstances hardly conducive to maximum artistic creativity. At times it sounds like a sound-check recording of some forgotten classic rock songs, even to the point of out-and-out plagiarism in some instances. Still, this disc is one of those that manages to stay in my player despite its demonization by the critics. There are those fans who believe this album never should have been recorded. I disagree. I am glad the album was recorded and I like these songs. In fact, I prefer Tarantula to Carnival of Light, Ride's Fourth album, in which Andy Bell took creative dominance, to the detriment of all concerned. When you think of what Ride did on those first three albums, it was sad to see them degenerate into three session musicians with an Austin Powers look-alike as a front man, spouting a bunch of BS sixties cliches as if they were somehow avant-garde (hey baby, sex drugs and rock n roll, can you dig it?). You see the same thing on Tarantula, but since it was produced literally under the gun (which you see pointed at you on the cover) Bell had less of an opportunity to indulge his inner dork, and somehow, ironically, more of the real Ride shines through.

I'm a huge fan of Ride especially the early stuff (the box set and "waves" are amazing too...half of waves anyway) When this first came out I was dissappointed, kind of like I was with "Carnival of Light", but "Carnival" still had a nervy vibe to it and earned a special place deep inside... This album lacked both their original catharsis and their innovative experimentation, but what is left is a collection of very solid very good songs. I lost my entire music collection to theft in 1995, and never felt inclined to buy this again....until now...

Previewing these songs again, I can't believe it's not in my collection...so many of these compel me to sing along. Many feel like "good times with my girlfriend" kinda songs...The album overall is kinda incoherent and somewhat like bland noodles
(Blur's House in the Country comes to mind) but individually many of these songs inspire a mood speciic unto themselves...and are quite beautiful. I'm quite fond of "Mary Anne" "Castle on the Hill" "Gonna be Alright" and "ride the wind"...Black Night Crash" is argueably the most rockin song here and it has a bit of a stomp to it and interesting rythmic change-ups but somehow falls slightly short, I have a feeling this song would wail live, but it doesn't quite come across on the album.

I think my main issue with this album is it's not weird enough, I'm somewhat embarrassed to like it...

I don't reccommend this as an intro to the band, nor would I reccommend it to the punk/goth/shoegazer crowd, but to those who like Blur, Oasis, Hurricane 1 :p, or songwriters in general, it's well worth checking out.

Tarantula is Ride's final album, recorded amid growing tensions and released after the band had split. This album is dominated by Andy Bell...there are only two songs not written by him. And it shows. Additionally, the band's sound is markedly different from previous efforts, being more straightforward rock than the swirling psychedlia of past efforts. Also, the lyrics are rather weak, on the whole, on this record. That being said, this is a good album, although it lacks the balance of all of Ride's previous albums in terms of songwriting. However, there is still some great stuff here: Mark Gardner's lone solo composition, Deep Inside My Pocket, is stunning. And Bell's songs: Black Nite Crash, Burnin', and Walk on Water, in particular, are excellent. The bonus tracks on this remastered (and EXCELLENT SOUNDING) CD, Slave, Nothing Lasts Forever (the best of the bunch, though they're all good), and A Trip Down Ronnie Lane are very good.

Sadly Ride split. This, then, while not their best album, is still a fine album and a fitting testimony to an amazing and sadly overlooked band.