IT'S been far too long since RIDE played a 'proper' headline Irish show.
The recently reactivated indie favourites – the only band this column considers worthy of the much in-demand 'all caps' typographic affectation – did appear at Electric Picnic in 2015, but that was an early evening festival gig in a tent.
It's been almost 23 years since Mark Gardener (guitar/vocals), Andy Bell (guitar/vocals), Steve Queralt (bass) and Loz Colbert (drums) had an actual Irish roof to blow off with a full strength set of melodic, noisy, textured guitar pop.
The quartet played their last club shows in Belfast and Dublin on their Carnival of Light tour in September 1994, supported by a little-known local trio called Ash.
Significantly, these gigs came the week after their Creation Records label-mates Oasis played The Limelight in Belfast on the very night their seminal debut LP Definitely Maybe topped the album chart, a moment which some might say (ho-ho) represented a seismic shift in the musical landscape which ultimately helped usher in the demise of RIDE and some of their fellow travellers in the effects-pedal enhanced indie guitar scene.
Happily, the Oxford combo have been back in action since 2015 and are eager to make up for lost time: when we spoke on the phone earlier this week, Mark and co were busy practising for their Irish gigs and an appearance at the BBC 6Music Festival in Glasgow next weekend.
"It's homework, basically," chuckles the RIDE man, who hints that we may be getting a rather different set-list from the summer shows they have lined-up to coincide with the release of a highly anticipated new album.
"We've got a load of new songs to rehearse at the moment," confirms Mark.
"But we're also concious of the fact that Ireland didn't get the show that we were doing over the past couple of years and that the new record isn't out for a few months yet.
"We know that people (in Belfast and Dublin) will want to hear lots of the old songs, so we'll definitely be playing them – plus a couple of new things as well."
Indeed, over the past couple of years, the re-united band have drawn heavily on their early EPs, 1990's debut LP Nowhere and 1992's top 5 LP Going Blank Again for their live shows – which also saw them playing their cracking single Black Nite Crash (the sole redeeming feature of 1996's 'posthumously' released swansong, Tarantula) live for the first time along with highlights of the unfairly maligned Carnival of Light.
From now on though, a handful of new tracks from their as-yet-untitled fifth album will be fighting their way into the set alongside the likes of RIDE classics Leave Them All Behind, Chelsea Girl, Seagull and Vapour Trail.
Recorded with producer Errol Alkan, mixed by Alan Moulder (who previously mixed Nowhere and produced Going Blank Again) and due out this summer on former Creation man Dick Green's Wichita Records label, our first taste of the new album comes in the form of the chiming, gothy indiepop of new single Charm Assault and the dreamier atmospherics of teaser track Home Is a Feeling – the latter of which is set to make its live debut in Belfast on Tuesday.
"We've never played Home Is a Feeling out before so that will definitely get an airing," confirms Mark of the shoegazey new number, laid down during a 17-day-long album recording session at The Vale studio last December.
"It's at the other end of the spectrum from Charm Assault, just to show that there is a range to what we're doing now.
"There's elements of some other songs which may be a little bit like Home Is A Feeling, but for me it's the one that does that more 'shoegazey' thing which maybe the rest of the album doesn't do.
"Without getting too pretentious about it, I think there's a lot of 'colours' on the record. Certainly, we don't walk into a room thinking 'we're a shoegaze band, we have to do things a certain way', we just do what feels right for each song – and for me that makes for a much, much more interesting album."
So, will the 'colourful' new sound of RIDE's fifth be dubbed 'post-gaze', 'prog-gaze' or (god forbid) 'new wave of 'nu gaze'?
"No doubt lots of people will find a new term for it, because they always want to pigeonhole you somewhere, but that's fine," says Mark, who reveals that the making of this album was a harmonious, collaborative affair between four life-long friends – in stark contrast to the pained Tarantula sessions which helped finish the band off first time around.
"Tarantula to me was a sort of break-up record," he tells me.
"I still probably couldn't tell you the tracklisting of it, I didn't really feel part of the whole process by that point. But we were never a 'career' band, we were always bound to crash at some point.
"In a lot of ways, this one is like a new debut record for us because it's been 20 years. After being outside the RIDE 'bubble' for so long we had the benefit of hindsight in terms of deciding how we worked together best.
"It felt good and fun and great to make, really."
Given the happy occasion of the band's return to Ireland, I asked Mark about RIDE's early Irish visits, which were among some of the young Oxford act's first live outings beyond GB.
Such was the buzz surrounding their fantastic run of early Creation EPs that they were able to pack four Irish gigs into 1990 alone, returning the following year for an appearance at the much-missed 'Trip to Tipp' festival in Thurles.
"I remember we did Feile with Happy Mondays, The Farm and that – quite a bizarre day," recalls Mark, " and I have good memories of our own early shows in Ireland as well.
"Also, my mum's maiden name is Yeats, so there's some Irish going on in my family. I went to the Wicklow mountains with my parents and things like that way back in the day when I was a kid, so I've always had a fond feeling for Ireland. It's a place where people appreciate music, art and culture.
"The last time I played there was in Dublin last December with The Color Bars Experience. I did about seven Nick Drake songs with a chamber orchestra – so next week will be quite different from that!"
RIDE, Tuesday March 21, The Limelight, Belfast / Wednesday March 22, The Olympia, Dublin. Doors 7pm, tickets via Ticketmaster.ie.
