Prayer Remembered by Slowdive

Album: Everything Is Alive (2023)

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"Prayer Remembered" is a dreamy, melodic instrumental that exemplifies Slowdive's shoegaze style. Neil Halstead, Slowdive's lead guitarist and songwriter, originally composed the song three days after the birth of his son Albert. He wrote the piece late one night after returning home from the hospital, sitting down at a keyboard and spontaneously creating the initial melody.
The track found its home on Everything Is Alive, Slowdive's first album in six years. Had the record been conceived in happier times, it might have mirrored the optimistic joy of fresh beginnings. But life, as we know, isn't a smooth road. As the world grappled with the COVID-19 pandemic, sorrow visited other members of the band. Singer Rachel Goswell mourned the loss of her mother, while drummer Simon Scott grieved the passing of his father.

"Neil wrote the album, but with the death of our parents during its making, you've got that atmosphere coming into the studio," Goswell told Uncut magazine. "The first session we had together was in October 2020. Simon's loss was April, mine was in June, and that was during the second lockdown. It was weird coming in with that grief. It was sad to have Simon in the same situation, obviously, but equally good that we have each other, to talk to privately, away from everybody else."
"Prayer Remembered" balances the deaths with new life. "I ended up bringing it into the Slowdive sessions quite late on just because there was something I felt we needed on the record," Halstead told Apple Music.
Many of the Everything Is Alive tracks came from a pile of material using modular synthesizers composed by Halstead in 2019. Of the 30 ideas he introduced to his bandmates, "Prayer Remembered" was already "fairly fully formed," according to Goswell.

Halstead had bassist Nick Chaplin, guitarist Christian Savill, and Scott play along with his original synth part, only to then pull the synth out of the mix altogether and add a few extra elements.

"The band played that live, and it was done quite quickly," Goswell told Billboard.

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