Shoegaze giants Slowdive have announced they will be playing a headline Irish show for the first time. The band is scheduled to play two huge shows in Belfast and Dublin this November, with tickets costing £30/€35, and going on sale this Friday.

The live gigs will take place in Belfast’s Mandela Hall on Sunday November 5, and in Dublin’s National Stadium the following day, Monday November 6. It will be Slowdive’s first headline shows in Ireland, having only appeared here once in 2014 at Electric Picnic.

The band has also released their newest single from their upcoming album, ‘Kisses’. This news comes on the back of the imminent release of Slowdive’s fifth studio album, everything is alive, out September 1.

The U.K. rock band is made up of Rachel Goswell and Neil Halstead on vocals and guitar, guitarist Christian Savill, Nick Chaplin on bass and Simon Scott on drums.

They are set to undertake one of their biggest world tours as a band, with shows across the U.S, U.K. and Ireland. They are currently touring Australia and New Zealand.

everything is alive is the band’s first album in six years. The record is dedicated to Goswell’s mother and Scott’s father, who both died in 2020. “There were some profound shifts for some of us personally,” Goswell says.

“As a band, when we’re all happy with it, that tends to be the stronger material,” Halstead says. “We’ve always come from slightly different directions, and the best bits are where we all meet in the middle.”

“Slowdive is very much the sum of its parts,” Goswell adds. “Something unquantifiable happens when the five of us come together in a room.”

Reflecting on new single 'kisses', a song that is uniquely neither happy or sad, Halstead said, “It wouldn’t feel right to make a really dark record right now. The album is quite eclectic emotionally, but it does feel hopeful.”

Tickets to see Slowdive in Ireland this November go on sale this Friday at 10AM. Get them here.

Listen to Slowdive’s new single ‘Kisses’ below: