You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishikesh Herway.

Slowdive formed in 1989 in Redding, England. They put out three albums between 1991 and 1995, and their sound helped define the Shugae's genre.

In 2017, the band released a critically acclaimed self-titled album, their first in over 20 years.

And in this episode, Singer and guitarist Neil Halstedt takes apart the slowdive song Sugar for the Pill.

I'm Neil Halstedt from the band Slowdive. We live by the coast, in a place called New Key, in Cornwall, down by the sea. And we have a lot of sea girls around here.

This song has elements of where I live and the first line. There's a Blizzard of Girls drumming in the wind.

It's inspired by walking around the coastline here and the very noisy sea girls we have.

The song originated from the sort of ascending guitar motif.

Why was just playing it on an acoustic guitar?

I started playing it in some sound checks, and then I added the delay onto it.

A lot of the songs start that way. They're often led by the kind of effects that are on them.

Even the first song we really had as a band, it was the song Slowdive.

It was the effect on the guitar, kind of, provided the inspiration for the song almost, because it allowed something quite simple to sound somewhat more interesting.

Here's a little bit of that first song they ever wrote. Slowdive, by Slowdive.

Okay, now back to sugar for the pill.

I liked the resonance of those notes. The initial guitar riff was something that had a emotional content for me.

And I think that it then fed the rest of the song and it fed the lyrics.

We went in a rehearsal room, just jammed through it. And Nick came up with a great bass line for it.

Nick's really good at coming up with these bass lines that really add something to the song.

He doesn't just hold the bass in down, there's something melodic happening there as well. So he came up with a really nice one.

Two months later we went to Exeter, which is where Rachel lived. We recorded a version there.

It had Simon's drums, it had the bass line, and it had me singing the melody but not a complete set of lyrics.

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