Kevin Bronson on August 12th, 2020

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Andy Bell is known for his work in Ride, Oasis, Hurricane #1 and Liam Gallagher’s Beady Eye. This week, he announced the Oct. 9 release of a long-in-the-works solo album, “The View From Halfway Down.”

The album’s lead track is the Byrdsian “Love Comes in Waves,” a propulsive psych-rocker that sounds like a Stone Roses A-side. Which is to say, hallelujah.

Bell allows as how the album is “not about songwriting. There aren’t many verses or choruses, because this album is about sounds, a listening experience.”

Ride’s momentous reunion, which has fostered new albums in 2017 and ’19 after the quartet fell largely silent after a 1996 breakup, slowed Bell’s solo work, but the pandemic gave him a chance to revisit it. “I’ve always wanted to make a solo album, I’ve always said I would do it, although I never imagined it happening like, or sounding like, this one does,” he says. “I’d been sitting on this pile of almost finished tracks, along with all the other hundreds of ideas that had fallen by the wayside since I’ve been making music. Lockdown gave me the opportunity to find a way to present it to the world.”

||| Stream: “Love Comes in Waves”