LUSH
Lovelife (4AD/Reprise) ***1/2
Sometimes I'm just not prepared to meet celebrities. I was working one summer in a hotel in downtown Cleveland, and one afternoon, I was taking a cigarette break outside the lobby. I saw this big tour bus on the street, and the next thing I know, Miki Berenyi from Lush is standing there, too. I sauntered over to her with a sheepish grin and stammered, "You're...um...Lush?!" She smiled affably and confirmed that, yes, she was one quarter of the pioneering British dream-pop band, so I told her that I really liked the latest album (1994's Split) and asked her for an autograph. She signed, "No Spinal Tap jokes, I promise-Miki" (this was Cleveland, remember), so I thanked her and slunk away like the loser I was.
It's been about two years since then, and Miki, Emma Anderson et al. have finally delivered another LP of delicious atmospheric pop, entitled Lovelife-an apt title since most of these songs deal with the disappointments and ambivalences of love and relationships. "Ladykillers," the first single off Lovelife, is a short treatise on a very modern sociological development-the sensitive stud of the '90s: "Hey you, the muscles and the long hair, / Telling me that women are superior to men... / So he talks for hours 'bout his sensitive soul... / But, Christ, this guy's too much." The haunting minor chord progressions are there, but the guitars are uncharacteristically crunchy, the pace is unusually fast, and Berenyi's voice drops to an unfamiliarly low register. The band is also playing more with dynamics and sudden textural shifts. The guitars drop out for half a verse, leaving Berenyi supported only by a barebones drums-and-handclaps accompaniment. At certain points, the music completely halts on a dime for short, half-spoken phrases from Anderson.
"The Childcatcher" similarly toys with unexpected sonic textures. It tells the story of a sixteen-year-old girl caught in a sad, perverse relationship with an older man: "'Baby,' he says, 'You are like the clean, white page and I the pen. The innocence I find in between your girlish thighs is like the fountain of youth to my old bones.'" The song opens with a screeching, effects-laden slide guitar riff and the low rumble of the floor tom. At different points in the song, the guitars give way to the low mutters of a man reading a poem, only to return in full force a few bars later. At the end of the song, the narrator shifts from third to first person, injecting a subtle emotional twist into the closing.
A few of these songs veer into Euro-trashy terrain, but the band seems wryly self-aware of its stylings. And for traditionalists, the album contains its fair share of classic Lush ambience. "500," penned by Anderson, bounces along with bright, chorus-heavy guitars and wistful pop harmonies. "Tralala," also one of Anderson's tunes, shimmers with beautiful, downward chord progressions, quiet, acoustic arpeggios, a string quartet, and piano. And Berenyi's "Last Night" is pure, sensual ambience, a churning paean to seduction and narcotic forgetfulness. Highly recommended, Lovelife shows Lush at a challenging point of evolution.
-I-Huei Go
Copyright 1996, The Yale Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.
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