Shoegaze Pioneers: Revisiting "Gala" by Lush

Lush

When I was young, I always prided myself on being up on music, and then, in 1990, I moved to Salt Lake City to go to college.  It was like moving into a musical black hole.

Utah is not like that now, home to bands like Neon Trees, The Used, and Joshua James.  But back then, it was always three years behind.  They had an alternative radio station, X96, but they were playing stuff like The Smiths, Depeche Mode, and The Cure.  As appealing as that sounds now, in 1990, that stuff was sooo 1987.

Now, I realize that Phoenix is no cultural mecca, but, in the days before internet, perhaps its proximity to Los Angeles made music a little more accessible.  It was home to Meat Puppets, Gin Blossoms, and a healthy punk and metal scene that included JFA, Junior Achievement, Mighty Sphincter, Sacred Reich, and Pedifile.  Not to mention an awesome alternative radio station, KUKQ, with its iconic deejay, Jonathan L, who organized the very first alternative festival, Q-Fest, before Lollapalooza was even dreamed of - right there in Arizona.

On Christmas Break, I went home to Arizona, and it was like coming up for water.  I went to my friend Steve's house, armed with a stack of blank cassettes to record any new music he might have.  One of those bands was Lush, a British band on the prestigious 4AD label.  The album was the compilation, "Gala".  Armed with new music, I went back to Utah and listened to these cassettes - a lot.  I was a college student, so I did a lot of walking and riding the bus with enormous headphones always on my head.

Gala

Apart from the colorful album cover by Vaughan Oliver and 23 Envelope, I noticed that Miki Berenyi's overdubbed vocals reminded me of Elizabeth Fraser's from Cocteau Twins - not a surprise coming from a 4AD band - except that the music, while still swirly and ethereal, was hard and biting, not like Cocteau Twins.  Lush, for me, was part of the next-gen lineup of musicians for the label.  In the '80s, it had been Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, Throwing Muses, and ending out the decade with The Pixies.  Lush, for me, represented the newness of the '90s, music that was unfamiliar to me.  Since being back from Utah, when it came to being familiar with the music world, I felt, for the first time, being out of my element, out of touch - a feeling I have felt often since in my many years.

Back then, no one knew to call it "shoegaze", although that's what it would be called eventually.  To me, it was swirly, watery music like Cocteau Twins, with a vocalist whose lilt was like Liz Fraser's, except pushed into the background - it was like that, except that it was harder, had an edge.  No one knew what shoegaze was back then, except that it is easier to see how things progressed and were influenced - all from the perspective of looking back in time.

At the end of 1990, 4AD wanted to introduce an American audience to the music of Lush, and so they released "Gala", which was essentially a collection of the three EPs that the band had released previously in the UK.  As a result, the groups of songs on this collection have a very different sound - different EPs, different producers, different feels.

The first EP was 1989's "Scar", produced by Jon Fryer, of This Mortal Coil fame.  The first album is raw and unvarnished, much like My Bloody Valentine's first album, "Isn't Anything".  This includes "Bitter", a dead ringer for The Smiths - the machine-like drumming, the fierce strumming just like Johnny Marr's, and Berenyi doing her best female Morrissey.  "Second Sight" is one of my favorite Lush songs, because it goes through several tempo changes - starting out billowing like My Bloody Valentine, picking up tempo like Throwing Muses with a punk gallop that would make David Narcizo proud with tremulous vocals emulating Kristin Hersh, and then devolving into chaotic noise like Sonic Youth.   "Etheriel" lives up to its name, and "Baby Talk" has rubbery guitar leads over a pounding bassline.  There are two versions of "Thoughtforms" - one soaring and the other clear and muted, as well as two version of "Scarlet", one an extended play.

In 1990, their second EP was "Mad Love", which are the songs that I perhaps know this band best for.  One thing that I didn't know was that this collection of songs was produced by Robin Guthrie of Cocteau Twins.  This surprised me, because I had always just assumed that Guthrie had unwittingly influenced the shoegaze movement from afar, but here he actively produces a record that defines the sound.  The songs here are clearer and uninhibited.  If they resemble Cocteau Twins, then it is mainly from the early era where Cocteau had a more primal, less ethereal, sound, like the 1983 John Peel Sessions or on the EP "Peppermint Pig".  "De-Luxe" is arguably the most recognizable song by the band with its guitar hooks swathed in reverb, and Berenyi doing her vocal acrobatics.  "Leaves Me Cold" is perhaps one of my favorite songs with the guitars turned down to a gothic chill and Merenyi's vocals descending into dark scales, a strong bass ascending over the screeching guitars.  "Downer" is the perfect shoegaze song - aggressive and hard with angelic harmonies offering a musical contradiction.

The songs from their third EP, "Sweetness and Light", are perhaps the most uninteresting as the band seems to settle into what people would think shoegaze sounds like.  The songs - the title track, "Sweetness and Light", "Sunbathing" and "Breeze" - drift like dandelion chaff on a summer wind, coalescing and swirling, the flitting guitars nearly distinguishable from the hushed vocals.  They are good songs, but not nearly as unbridled and throaty as the other songs.  There is also a lovely cover of "Hey Hey Helen" by ABBA, which sounds as if it by done by Sex Pistols fronted by Kate Bush - in other words, sublime.

After taking a nearly twenty-year break, Lush reunited last year, releasing a brand new EP earlier this year (that I might have to review), as well as embarking on a tour with newer shoegaze artist, Tamaryn (whom I will review soon).  It pleases me that this band got back together, as they were so important to me in my youth, being at the front of a genre that is still my preferred style of music.  Now, if we can only get Cocteau Twins to reunite...

Retro-Review: Lowlife's "Permanent Sleep" Is Awake Again

Lowlife

Have you ever liked a band for decades that you didn't even know existed?  I did.

Like everyone, I have had some of my favorite music introduced by someone else.  A friend of mine from the suburbs of Chicago gave me a mix CD back in 1986 that introduced me to music from the prestigious 4AD label that included selections from Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, Clan of Xymox, This Mortal Coil, Felt, and a couple of songs "Permanent Sleep" and "Mother Tongue" that were labeled as by an artist named Will Heggie.  I fell in love with this music and started trying to find out as much as I could about them.

As I have said many times in the past, Cocteau Twins have been one of my favorite bands of all time.  I have loved every phase that they have gone through - from the eerie gothic tones of their first album to the pompuous faux-Greek bacchnalia of "Treasure" to the fluffy effervescence of "Victorialand" to the ambient electronica of their latter days.  The first album, "Garlands", still always has a special place in my heart.  It is a dark album with furious bass strumming and scratchy guitars offset by Elizabeth Frasier's nonsensical caterwauls.

During the course of my investigations, I learned that the bassist on "Garlands" was one Will Heggie, a founding member of Cocteau Twins who left after the first album to, as my friend told me, to pursue a solo career.  I really loved those songs by Will Heggie, but I was never able to find them on record, which wasn't too surprising.  Most of the stuff I listened to back then was either indie or import.  In the golden age before the internet, if you didn't live in a cultural mecca like Chicago or New York, such music was hard to find, and one had to save their pennies for excursions to record stores that specialized in imports.

But even after the advent of online music, I couldn't find anything by Will Heggie, or scarecly even a mention of him beyond his connection to Cocteau Twins.  Lo and behold, just recently, I did a research and learned that Will Heggie did not launch into a solo career like I was led to believe.  Instead, he joined an existing band of fellow Scotsmen and formed the band Lowlife (produced and managed by Brian Guthrie, brother to Cocteau Twin's iconoclastic guitarist, Robin Guthrie).  Lowlife had a long and distinguished career before disbanding in 1997, and I had never even heard about them.  So suddenly, I am able to download the music that was so dear to me.  (I had lost the cassette decades earlier.)

I still have yet to listen to any of the other albums in Lowlife's catalog, but I did download their debut album, "Permanent Sleep".  It is unique to become so captivated by an album that, released in 1986, is 28 years old!  And it stands up fairly well.  It has some markers of the early '80s goth scene of the UK, a bit like Siouxsie & the Banshees or Bauhas, but it has some of the precursors of the shoegaze movement which wouldn't emerge for another few years with bands like Lush or My Bloody Valentine.  In all honesty, this music is shoegaze before any such term existed.

That is me in the middle in 1986.  The cassette on the table is my first exposure to Cocteau Twins and Lowlife.

Yes, Will Heggie definitely took some of the Cocteau Twins sound with him to Lowlife, but, to be fair, he helped create that sound.  It is a well known that Cocteau Twins influenced many bands from the Sundays, Sigur Ros, Bel Canto, Phantogram, to even Coldplay.  But Lowlife can't be numbered as one of those bands, because they emerged right from Cocteau Twins.

As I listen to this music three decades later, it is easy to see the common thread that went through all of these bands - including Lowlife.  The melody is driven by the heavy double bass with the guitars, abstract and minimalist, used only to create atmosphere and a static texture, all held together by a low voice, crashing against all of the other sounds.  This comes right from Joy Division, the band that practically set the whole tone for underground music of the '80s.  I didn't see it then, but I see it now.

Songs of note are "Cowards Way", the title track, "Sometime Something", "Gallery of Shame", and my favorite, "From Side to Side".

If you are interested in innovative '80s music that never hit the mainstream, this this is a good album to check out.  I am surprised that, despite my limited exposure to it that it took me so long to locate.  This is truly a treasure trove.