Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 02:15:03 -0800 From: einexile the meek (einexile@NETCOM.COM) Subject: and another thing (lush) I have been meaning to post a review for almost two weeks now, and I just plain give up. I will never again have that kind of time on my hands, and if I do I will waste it, so... Single Girl is not a good indicator of the new Lush stuff. Lovelife is wonderful. It totally rocks and is a solid album. It manages to be a little bit funny at times and totally serious at others because the funny stuff is so bitter. There is an air of seriousness to it, and the result is that the album doesn't come apart in the way that Split sometimes did. Generally the songs are very pretty, either in the classic Lush sense or in a bright poppy way, but more interestingly there is an open air feeling to some of the album, a quality I have difficulty describing but always know when it's there. A dry, epic, regretful feeling that now and then shows its face in everything from Fields of the Nephilim to Renegade Soundwave (specifically in Pocket Porn). And actually Lush hit that note often on Scar and Mad Love. Here is it most prominent on Runaway. But the real gem of the album is Last Night, my early nomination for best song of 1996 and as good a piece of work as Lush have come up with since Scar, if ever. Everything I love about Desire Lines, Untogether, Monochrome, and other essential elements in there as well. It is a classic. Single Girl is indeed the least impressive song on the album, but as such it doesn't bother me. It's better than anything else on those singles and in this context is it a lot more fun. That's about all the time I have. Sorry for the cursory ramble but considering the venom I spat at Single Girl I thought it appropriate that I announce the complete and unconditional redemption of Lush as soon as possible. :) When did Starbucks start making good coffee? Wow. e Date: Sat, 17 Feb 1996 11:54:18 EST From: Dez (100702.123@COMPUSERVE.COM) Subject: Lush, Scheer eps etc Lush - Ladykillers. Face it, Single Girl was bollocks. Ladykillers sees Lush go all 1978 on us - the curse of Elastica strikes again. To be honest, the song is a huge improvement on Single Girl, but then what wouldn't be. Matador starts off wanting to be the Byrds' 'Everyone's Been Burned', but then goes into some sub-Mike Flowers easy listening tosh, full of ba-da-das. Written by Phil King who's probably old enough to remember The Fourth Dimension and the soundtrack to Hair. Yuk. Ex as a song is Lush-by-numbers, but the good news is that the arrangement seems to nod at Brotherhood-era New Order. Nice Barney-esque guitar. Dear Me is the pick of the tracks on the first ep - I think it's a track from Lovelife (here in demo form). It sound pretty glorious, a swoony waltz-time, multi-layered thing. The second has another three new songs. Heavenly is a great, soundtracky piece with a barely audible spoken-word contribution from Miki. This is more like it. Unfortunately, Carmen is crap. Boring chugging Britpop. Finally, and Emma's only solo writing contribution to these two eps (Carmen is co-written, with Miki having solo credit on four songs), we have Plums And Oranges. Trip-hop beats, a dub-passage. Wow. Cool. It's actually the sort of thing I'd like them to do more often. Now I might be going mad here, but this is an old song right? I've tried to fathom out which one, but I'm pretty sure that this is a song they've recorded before, but with a new (silly) title. Anyway, these eps are a mixed bag, but we can all breathe a huge sigh of relief that Single Girl (and to a lesser extent Ladykillers itself) seem to have been calculated shots at airplay and chart recognition. There are plenty of reasons here to indicate that Lush haven't lost it. And they never were the most consistent of bands anyway. Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 09:20:41 +0000 From: Andrew Norman (nja@LEICESTER.AC.UK) Subject: Treacle and Lush Now to more relevant matters. Lush's "Ladykillers" EPs - I haven't listened to the 7" (when I move house at the end of the week I must give serious consideration to sorting out my record deck - let's get the important things sorted first!). But the CDs are excellent, which is odd. When "Split" was released, it was preceded by two EPs which were basically Emma's ("Desire Lines") and Miki's ("Hypocrite"). As usual, I preferred Emma's songs. This time, the singles and B-sides have a similar division - "Single Girl" was mostly Emma, "Ladykillers" mostly Miki, but this time Miki's songs are far stronger. Title track is one of the less good ones, about being in a bar in Camden and meeting a man who goes on about being sensitive but really only wants to talk about himself and watch you fight his girlfriend. Phil's song, "Matador", is an attempt to win the world "ba da dum" trophy from Stereolab, "Ex" is about splitting up, and then the first real killer - a demo of "Dear Me", which I presume is going to be on the album. It's Miki backing herself, an introspective song about self-loathing with those slowed down backing vocals that they used to use years ago, very "Mad Love"-ish. Second CD: "Heavenly" is another great one, piano and atmospheric sounds with subliminal whispering lyrics, extremely sexy. "Carmen" is an Anderson/Berenyi song, great lyrics, and "Plums and Oranges" is Emma's only solo composition, a weak song given a dub production, lots of echoing and effects, which saves it. Unlike "Single Girl", there are three or four really good B-sides here, which wouldn't disgrace an album. There was a large article on them in Friday's Grauniad, which I can't be bothered to type in. A summary: they are trying to sing more clearly now they have more self-confidence, so people can no longer assume they are singing about "fairies, elves and clouds". Miki doesn't want to be labelled as a man-hater just because she writes bitter songs about specific men. She's responsible for encouraging the blokes to write songs. 4AD are doing their best to promote the album, Miki thinks the "ladette" phenomenon is a load of bollocks, and they have been doing a lot of writing because of the need to come up with seven B-sides per single. [Frankly this shows - they have released almost an hour of new stuff this year even before the album, and it has been rather patchy]. "Ladettes", by the way, are a feeble attempt to persuade people that a lot of women in short skirts and push-up bras talking dirty on late night TV are some sort of feminist post-modernist ironic blow for womens rights rather than a turn-on for the boys. Date: Sat, 2 Mar 1996 20:31:52 +0100 From: Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen (larsi@IFI.UIO.NO) Subject: New... stuff Lush - Ladykiller 1 & 2 Now, I've listened to these two thingies several times, and I still can't recall anything about them. The title track is Elastica-by-numbers, even though it's not as bad as Single Girl. I think. The rest of the tracks (six-count-em-six) just sort are there. I'm sure they're nice and everything. I probably should just listen to them some more. "Plums and Oranges" seems like a nice track. It's the only songs written by Emma. All the rest are by Miki, more or less. A clue! Miki bad Emma good? Is that it? Why have Lush released 14 tracks b-side tracks? Date: Wed, 20 Mar 1996 09:24:47 +0000 From: Andrew Norman (nja@LEICESTER.AC.UK) Subject: Lush, Cocteaus, Stereolab Lush - Lovelife. Great album. A dozen pop songs, just right for one side of a C90 (I have finally found something to couple with the Air Miami album). The Jarvis Cocker duet works better than I expected, and "Olympia" is the sort of song Stereolab could cover without too much adjustment. Despite the cleaner, brighter production, there's still a lot of atmosphere, odd samples and poetry recitals, and the songwriting is consistently good. Don't be put off by the mountain of sub-standard B-sides, the album is absolutely superb. Date: Fri, 26 Apr 1996 13:23:35 +0200 From: Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen (larsi@IFI.UIO.NO) Subject: Stina Nordenstam + Annie Williams = Anja Garbarek Lush - Lovelife Like, like -- yecch! It's not that this is a bad album, but as a group that has produced near-godhead (the Mad Love ep, for instance), this just won't do. Elastica does this thing badly enough -- we don't need Lush to do a second-rate imitation of something that's definitely not worth imitating in the first place. I have yet to hear anything that could be termed "britpop" that didn't such wet farts out of dead pigeons. Oasis, Blur, Cast (ad nauseum) -- burn in hell! I'm not declaring Lush dead just yet, though. They may still have something worthwhile in them. Let's hope this album flopped miserably so that Emma can take over the band and do more dancey & dreamey stuff.