I'm not quite ready yet to publish my retraction of what I said about the House of Love the other day - though ever since I went and listened to it in the middle of Greenwich Power Station, the insistent words of a certain Black Tambourine chorus have been clanging unavoidably through my head. But meanwhile, the following document has fallen into my hands. It purports to be the original Simon Reynolds review of the album from June 1988. I think a Reynolds expert has made it up to get some precious few of us slavering like idiots at sentences about sunbursts and sugarcubes. Personally, I know I lapped it up like a thirsty kitten. But what do the kids reckon? Is it for real, or merely 4 Reel? -------------------- "THE HOUSE OF LOVE" by THE HOUSE OF LOVE (Creation) WELL! I'm truly taken aback. That someone with nerves so jaded, with appetites accordingly so perversely attuned as myself, can be enthralled and utterly slain by...guitar shine, minor chord plangency, and melody...at this late hour...Well, it says something about the House of Love, "Christine" even has a "ba-ba-ba-ba-ba" refrain that, for once, elates rather than deflates me. "Christine" you must have heard about by now. A rare consensus has sprung up over this single round here, right across the spectrum from the Thanatos-worshipping cosmonauts to the lysergic dandy axis. It could well be this year's "Birthday". The literary side to the group was handled last week by John Wilde, so I guess I'll deal with the sound, which somehow he managed to overlook. This, to me, is like failing to notice the sun's gone into supernova. If ears were eyes, you'd need an arc-welding visor to face this dazzle. If you wanted to trace the origins of this lustrous, over exposed guitar sound, you'd have to look back to the innovations of Wire and McGeoch. But closest counterparts today are the jagged opalescence of Nice Strong Arm (true mavericks from Texas), and the ice-spar apocalypse of AR Kane. Remember that electric line in Van Morrison's "Ballerina":"the light is on the left side of your hair". This sound IS that light. "Love In A Car", "Happy", "Fisherman's Tale", "Touch Me", are all that close to the superlative "Christine". There are cadences and changes here that don't just trigger, they sound like the shiver down the spine. I haven't got to grips with the words yet, but I imagine they're about the moments so precious they make you terribly aware of mortality. Or they're about the things that help you ward it off:"deep blue eyes, takes me through my sleep". In "Christine" there's despondency - "and the whole world dragged us down" - but also the sheer ascent and severe hover of the guitars, a defiance of gravity. A though:the guitar sound is spring, the melody and lyrics autumn, "pleasure turn to poison as the bee-mouth sips..." Guy Chadwick's vocal persona falls somewhere between Go Between' dry and meditative, and Chill's chaste devotional. It's not a big voice, nor is it demonstrative, but its the right one, for this ravished gaze. Without resorting to any of the self-conscious gestures of the "New", The House Of Love make it all feel so new again. For once, we are talking "perfect pop". But there are no specific echoes or retrovibes, just a myriad of reverberations. This is no petrified model of lost perfection, but rather perfectly petrifying. In both senses:this is the beauty that terrorises, this is the beauty that turns to stone. Timeless transcendence. (SIMON REYNOLDS) ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the undead Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students" +-+ +-+ "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+ +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "peculiarly deranged fanbase" "frighteningly named +-+ +-+ Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+