Sinister: This Year's Birthday. Possibly.

[P F]

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)





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