Listening to some of 2017's shoegaze survivors put me in mind of 1988's great indie guitar hopes, Creation's House Of Love. Signed in 1987 Guy Chadwick, already a veteran of several bands but in 1986 inspired by seeing The Mary Chain, put a band together from an advert in Melody Maker and Terry Bickers dropped into his lap. Bickers was an understated but mercurial whizzkid. Much of the 'sonic cathedrals' aspect of shoegaze can be traced back to Bickers wall of fuzz and melody. Singles Christine and Destroy The Heart took them to the top of the Festive Fifty and the NME and briefly they looked like the boys most likely to. Then drugs, disagreements, major label problems and ego took over- and so did Manchester- and they never really recovered (despite making some songs that still stand up on various follow up lps and singles). But as well as the indie shimmer they could also be direct and full on. Road is drama filled, widescreen late 80s indie, chiming, ringing guitars and existential dread in the vocals followed by Guy's indie boy dream of freedom- 'Steal a car, the highway calls, stick some pins, in your toes, suck your cheeks, dance boy down the road'.
Road
Album track Salome enters on driving drums and a killer riff before Guy comes in with 'I love the way she cries...' Bickers fires off blasts of guitar. Echoes of The Bunnymen in this one, not least Chadwick's closing lines 'Salome is dead, the king is free... I'm sailing on the sea'.
Salome
The dreamier side of them is captured well on this 1989 appearance of Channel 4's Big World Cafe. Whatever it is, they had it briefly.
1 comment:
House Of Love made a transitional sound in the very best meaning of the term. They bridge the Post Punk/Indie into the future sounds of Shoegaze and Manchester, even ahem, Britpop.
You are so right SA, for a time, they certainly had it.
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