What happened to LUSH?

Drummer Chris Acland -- a virtual CLONE of Peter Murphy

It was weird -- I had seen photos of him (and the band live) but this comparison didn't leap out at me until a MM article mentioned the resemblance, late 1991 or so I think. The photo with it featured his eyes and above in light and the rest in shadow, and the way he glowered made it all perfectly obvious!

Friend of mine interviewed him a few weeks before he killed himself, said that he seemed perfectly happy and chatty. You really can't tell...

After that the sound veers some there are fine tracks on split and even on lovelife, but I could never love them as much as I adore the early records, which remain frosted december heaths.

On the Sleeper/Echobelly mistake: they were kind of contemporaries but Emma and Miki had been contemporaries of MBV too, I guess

My statement? Well, the bit about falling completely asleep on my feet in front of Sonic Youth is entirely true. I'm not saying Lush blew a new part in my hair and set the room on fire, but they were visually more engaging than Sonic Youth. But, y'know, I've never been a member of Sonic Youth's hallelujah choir, so ya might factor that into your assessment.

The idea of getting paperwork or voicemail from Miki Berenyi seems really strange to me. It would be like having Kevin Sheilds fix your plumbing or something. You would sit there thinking "oh my god, oh my god, Kevin from MBV is snaking my toilet."

But as the others upthread note, "De Luxe" = winner.

tbf it didn't stay in print - I got a 4AD catalog in about 1994/5 and it wasn't in that. so it probably was "limited edition" just not all that limited.

cad0017cd

so that's a UK catalogue number. i think everything on it was still in print, but i bought a copy anyway

the boxset had Gala as a seperate cd.

cad0017cd

That's it. I remember how pleased I was to get Gala. I had a CD boombox in my room and now I didn't have to go downstairs to the family record player to listen to the Mad Love EP.

limited to how many we can sell, I think.

I was an absolutely rabid Lush fan from Scar onward, living in Tasmania it was impossible to get their releases except thru contortions, mail order etc. and then at the end of 1990, there on the shelf was a fckn ALBUM I had never heard about. Super disappointed to realise it was a comp, bought it anyway.

I had bought the Scar CD single before but couldn't find Mad Love or Sweetness & Light anywhere at the time. I grew up in Worcester and there was one indie shop there that was tiny and didn't have much in, in fact I think I bought Scar when my mum took us to Cheltenham one day. went to Reading Uni and a 2nd hand shop had Gala so I bought it immediately.

Will never forget waiting weeks for Mad Love and then cranking “De-Luxe” when it arrived, pure bliss. Still love it.

I still have a vivid memory of hearing "Sweetness and Light" on KROQ in the early morning and waiting for what felt like an hour for someone to announce what it was they played. Bought Gala that afternoon - didn't know it was a comp.

I knew Gala was a comp because, by 1997 when I bought it, there was a very active online community for 4AD fans (the 4AD-L mailing list). I had the bad luck, though, to become a fan of Lush and Cocteau Twins in that period between the release of their respective last albums and the announcement of their tragic ends.

I was pretty active on 4ad-l around then or slightly earlier. I think a few of us were (Ned of course).

Thanks to set list.fm I figured out when I saw Lush live. April 3, 1992 in Tampa, Florida. I don’t remember who the opening act was. In those days it seemed to be Flesh For Lulu half the time.

I was really surprised to read from Miki Berenyi's autobiography that Lush toured with Lollapalooza after the Spooky album. I always misremembered the Lollapalooza thing as after Split, because the latter’s sound seemed to fit better in an American alternative rock context than the UK-specific shoegaze of Spooky.

xp Babes in Toyland opened for Lush when I saw them in March of 1992.

Ooh I wish it was them. Possibly I came late and missed the opening act. I had to drive across the state of Florida to get there.

I just looked deeply into this and apparently Flaming Lips opened in April 1992. Definitely missed them, or they made no impression whatsoever.

“the UK-specific shoegaze of Spooky”.

I didn’t see them live around this time, but a lot of reviewers of Spooky were disappointed that it had been Cocteau-d to death by Robin Guthrie and did not reflect the energy of the live versions.

yes I interviewed Emma after Split and she described being treated like “lab rats” for the Spooky sessions, apparently Chis had to play a Simmons kit and was quantised to death.

Only saw Lush once, that was in Manchester in 1989 around the time that Scar came out. Can't find any confirmation of this online but my memory says they were supporting Galaxie 500 who were touring off the back of On Fire

I swear that I read back in the 1990s or early 2000s that Acland did not actually know how to play the drums that well, so Guthrie’s click-track interventions on Spooky were actually helpful. But Berenyi’s biography claims Acland already had years of drumming experience before joining Lush. Now I don’t know what to believe.

well, they sounded pretty great on the Sweetness and Light EP, Guthrie had nothing to do with that. Scar isn’t exactly virtuoso performances but they were all pretty undercooked when the hype hit.

At a guess, they may have been playing to a click-track to get the effects/delays to sync up perfectly?

Did not realise this had been recorded this way though, will try some beatmatching next time I‘m on my decks to test it out.

Yep that’s exactly it, the timing/phase on the delays and modulations required regular time since Guthrie usually worked with drum machines.

My sense of Lush of the four times I saw them first time through was: 1990 — tentative; 1991 — more settled; 1992 twice — much more of a solid live band. Sadly didn’t catch them again until the reunion which was nice but obviously its own vibe.

ha, I was on 4ad-l too. With time a lot of these criticisms seem absurd; Spooky is frankly as good as Gala and Split and the differences in production and approach are are fairly slight to me now. I'm still not really a fan of the last album though.

Berenyi’s autobiography claims Rippon was the weak link in the band.

It used to be a bit of fan lore that when Rippon left the band, he hawked his fictionalized memoir about touring with Lush (under the title Cold Turkey Sandwich) to publishers, but none accepted it. Berenyi mentions nothing about this, and I wonder why. But if interest in Lush remains high enough that Berenyi got to publish a memoir, I’m surprised that Rippon hasn’t just put his old manuscript up on Amazon or another self-publishing channel.

I remember seeing a live performance of Covert on Paul King’s 120 Minutes, and being absolutely blown away, and really excited for Spooky. Then I came out, all slathered in worst Guthrie f/x — it frankly sounded like he didn’t have faith in the band and gilded them to death.

There’s a superb remix of Superblast! by Gil Norton, and shows what Spooky could’ve been with more sympathetic mixing. That version is also on the video, peels the skin right off my face every time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uU5DU7P83E

“Then it came out,” brb I got Dr Freud on the phone

I think Guthrie's production is what makes the best bits of Spooky so good (and much prefer it to Sweetness And Light). One of my favourite bits is the swirling guitar sound in Ocean that jumps between your left and right ears when you listen with headphones.

I am anti-Guthrie on this. much prefer everything else they did apart from the Lovelife album to Spooky

completely love the Guthrieness

Her twitter follows are abysmal

I think this has been noted itt

tbh Emma wasn't much better, wall-to-wall FBPE, but maybe less TERFs

cool. binning them asap nothing was lost really

what does "wall-to-wall FBPE" mean

FBPE = follow back pro-europe. basically a Twitter siren for centrists for whom nothing matters but Brexit. NB I did not vote for Brexit just tbc. basically a load of "sensible" twats who "hate the Tories" but want to replace them with people who will enact policies that are almost exactly the same as the Tories but they might grimace a bit and say sorry before they do it.

wonder if a 'Glasgow' label will reissue them next

ah see I keep seeing references to this but I don't know which label this refers to

I appreciate Guthrie’s contributions. I’m not sure that Lush themselves were capable of making a great album 100% all on their lonesome. Guthrie’s production is no different than, say, the strings on Split that give that album the extra edge.

I dislike both Guthrie’s Christmas tree production and how weak 60% of Spooky’s songs are. Found Emma’s twitter tedious but hadn’t realised Miki was a reactionary as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc-qPHoqr74
This film on the criterion streaming?

Yep, in the US anyway