What happened to LUSH?

“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