What happened to LUSH?

For a long time I thought I was really into shoegaze, but for the most part it was just that I was a fan of Lush.

I was pretty circumspect on reunions for awhile until one crazed MBV show with a crowd mostly made up of crowd surfing kids who were totally excited that they had a chance to see MBV. Happy to see more kids at these shows than greyhairs.

Curve next please.

Just in case the box set is too limited/expensive: are the compilations fairly comprehensive in collecting all the non-album tracks? I don't really care if I'm missing alternate versions of songs.

Announced earlier today that North American dates of some sort forthcoming.

I listened to Split the most out of their albums, but Gala made more of an impression because high school. Also we were impressed that they made it to Texas multiple times to play shows! The first Sing-Sing album is pretty solid too... the Feels Like Summer EP on Bella Union is fantastic.

xxp Topolino and Gala are weird; one collects EP tracks pre-Spooky and one compiles the later, final album B's but the Spooky-era B sides and Split era B sides from their 'mid period' don't have an attendant comp. if you get me. so even a box set with obscurities won't give you the full hit. which is a bit shit. what all bands need to do is do what The Beatles box sets did; have a specific comp (Past Masters) that mops up all the stuff not collected elsewhere.

just about *everything* (comps, EPs, B sides, etc) they ever did is on Spotify if that's any help.

Thank you. The tracklisting for the box isn't out yet so it might still have everything. 4ad seems to put singles and eps on mp3 stores so I might just get the loose ends on amazon someday.

xpost: I was wondering about the 'Spooky'/'Split' era b-sides, hopefully the box mops them up too.

So I guess I'm going to the Saturday show? Anyone else score tickets?

I did not, but then again I'm in a completely different country

Curve next please.
― Elvis Telecom, Tuesday, September 29, 2015 6:31 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Agreed - Curve and Single Gun Theory top my list. Curve's dissolve seemed more due to monetary/new challenges reasoning, so holding out hope for a reunion. What I've heard of Dean Garcia's follow-on work (Headcase, albums w/ his daughter Rose) hasn't piqued interest like Curve and Toni's presence. "Die Like a Dog" came up on an iPod shuffle the other day, and still sounded fresh to my ears. The "Pink Girl with the Blues" EP was a great return after time off - would be great if they did it again.

Elvis Telecom is OTM

Saturday for me too

(even from supposed fans who are all "but they were so much better on their early stuff, before they mastered their instruments and their sound and turned up the vocals so we had to listen to their actual ~thoughts~ not vague angelic lady-cooing") just reminds me of all the misogynist battles I fought 20 years ago and don't want to retread yet again.

lmao this type of lazy self-serving psychoanalysis never gets old

Heads up, career spanning box set out next month:

http://lush.sandbaghq.com/home/chorus.html

Has it got everything? At least it's decently priced.

Everything and then some.

ordered !
i only have had lovelife on cd, and for that price i aint letting this one go (like i did the colourbox boxset much to my regret)
ta for the tip off.

cool!!!

peel sessions!!!

jeez, it really looks like they compiled EVERYTHING. no stone unturned.

Excellent

the only thing missing that struck me was the Superblast single remix.

TQ: A Mad Love: An Interview With Lush

"...having been given the chance of a sneak preview, I can confirm that the new EP is good. In fact, it is very good."

Nice.

"

didn't know they covered Vashti Bunyan.

also:

We did feel that we weren't taken seriously in this country as
songwriters

this is beyond criminal!!

Jim Abbiss, who had produced the Ladytron album The Witching Hour

!!!!

that album had such a massive sugary sparkly sound, perfect for lush

New interview -- and new photo!

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/dec/03/lush-reunited-we-were-seen-as-a-band-whod-turn-up-to-the-opening-of-a-packet-of-crisps

Berenyi, instantly recognisable even though her distinctive shocking-pink 90s hair is now ink-black, gets told off for vaping indoors.

Gough did, however, wangle Lush the opening slot on Perry Farrell’s 1992 Lollapalooza tour of the US. Anderson and Berenyi were the only women to appear on the main stage, unless you count the industrial rock group Ministry’s dancers, which you probably shouldn’t. Among their touring companions, Ministry were fun, Pearl Jam gracious, the Red Hot Chili Peppers obnoxious and Ice Cube standoffish. “We wrote on his mirror: ‘Hey Cube, say hi to Lush,’ in lipstick,” Anderson remembers. “He came in and said: ‘Some people got no respect.’ We were quite drunk.”

excellent.

Is the interviewer actually colourblind? Miki never had shocking pink hair. It was pillarbox red.

(I know my Manic Panic colours!)

That reminds me; no idea if this has been posted on the thread but I found it really really interesting:

http://myoldman.org/2013/10/03/bill-anderson-by-emma/

christ some of that is pretty heartbreaking. i'm glad they're back. good luck to them.

Is the interviewer actually colourblind?

He's a poster here with a name, you could just address him

I know this is weird for ILM but I tend to pay attention to the name of the person being interviewed, not the person doing the interview. Crazy, I know right?

It's just a very very Grauniad mistake to make, when mentioning that a woman is known for her distinctive hair colour, to get that hair colour wrong.

I dunno, her hair color could have been hot pink manic panic... especially if she had to bleach it first.

Memory is a funny thing - yes, definitely pillarbox red later on, but I could've sworn there was a photo of Miki B with Graeme Naysmith of Pale Saints in early 1990 where it was kind of mauve. And whaddya know... it was a B&W photo.

the box set is really a pretty reasonable price!

I can't remember it ever having been anything other than a bright orangey-red

wow, crucifix heaven is pretty neat

oops, that was for the Felt thread

Thanks for that link (myoldman), Branwell

This keeps picking at my brain, so I'm going to have to type it out, why that mistake bothers me. (It's not implied as a dig at a music journalist, or a specific organ, because sic or anyone else goes at that again; more something that's more generally symptomatic.)

I am always the first person to insist that an artist's visual semiotics are hugely important! Image, haircuts, clothes, these things do *matter* in why people love bands and why bands are important or influential. It's more that... image and visual semiotics rely upon signifiers and associations. Even subtle things like colours are emotive and come with charged with pre-established meanings. It does not feel like an accident that (at least) two people, including one that was so confident of the memory that he published it in a national newspaper, despite accompanying pictorial evidence to the contrary, described Berenyi's hair as "shocking pink" when she was well-known for fire-engine / stop-sign / pillarbox *red* hair. And this is about the cultural *meaning* and associations of "shocking pink".

If you think this is just a simple error of mis-attribution in the description of a colour, try to imagine this: a music journalist describing Kraftwerk "taking to the stage in their iconic/distinctive/characteristic shocking pink shirts and black ties". It's the same exact colour, but that error of memory would be unthinkable.

I'm just disappointed with Lush interviews now, like I was constantly being disappointed with interviews, then. Like, how every interview will mention Berenyi's pillarbox red hair, but would not mention her cherry red 12-string. And that's not just quibbling "oh, only musos care about guitars" because reviews of Ride managed to mention "rave music with Rickenbackers" and reviews of MBV always managed to talk about the swooping sounds of their tremolos, even if the journalists didn't always know what the piece of kit was called. And how completely *integral* - not to mention distinctive and unique - Berenyi's use of the 12-string was to their music. Yet people will mention her hair colour a hundred times before mentioning her guitar?

I mean, that 12-string sound... I was just listening to Gala all over again, and on the those early EPs it was so amazing. Most bands of that era who used a 12-string would make like Ride or MBV in their Strawberry Wine phase, and jangle away in this really retro, pseudo-60s Beatlesy-Byrdsy prettiness. Lush managed to have a 12-string that did hark to the 60s at all, it was a much more aggressive, punky, whallop of a sound. I was always fascinated by that guitar because it didn't *sound* like a jangly, trebley Rickenbacker. It was something that sounded both (LOL) Lush and swirly and glittering, but was also huge and solid and as brash as punk, like sandpaper made out of diamonds, beautiful and deadly. It's hard to write about that music without coming across all ~cathedrals of sound~ because it's that weird contradiction of a tone that is both solid as marble and uncompromising as a concrete wall, but as intricate as the tracery on a Gothic arch. That whole "glittering shards of sound" thing was hugely down to the distinctive sound of that 12-string and how Berenyi played it. This was something that was particularly noticeable on seeing them live (which I was lucky enough to do, several times) but is easy to lose in the swirls of the records.

I know that they were always all about demystification - and I think that Berenyi and Anderson's constant self-effacement probably fuels the tradition that people do not talk about their craft or their instrument choices and aesthetic choices (or worse, project those choices onto the nearest (male) producer) as opposed to their hair or their mateyness or their drinking habits. But self-effacement is a game that's enforced upon women, and it's always lose-lose.

Yes. It *is* criminal, how underrated they were as songwriters, and also as authors of their own, intensely unique - and highly influential - sound. But this thing, where interviews write about their haircolour (badly wrongly, as it may be) and their drinking habits and their relationships; but never ever about their music. This contributes to that act.

Anyway, this has reminded me that I need to order the box sex (provided it's available in CD and not vinyl or cassette or etched into the stones of sonic cathedrals) and I'm excited to hear this new EP.

Thankfully it is on CD. Hoping it's not too limited. I'm waiting for it to pop up on amazon sometime today.

actual IRL LOL @ "box sex*" typo

*set