Lush — Lovelife (2023 Remaster)
Qobuz reissue review (August 2023)
For fans of a group who built their reputation on “Sweetness and Light” and “Starlust,” the opening moments of Lush’s third album were a shock. The brisk, forward clarity of “Ladykillers” — from the thick, snapping drum tone to the burly, aggressive precision of the guitars, not to mention the intelligible feminist lyrics — were far from the reverb-drenched shoegaze textures of the band’s previous records. That clarity persists throughout most of Lovelife, both lyrically and sonically, so immediately, the album’s narrative became “Lush goes Britpop” (after all, Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker showed up to sing a duet with Miki Berenyi on “Ciao!”). The world had turned since the halcyon days of “the scene that celebrates itself,” and effects-drenched guitars and ethereal vocals had been supplanted in the British popular consciousness by lads who swore by their Rickenbackers and at least three Kinks albums. But, fun fact: Lush had always been a “Britpop” band, all the way back to the caffeinated rush of their spiky debut EP. (Berenyi had been playing a Rickenbacker the whole time, too!) For Lush, Lovelife was more a return to form than a capitulation to style. To be sure, the crystalline sonic approach taken by the band and producer Pete Bartlett gives Lovelife a sound that’s quite distinct from the whoosh-and-swoosh of Spooky or the miasmic Split, but whether it’s the thick harmonies and gentle textures of “Papasan” or the wall of guitars on “Heavenly Nobodies” or even the tra-la-las of a song that is called “Tralala,” there’s no mistaking that this is a Lush album. Although the sugar-rush confection of “Single Girl” seems a bit of an outlier, it’s still a maddeningly catchy number that provided the album a much-needed boost on the charts and has held up incredibly well over the years; it’s also only slightly less infectious than the razor-sharp “Childcatcher.” Darker numbers like “Olympia” and “I’ve Been Here Before” provide dynamic contrast, while the dubby “Last Night” reads like a Split outtake. In total, it’s an album that’s far more diverse than its reputation would lead one to believe, and is an excellent summation of the band’s strengths.
