Lush — Split (2023 Remaster)
Qobuz reissue review (August 2023)
The choice of “Desire Lines” as one of two singles simultaneously released a few weeks before the release of Split was a bold one for Lush, a band who made their reputation on spiky noise-drenched guitar pop numbers. Although the song is among one of the band’s most beautiful and unique, it’s also seven-and-a-half minutes long, and most of those minutes are spent in a hazy, midtempo narcosis; a snappy single, it is not. To be fair, the other single released alongside it was “Hypocrite,” a crisp and clear bit of rage-pop that clocks in at under three minutes. While their commercial instincts may not have been the most astute, the twinned effect of “Hypocrite” and “Desire Lines” goes a long way to predicting the pleasures and challenges of Lush’s second full-length album. Split sways back and forth between astringent pop and melancholic atmospheres on its dozen tracks, giving fans and critics alike plenty to point to throughout. While some folks heard a midtempo slog and others heard a straight-ahead dream-pop record, in truth, Split is a remarkably dynamic album that finds primary songwriters Miki Berenyi and Emma Anderson taking some adventurous chances. Some tracks delve deeply into spaciness — “Never-Never” tops the runtime of “Desire Lines” with its eight-plus minutes of echoey percussion, well-placed string arrangements, and ethereal vocals all slowly building to an emotional climax — while others, like “Starlust” and “Blackout” are high-octane doses of straightforward power pop. But it’s when Lush finds the middle ground that things get the most interesting. The funky post-punk groove “Undertow” sounds utterly unlike anything the band had done before or since, with a bass-forward approach that surprisingly jells perfectly with the accompanying bristling guitars. Likewise, the confident strut of “Lit Up” and the warm grooves of “Lovelife” both manage to be as dreamy as they are direct, making Split a richly rewarding outing from a band that was clearly not content with revisiting the same approach of their debut.
