throwback thursday: house of love
I mentioned before that I saw Peter Murphy at Astroworld in Houston and that House of Love opened up – and it was an amazing show.
I was a huge Peter Murphy fan by this time but I had not really heard of House of Love so some days before the show I went to Sound Warehouse (anyone remember that place?) and bought a House of Love tape.
It was the one pictured above – the second self-titled also known as the butterfly album.
This record (and really House of Love entirely) has such a contextual sound. They are the descendants of The Smiths and a very obvious precursor to Blur and Oasis. Something akin to the interwar years but with brit-pop. Their sound very much screams 1990!
It’s got a little bit of that low voice singing that was popular among the a factory records scene or The Church (though they were Australian) type bands as well as the jangley, crisp guitar work that you hear in other contemporaries like The Railway Children.
This reminds me.
Do you have sirius or xm satellite radio? Do you listen to the channel first wave? Well first wave should be pretty much playing House of Love, The Smiths, The Church, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Wonderstuff, Railway Children etc all the time but what it really seems to play is OMD, Squeeze, Dream Academy, Dead or Alive etc etc. Boo!
Now don’t get me wrong, those are all great bands but we need more of the later 80’s early 90’s classic alternative (which is what they call the music on that station) and not such a focus on the earlier 80′s stuff.
I guess that stuff got overshadowed with the rapid rise of grunge… Whatever.
Anyway, where was I?
That show at Astroworld was really good! Since they only had two records out at this time (and their first two were their best records) they played all the good songs off of those. Also as a bonus, we bought cheap general admission tickets which gets you a seat on the hill but the place was so empty that they let everyone from the hill go down to where the seats were so I ended up sitting third row center. It was pretty sweet!
(and holy shit! I just found this site that list all the shows from Astroworld! Strangely this show is not on there though I swear it happened and I was there…)
Great show.
Not so great a story. But anyway go listen to House of Love. All you need is the first two self-titled records.
This song is from the butterfly album.
There are a lot of slower, prettier songs on this record but I went ahead and picked this one since it is more of an upbeat jam.
Plus I love the line ‘when I’m drunk in a room, that’s when I think of you…’ I was drunk in a room quite a bit back then.
Good times…
Dan Sharber wrote this post. You might have noticed he’s written a lot of posts. Mainly of the throwback thursday variety. Thanks for reading!
they used to see themselves as not part of any indie scene– they would more likely name-check Nirvana and even Depeche Mode than the Charlatans or Railway Children. they were pretty ‘big’ in sound, yet shimmering and feminine at the same time. and also pretty damn good
yeah they were pretty great. many many bands don’t see themselves as part of the scene they are clearly in (and often don’t even listen to music at all similar to what they play). it’s strange. but they will always be closer to the railway children than nirvana in my mind!
-dan