Customer Reviews

Lovelife

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a great off-the-beaten-path album. Years ago I got this for one or two songs and I find that I play it quite often, usually from beginning to end. There are surprisingly few albums that I do that with.

Their is a fair range of styles, but it basically is a girl-voice band with attitude, but style. The name "lush" is appropriate -- for the style and the playing. Kinda a laid-back lush playing.

The album starts out with an in-your-face rejection of womanizers ("Ladykillers"), but realizes that both sexes are doing the same things to each other. "Heaven Nobodies" is almost like that -- something snappy but you almost forget about the title before the song ends. "Shake Baby Shake" is almost a Kate Bush simple tune (ala the movie "She's Having a Baby"). "I've Been Here Before" is almost a morning-after to the "Ladykillers" opening -- a realization of what is going on around the scene. "Papason" and "Tralala" are more mellow and evening songs.

If there is one song that I play over and over, it would have to be "Last Night". It takes me back to evenings of watching "Miami Vice" with the driving down slick streets in a fast, sleek car -- an absent-minded mood with swooping backups.

Only to be rocked awake with "Runaway". I think they could have ordered the songs a little differently. The same goes for "Childcatcher", a good song in its own rite, but it almost should have been on a different album.

Oh, "Olympia". Now, that is softer than "Last Night", especially with the flute intro. This is clearly my favorite song from this album (but second most played). Your heart cries with slight pain and slight joy, especially as the strings come in. You feel "Olympia" throughout your body.

Definitely an album to recommend, but fairly safe that others have not heard of it. Give it as a gift -- they may be pleasantly surprised.

This is one of my top albums, after I first heard it on the radio I knew it had to be mine forever. It reflects perfectly the feeling that floats around girls in fear of becoming spinsters, or the contumacy for Saturday outings in the hope of coming back home not alone. It contains the quintessential British superficial-deepness, neither wanting to think about the problems, nor letting you explode with joy (because you know there is something else behind the dancing queen).

And, of course, the duet with Jarvis Cocker (Pulp) is one of those sexy duets that deserve a place in pop history (almost as a kind of Gainsbourg-Birkin duet with country arrangements). I think there is a connection between those two British groups (Pulp and Lush), but you can find similarities in other groups that combine that apparent carelessness with melancholy (...).

If you are fond of bittersweet-but-catchy melodies, this is your record, but listen to it only once in a while. It has the power of making you want to dance while you're listening to it, and make you want to sob when the music leaves you...alone. So don't listen to it before going to bed, but before going out, and put on your sexiest clothes!!!

This is an intelligible and mainstream departure from their previous efforts like Gala and Spooky. Those albums were landmarks in ethereal, lovely, layered noise. Lovelife goes in a direction that Lush started to go in their last album, very clear lyrics with universal themes and lots of guitars.

"Blondie was with me for a summer, he flirted like a maniac but I wouldn't bite. I'm weak and he was so persistent. He only had to have me cause I put up a fight..." in the excellent opener, "Ladykillers". "Ladykillers" is a song to which all women who have dealt with men who are "players" can relate.

The album is brilliant overall and definitely a move in the right direction for Lush, but I feel it falls apart with some of the songs at the end. Nothing comes close to the sheer force of "Ladykillers", although track 4, claiming, "I've tried to be strong, I've tried to be tough. I think that this time I've had more than enough. I've seen too much of your games and your immature stuff. You're a waste of time" and track 6 ("Single Girl" which tells a roundabout story of a girl who doesn't want to be single and alone anymore... but ends with her wanting to be single again-weighing the negative and positive elements of relationships within the course of a three minute song) are brilliant songs. Another superb addition to this album is a duet with Pulp's Jarvis Cocker called "Ciao!" which also takes a slight roundabout approach, with both parties in the song expressing their bitterness toward each other after their breakup. The song starts with each claiming to be so happy to be "rid" of the other, but by the end each is happy to be "over" the other one. Kind of clever and true-to-life... people tend to be bitter in the end of a relationship and throw barbs at each other, of which this song is FULL!

There are a couple of songs with dreamy, old "shoegazing" Lush stylistics. For the most part, though, this is a mature development for a great band.

When Lovelife first came out, the fans were generally disappointed. I had that same reaction when I picked up this album for the second time recently, but I worked at it and realised what the main problem is (apart from the stupid cover): it's the track order. Front-loading the singles was a tacky label move, and putting the two longest, slowest tracks next to each other made for a monotonous experience (they're even in the same key). So I sorted the tracks by tempo, quality, musical complexity, and whether they felt like a Side 1 or a Side 2 song. I also made sure that the weaker tracks were surrounded by strong tracks. To cut a long story short:

Heavenly Nobodies
I've Been Here Before
Ladykillers
Papasan
Runaway
500 (Shake, Baby, Shake)

Ciao!
Single Girl
Last Night
The Childcatcher
Tralala
Olympia

The album has other problems; most of the songs were assembled in studio and lack the refinement and elaborated guitar lines of earlier songs. The production isn't always flattering to Miki's voice, the snare drum is sometimes annoyingly prominent (e.g. 500 and Olympia), and THREE songs feature muffled talking over an instrumental break. Nonetheless, the songs and performances are good enough, often outstanding, to be worth your time. Give this alternate track ordering a go. For me, it raised the album's rating from a tentative 3 stars to a solid 4.

(P.S. If this works for you, you could also try flipping tracks 7 / 8, and 11 / 12, on Lush's Split album.)

A fine work by this across-the-pond grouping. The song that is a classic, one of my favorite 100 songs of all time, is "Olympia." I always get a little teary eyed when I play it. As my girlfriend says--"it's music, not just a song." The album is very well done, with catch tunes and lyrics....but, "Olympia" is the gem!

I'm astounded by some of the reviews of this album. If you like indie-pop, ask yourself a simple question, why don't you have a copy? I'm not a great fan of some of their earlier work which some "intelligensia" will have you believe was their best. Don't be fooled, this is a classic album. No song comes lower than four out of five, and the majority are six. Trust me - I've even forgiven them for being Spurs fans!

Lovelife was a landmark in the development of Lush as a band -- from the tentative, dreamy coos on 1990's Gala (a collection of EPs) through the experimental Floyd-isms of 1992's Spooky and the harder rock-industrial-ambient hybrid on 1994's Split. Starting with Split, we found Lush going towards a more song-based approach instead of the breathtaking but amorphous sonics of its first two albums. Lovelife is the pinnacle of the band's journey into master songcraft. Unfortunately, it's also been the band's last work for over three years, having lost drummer Chris Acland a year after Lovelife's release.

But the album itself is nearly perfect -- the aggressive, sinewy rock on "Ladykillers", the breathless pop rush of "Heavenly Nobodies", the giddy girl-band references on "500", the almost country-ish "I've Been Here Before", the achingly lovely, confessional "Tralala" (beautifully simple lead guitars by Emma Anderson), and haunting Miki Berenyi songs in "The Childcatcher", "Mamasan" and "Last Night", showing Berenyi at her strongest and most assured, fully achieving the genius she hinted at on Split's haunting "Light from a Dead Star". The only downer on Lovelife is "Ciao!", a duet with Pulp's Jarvis Cocker, whose sickeningly apathetic vocal style is completely at odds with the freewheeling expression and pure emotion of the Berenyi/Anderson duo. The album would have been perfectly fine without this tasteless bit of rockabilly duet; Cocker ends up marring what would have been the first flawless album in Lush's catalogue.

It would be a real shame if Lush were to call it quits now. Though the prospect of following up this album appears daunting, the one thing Berenyi and Anderson seem capable of is growth, destorying past expectations and resetting their artistic scope. One can only wish that there will still be more of this band in the next decade.

Many indie bands have an album that is so far removed from their earlier work that, in spite of its quality, it disappoints fans. For the Cocteau Twins, it was FOUR CALENDER CAFE, for Pale Saints it was FINE FRIEND. Lush's hour came when the foursome released LOVELIFE in 1996. The band's turn to a Britpop-like sound alienated many, and it is perhaps the lowest point in the band's all-too-brief career.

(However, critics who claim that LOVELIFE is the band's only shift from their shoe-gazing sound are ignoring the sublime SPLIT, which saw the band in a more industrial production.)

Nonetheless, LOVELIFE is a good album if one just shoves aside memories of Lush's previous albums. There are some really good songs here, such as "Olympia" and "Papasan." Most of the album is simple have-a-good time pop, like the opening track "Ladykillers" and the infamous "500," the band's tribute to the diminuitive Fiat Cinquecento automobile.

The album does have some misses. As funny as it is on the first listen, the Miki and Jarvis Cocker duet "Ciao!" drives one crazy on repeat hearings. "The Childcatcher" is disappointing for anyone who has heard the much better version on the limited edition ALL VIRGOS ARE MAD compilation.

Sure, LOVELIFE isn't the best rock album ever, and is disappointing in light of Lush's earlier output, but it's pretty darn good on its own.

I can not stop dacing to it. It's a must have for girls or guys who just want to have fun.

Lush-Lovelife (1996) Queens of the ethereal, the band finally went pop with this album, and turned out to be its best. Also hailing from England, these shoe-gazers are Miki Berenyi (with hot-pink hair) and Emma Anderson on guitar and vocals. Their complex harmonies dominate the songs, and I never tire of listening to this. Their jangly, layered guitar-work and melodic solos are also pleasant. Lyrics deal with female insecurities, such as self-confidence and self-consciousness, but these women are no victims. They know how to empower themselves and use their sexuality to get what they want. With biting sarcasm and witty commentary, lyrics confront male/female relationship issues. From the minor hit, "Ladykillers": "I'm as human as the next girl/I like a bit of flattery/But I don't need your practised lines/your school of charm mentality..." And from "Heavenly Bodies," a song about idol worship: "I remember when I was younger I thought the answers were locked in people/So I admired the ones whose lives were a source of envy to people like me". "The Childcatcher" is a searing take on older men who romance younger girls: "You are like the clean white page and I the pen/The innocence I find between your girlish thighs is like the fountain of youth to my old bones." Sadly, this was their last album, as drummer Chris Acland committed suicide after a long bout with depression in 1997.