DIAMOND DAYS CUT AND DRY

Or what about Bauhaus?  Not that good, y’know?  Kind of pretentious, kind of silly in that “man are we serious motherfuckers” kind of way.

 And then the split, and DAMN if Peter Murphy didn’t end up being pretty good as a solo act.  Was CASCADE his best?  Sure, why not.  Deep and moody, still, but human.  Real, not a cartoon.

And Tones on Tail?  Freakin’ awesome.  Someone turned me onto a Canadian import of the POP album back in ’90 or so, and how goddamn awesome-wacky were they?  The good thing about those short careers, you can pick up the 2 cd set EVERYTHING, and you’ve got everything.  How easy is that?

And then Love & Rockets.  Just, wow.  So good, and then it all fell apart so quickly.  To summarize:

SEVENTH DREAM OF TEENAGE HEAVEN – Warm, dreamy, womb-like.  Very insular and kick-ass.  If you want your band’s first album to be any good, you’ll want to listen to this.

EXPRESS – Guitar overload.  A mystical frenzy.  Some remnants of the first album, but mostly many   explosions in all-new directions.  Fuck yeah.

EARTH SUN MOON – Can you hear them starting to pull apart on this one?  I think so.  Still, a third great effort in a row.  The guitars are reigned in a bit, but the acoustic stuff is even more beautiful as a compensation.

LOVE AND ROCKETS – Aaaaaaand, here it is – not a bang, but a whimper.  30% good?  Maybe.  What a huge letdown.  Seemed like they went from “writing amazing songs” to “trying really hard to be cool (and ultimately failing)”.  Bleah.  I’ll let you figure out the good songs yourself.

HOT TRIP TO HEAVEN – Conventional wisdom seems to call this one a dud, but I like it.  Side One (I bought my first copy on cassette, see) is forty minutes long, for christ’s sake!  And it’s dancey, spacey, trippy in a whole new way for the band.  Side two falters, but it has almost as many good songs on it as the entirety of the previous album.  To hell with the nay-sayers.

After this, though, switch the channel.  The last 2 albums are duds and, dammit, I tried like hell to enjoy them.  Couldn’t be done.  Still, we’ll always have our memories……….