Music today has been the sixth Love and Rockets album Sweet F.A. (1996). A mellow start with the title track, as far away from the last album as could be. I keep on hearing an English seventies and American nineties hybrid in their music when they get mellow like this, Judgement Day is like Barclay James Harvest meets the Dandy Warhols. Use Me sounds like The Jesus and Mary Chain meets The Stones, they are so astride the seventies and the nineties, missing the eighties out completely – which is obviously their genius. Fever is back to the drum machines but with a Fender Rhodes like The Beta Band meets Jona Lewie. The single Sweet Lover Of Mine sounds like The Breeders formed a band with The Charlatans.

I could go on like this, Pearl is beautiful, with an arpeggio from an early Genesis album and a sweet David Cassidy vocal. Shelf Life is like a later Bowie song. Sad and Beautiful World is great, the old Squeeze trick of low and high vocalists together, but intriguing and moody rather than ‘Sarf Landan Pop’ and showing the depth of the album. I read that Natacha was for Natacha Atlas, getting floydy again before going slow glam. Words Of A Fool is finding its way back to the groove with its Massive Attack bassline but with fuzzy guitars. Clean, horror fog horns and spacey vibe reminds me of Wire if they were from the moon, music for lounging around in craters, sprinkled with moon dust. Here Comes The Comedown, a song from a London musical, I see the dancers in the chorus line dressed in rags like a modern-day Oliver Twist. I see Oliver Reed, I see Fagin. On the final track before the Sweet F.A. reprise, I hear some Nine Inch Nails gatecrashing Depeche Mode’s party.

What is it with all these comparisons? I don’t know, I just like the album a lot.

Music Of The Daze

The musical musings in this post are an excerpt from my daily blog, TO WHERE I AM NOW, featured on my main website. See more pictures and read the full post here.