CORRECTION- Merial Barham was not a founding member of Lush. She was part of the band in 1990, contributing vocals and guitar to the Half-Life EP.
Ethereal, sensual, and surreal. These are all words to describe the English rock band Lush. While they never achieved the critical and commercial success of some of their contemporaries, the band delivered a unique sound that one Rate Your Music user described as, “if David Lynch was the primary songwriter behind ABBA, and it was produced by Robin Guthrie.” It’s time Lush received some recognition of their own, rather than being lumped together with countless other shoegaze groups of the early 1990s.
Miki Berenyi and Emma Anderson had been school friends since their teenage years in the early 1980s. Prior to the formation of Lush, Berenyi and Anderson performed individually with different groups. The band officially formed in 1987 in London, and they originally called themselves Baby Machines. The initial line-up included Meriel Barham on vocals, Anderson on guitar and vocals, Berenyi on guitar and vocals, Steve Rippon on bass guitar, and Chris Acland on drums. Acland was Berenyi’s boyfriend at the time. Lush’s early days consisted of punk rock music. Anderson commented on the band’s beginnings, “Basically, our idea was to have extremely loud guitars with much weaker vocals. And, really, the vocals were weaker due to nervousness - we'd always be going 'Turn them down! Turn them down!'" A year after Lush formed, Barham would leave the band to form Pale Saints. Now without a lead singer, Berenyi reluctantly stepped up to be vocalist. In 1989, Lush was signed to 4AD Records, a UK based record label that had signed influential groups including Bauhaus, Cocteau Twins, and Pixies. That same year, they would release their first recording- a mini-album entitled “Scar.” Combining elements of shoegaze, post-punk, and jangle pop, Scar is a sonically diverse record that cannot be pinned down to one genre. It was a strong first record for the band, as it was well received by critics. The UK music newspaper Sounds listed Lush as the “Brightest Hope” for music in 1990, alongside Pixies, the Stone Roses and the Sundays. While the band received acclaim for contributing to the shoegaze sound, it should be noted that they have tried to distance themselves from being associated with the genre.
In 1990, Lush would release two EPs, with the first entitled “Mad Love.” Consisting of four songs, the EP was produced by Cocteau Twins guitarist Robin Guthrie. It had a more polished sound than Scar, with the song “De-Luxe” being a high point on the release.One major highlight on the record is the harmonizing vocals of Anderson and Berenyi, which compliment each other naturally. Their following EP released eight months later was called “Sweetness and Light,” this time in collaboration with Talk Talk producer Tim Friese-Greene. The release distanced itself from the post-punk sound in the band’s earlier records in favor of a more atmospheric dream pop sound. In particular, the title track became a fan favorite for the band. The EP received mixed reviews from critics, with NME considering it “glorious” while Melody Maker deemed it “sorely over-produced.” Following its release, the band embarked on a series of tours in the United States and Japan. In conjunction with these tours, Lush released the compilation album, “Gala” in order to introduce themselves to American and Japanese markets. The album failed to chart, but was a critical success.
After an incredibly eventful 1990, Lush released “Black Spring” the following year, their third EP. It sounded more innovative and not as over-produced as their previous release, as the band began experimenting with sequencers and MIDI to create unique guitar and drum sounds. Described as “space-age guitar pop,” Anderson’s increased songwriting role contributed to Black Spring’s “moody dream pop” sound. A promotional video was released for the leading track “Nothing Natural,” which Berenyi described as, “an effing nightmare" and that the video's director had "some ludicrous idea of what he wanted [Lush] to look/act like in the video and it was nothing to do with how [the band was]". It did, however, further increase the popularity of the band, with Kurt Cobain becoming a fan after seeing the video.
In 1992, Lush would release their first full-length studio album “Spooky.” Once again produced by Robin Guthrie, the album reached the top 10 on the UK album charts and produced three singles: “For Love,” “Superblast!,” and the aforementioned, “Nothing Natural.” A continuation of their angelic and soothing sound, some listeners criticized Guthrie’s production as underwhelming and sounding similar to Cocteau Twins. Despite receiving some criticism, Pitchfork ranked Spooky at number 27 on its list of "The 50 Best Shoegaze Albums of All Time" in 2016.
10 янв 2022
