Or the butterfly album, if you prefer, based on the cover art and dominant motif. I seem to remember the Mission UK having their "Butterfly on a Wheel" single around that time, namely 1990, produced by Tim Palmer, who also did some of the production work on this album. CONSPIRACY!
What was especially interesting about this album was how, in ways, it could afford getting away with certain things. Like titling a song "Beatles and the Stones," but not sounding like either, instead being a gentle, spacious and spaced-out strum with post-punk keyboards here and there, shading just so, and steering away from the communal experience with the assertion that said group "made it good to be alone." Come 1995 and anyone proposing this song would be expected to sound like exactly that and to celebrate the communal takeover of the industry at least in the UK, or such was supposedly the case. By that time Guy Chadwick had long since decided to hide out.
But it wasn't just about that or that one song or the presumed shift in history, because after all, who knew? To be sure, the House of Love were also a saving force for Creation at one point a la Oasis or something of the sort, except they jumped up higher, recorded a mess of sessions, lost a pretty good guitarist in Terry Bickers along the way, and then put this out as the major label debut. And wouldn't you know, it's fantastic. What a lovely record. Really, it is.
The way it creeps up at the start, the way "Hannah" gets introduced with those one or two guitar notes through more layers of reverb than I can count, the way everything felt like it was slouching towards some sort of Bethlehem, but heaven knows which and where, and how when things amped up a bit, it was all still nicely cool, the way Chadwick sang, the way they played. Far from being a hindrance, it was a help, a way to finally (again) dispense with some of rock's more annoying presumptions and forget about gladhanding in favor of a thoughtful regard.
But a deeply felt one. Even something as straightforward as the semi-boogie retake on "Hedonist," an earlier number of theirs, threw in strange "ba-ba-bas," the Holy Trinity and an a capella line, "I came a cropper when I trusted you," which somehow captures something in the world-weary tone that's not self-pitying so much as it's wondering, almost asking why.
And I could refer to how "32nd Floor" has this deep blue feel in the chorus even when everything seems so pristinely right and loud and shimmering, or how "In a Room" gets more and more frenetic, more powerful, more driving you down the road to, well, somewhere. But I think I'll refer to possibly one of the greatest singles of the decade for me, "I Don't Know Why I Love You," everything you ever thought post-punk emotionalism should have contained in fact contained in three perfect minutes. A wonderfully questioning lyric, a great riff and acoustic counterpoints, aching backing vocals and all the drumming drive and flow you could ever want -- remind me again why they never got famous? Whatever the reason was, I don't like it.