What was it with shoegazers who discovered the Black Crowes and started liking them? Thank heavens that didn't carry over onto these guys' second and last album, Blood Music, because then I would have puked.
This was recorded all before that, though, and zer House were the great mix'n'match bunch of the feedback and pop crowd, even more so than MBV itself in ways, or at least more freely open. Samples and scratches were part of the sonic equation from the start, as was good synchronicity ("Pearl" not only borrowed that Led Zeppelin drum sample which has proven so fruitful over the years, but whatever it was that Siouxsie and the Banshees then themselves borrowed for "Kiss Them For Me" a couple of months later -- what it all means I'm not sure myself, I should note -- and had Rachel Goswell of Slowdive doing a lovely backing vocal at that). They not only headlined over Nirvana that year, 1991, at the Reading Festival, by all accounts they blew said trio away, unless you're Everett True. Happily you're not. Sure, sometimes the Great Kevin Shields Guitar Wash was the key element -- thus "Treasure" and the way it kicked in on the chorus. But only there, and everything else was more open chime and echo and beat.
So maybe the vocals were barely but a whisper most of the time -- it all combined together well, as well as having three guitarists and doing fifteen-minute death metal tunes on stage for encores, which in fact they did. It's why "Breather" was an even better headrush of a song live than on record but still worked great there, a perfect introduction the album, all strange flanges and tremolos and blasting drums and buried singalongs. Or why "Autosleeper" alternated between a lovely Cocteau drift and an explosive Sonic Youth noiseout, or seemed to, or maybe didn't, who knows, but the keyboards all sounded great, that's for sure, as much as the guitar scrapes and screams and the effects pedals.
"Falling Down" sounded just as good as their debut single did, which it in fact was, just slightly guzzied up here but still reliant on a heavy-ass groove that sounded like Loop woke up and realized that hip-hop was even more mesmerizing at points. And then there's "If You Want Me" and "Something More" and lots more in the way of loud, heavy and delicate goodness. But I'll leave with "April," nothing but relentlessly riffed and looped and rising shimmer, sheen, feedback and fuzz, a blissout with just enough viscera to matter.
At one time I wanted bands like this to take over the world. Still do, actually.