I read it first on Indie C-86 and now the Guardian has confirmed it: The House of Love has reformed. Not the electronica act, but the British indie guitar band from the late 80s/early 90s. I’m excited, less to hear what new material they come up with (though it may be quite good) than to see more attention brought to a criminally undervalued and overlooked band. The Guardian article documents the personal tension and label diffificulties that tore apart the band. Indeed, their last album Audience with the Mind, is washed up and nearly unlistenable. But equally the band suffered from bad timing. It came of age under the twin influence of C-86 (and its love of 60s pop) and shoegaze (with its lush-is-cool aesthetic). House of Love took both and refined them, developing their own sound, only one which didn’t quite fit in with Madchester or the Pixies-inflected alternative sound or whatever musical zeitgeist came to rule in the UK and US. (I myself missed them first time around.) Since then, they’ve lingered in cut out bins and out of print limbo.
Fortunately a couple of compilations, one for their recordings with Creation Records and another with their major label A and B-sides, have been released. Maybe now their intimate, reverb-drenched music can get another go at the spotlight.
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