House Of Love - The days rush by

The days slip away, inexorably dragging youth and dreams of glory into the vortex of time. A millennium ago, House Of Love seemed to have a long, bright future ahead of them: success would arrive swift and corrupting, overwhelming the English band and consigning them to early oblivion, from which they would only painstakingly re-emerge with milder counsel and the composure of maturity. A thirty-year catharsis: let's hop on the time machine and try to trace it.

In 1986, Guy Chadwick is no longer exactly a kid: born in 1956 in Germany, the now thirty-year-old musician spent his childhood travelling the world in the wake of his military father, but had long since settled in London, where he was pursuing the idea of a band through which he could give shape to his musical vision. He'd already tried, singing and playing guitar in a group called The Kingdoms, but it had been a flash in the pan, burning out quickly after putting out a single solitary single for RCA. Legend has it that a concert by The Jesus & Mary Chain provided the spark for a new band: through an ad placed in Melody Maker, he recruited 21-year-old London guitarist Terry Bickers, already a member of the little-known Colenso Parade, German singer and guitarist Andrea Heukamp, and New Zealand bassist Chris Groothuizen, joined by Welsh drummer (and longtime friend of Chadwick's) Pete Evans, forming a kind of motley musical multinational that took the name The House Of Love, in homage to the novella "A Spy In The House Of Love" (published in Italy by Bompiani as "Una spia nella casa dell'amore") by writer Anaïs Nin, for years the lover of both Henry Miller and his wife June Mansfield in the murky ménage à trois recounted in her "Diaries" and later adapted by director Philip Kaufman in the film "Henry & June".

It's no coincidence that the fledgling House Of Love, chasing a record deal, turned to none other than Alan McGee, founder of Creation, the label on which their beloved The Jesus & Mary Chain recorded. After some initial resistance, the label boss gave in and allowed the band to put out a handful of singles which, together with unreleased tracks and B-sides, would form an untitled collection, initially released only in the German market and, for that reason, better known as The German Album. Long coveted by fans of the band and only finally reissued on CD in 2007 (an eternity seems to have passed already!) in a lovely edition by the small but deserving Renascent Records, the record inevitably bears the marks of inexperience, but already shows, in fieri, the defining traits of the band's sound: a guitar-pop with psychedelic streaks, drawing on the 1960s and inevitably tied to the lessons of 80s post-punk, but which, climbing the wall of sound raised by the guitars of the Chadwick-Bickers-Heukamp trio, already projects forward (probably acting as a source of inspiration) toward the shoegaze movement about to live out its brief, intense season.

On the cover, the band's five members, with Chadwick at the centre literally embracing Bickers and Heukamp, shot from above against a dark background, as if the quintet were emerging from below, in a literal climb toward success. The German Album's most significant moments come mostly at the start of the tracklist, with "Destroy The Heart", a song destined to become one of the band's best known, with its sprightly, damnably catchy stride that repeatedly evokes Echo & The Bunnymen, and with the celebrated "Shine On", perhaps even "the" song of the band's career, presented here in an early version that, revised and polished, would resurface on the self-titled 1990 album.

The rest of the record is interesting too, in any case: "Real Animal" has a Velvet Underground soul grafted onto a structure of unleashed psychedelic pop that winks at the lesson of the contemporaneous Paisley Underground; "Nothing To Me" chases shadowy post-punk digressions, with Groothuizen's bass prominently on show and the crossing of Chadwick's and Heukamp's voices sketching evocative embroidery; "The Hedonist" is pure sixties psychedelia; "Plastic" and "Blind" are brief, delightful bedroom-pop sketches, with echoes of the C86 movement; "On The Hill" is an experiment with Andrea Heukamp on vocals, her declamatory tone rising over Eastern-tinged guitar arpeggios, at times recalling the lysergic California of Jefferson Airplane; "Flow" is a pleasant filler track that drifts by (nomen omen) without leaving much of a mark; "Mr Jo" is more Paisley Underground, while "Welt" returns to C86 territory and "Love" is a (near) instrumental with post-punk atmospheres; "Loneliness Is A Gun", finally, is an exquisitely delicate acoustic gem that closes out the collection.

Taken as a whole, the German Album is an enticing work that hints at the band's great potential, but still betrays a certain irresolution, most noticeable in how several songs feel merely sketched out and somehow unfinished. The first Creation singles nonetheless receive some attention from the press, which begins talking about Chadwick & Bickers as the new Morrissey & Marr, while on tour too the band is met with encouraging audience response.

The time is ripe for a proper debut album, which arrives in 1988 on Creation and is self-titled, just like the previous record and, curiously, the one after it too. In the meantime, however, House Of Love have shrunk to a quartet following the heavy blow (only the first of a long series) of Andrea Heukamp, who, to her bandmates' great disappointment, decides to leave the group and return home. Produced with the help of Pat Collier, The House Of Love is without doubt the English band's masterpiece, a small gem of guitar-driven psychedelia, skilfully balanced on pop melodies of remarkable immediacy, in which the growing rapport between Guy Chadwick's voice and Terry Bickers's guitar plays a pivotal role. The record is decidedly more refined and accomplished than the German Album, the songs finally freed from that sense of indeterminacy that had confined the still-promising ideas of the earlier recordings to a kind of limbo. On the cover, almost to underline the centrality of their roles, a close-up of the frontman and his guitarist, with the quartet reassembled when the vinyl sleeve (or, in the Renascent CD reissue, the digipack) opens out 180 degrees.

The opening "Christine", with its candyfloss whirls of guitar, is perhaps House Of Love's signature song and an ideal link between the most melodic Jesus & Mary Chain and the shoegaze phenomenon about to explode with the work of bands like My Bloody Valentine, Ride and Slowdive; the immediate "Hope" strikes a perfect balance between the frontman's confiding tone, never so knowing and communicative, and Bickers's sudden guitar surges; far more anxious is the following "Road", with the rhythm section hammering compulsively while the lead guitar keeps sketching lysergic flourishes across a shifting sky; "Sulphur" is a rock track that starts off fairly conventionally before culminating in a grand crescendo, while "Man To Child" is a relaxing decompression chamber, offering a moment's pause before the frantic "Salome"; the grandiose atmospheres of "Love In A Car" lead into the magnificent "Happy", in which the Paisley Underground-style psychedelia that seemed to have influenced some tracks on the German Album appears to resurface; the pleasant "Fisherman's Tale" once again highlights the perfect union of Chadwick's voice and Bickers's guitar, with the latter going truly wild in the distorted, acid-drenched finale of the remarkable "Touch Me", which brings to a close a thoroughly exhilarating record.

The British press, ever inclined to champion the most promising newcomers on the local musical scene, zeroes in on the House Of Love project, and the media's pervasive scrutiny certainly doesn't miss the excesses and addictions the band members seem to indulge in with dangerously self-destructive abandon, undermining the stability of relationships within the group.

Critical acclaim and the first album's solid commercial showing inevitably draw the interest of the majors: having left Creation (though Alan McGee is still given the role of the band's manager), among the various offers received, Chadwick chooses Fontana, a Dutch label within the Polygram orbit, despite the fierce opposition of Terry Bickers, firmly determined to preserve the project's independence. Work on the new material proves troubled to say the least, with the predictable pressures from the record label and as many as four producers cycling through the studio. And yet, despite a long and complicated labour, House Of Love's third collection, once again self-titled and consequently dubbed by fans The Butterfly Album after Trevor Key's cover art (a multicoloured butterfly printed against a brick backdrop, as if symbolising the maturity the band had reached, no longer a chrysalis), or alternatively Fontana after the label, turns out to be a thoroughly successful record, albeit one clearly conceived as an attempt to storm radio's heavy rotation.

The quartet's sound has become cleaner and more polished, probably shorn of the feverish urgency that had characterised the earlier recordings, and certainly more pop, in the noblest sense of the word. The opening trio of tracks deserves applause, and on its own is worth the price of admission: the restlessness and taut nerves beneath the skin of "Hannah" lead into the already familiar "Shine On", here presented in a definitive, exquisitely polished and terribly radio friendly version; "Beatles And The Stones" is probably one of Guy Chadwick's absolute masterpieces, a sweetly melancholic ballad gently laid over a carpet of jingle-jangle guitars, a song capable of delivering that special "joy of being sad" that belongs only to great songs.

The rest of the record is very solid, if perhaps less thrilling: "Shake And Crawl" is a pop interlude that never quite takes off; "Hedonist" tones down (some might say "normalises") the lysergic, Eastern-tinged atmospheres of the version on the German Album, lending the track an unexpected (but not unpleasant) rock 'n' roll edge; "I Don't Know Why I Love You" and "Never" are two highly catchy guitar-pop numbers, unsurprisingly chosen by Fontana as the first singles, despite the band's own objections.

The final stretch of the album alternates between the pensive, dreamy moods of "Someone's Got To Love You" and "Blind" (the latter also revised and reworked compared to the version already heard on the German Album), and the sparkling rhythms of the lively "In A Room" and "32^nd Floor", while the capricious emotional ups and downs of the lovely "Se Dest" close out a record that, while not equalling the band's splendid debut, still maintains a remarkably high standard, managing to strike a balance between commercial pressure and artistic needs - though not to resolve the rift between Chadwick and Bickers, which soon becomes irreparable, leading to the guitarist's nervous breakdown and subsequent departure from the band. He is replaced by Simon Walker, formerly of The Dave Howard Singers.

Meanwhile, the Butterfly Album sells reasonably well, though probably falling short of Fontana's expectations; the label decides to support the record with a long tour (on some dates graced by the welcome presence of former bandmate Andrea Heukamp) and to scrape the bottom of the proverbial barrel in 1991 with the release of a frankly negligible collection of outtakes and rarities for fans only, saddled with the title A Spy In The House Of Love.

In 1992, the band shows up for its new record with yet another line-up change: although he's still credited on the album, guitarist Simon Walker has by then effectively left House Of Love, and even Alan McGee, increasingly absorbed by the running of his label, has given up his role as the band's manager. Only two years have passed since their celebrated debut, and three since the German Album, but times have changed profoundly, and the music press's attention, which once seemed to surround Chadwick and co., has quickly evaporated. Culturally worlds away from the grunge raging on the other side of the Atlantic, outdone on the guitar-psychedelia front by the shoegaze movement, too serious to give themselves over to the ecstasy-scented dancing of the Madchester scene, and essentially ahead of the overwhelming Brit-rock wave that is about to break over the UK but is at this point barely visible on the horizon, House Of Love are already out of fashion and out of step with the times, snubbed by critics and gradually abandoned by the public. And yet, despite such unpromising circumstances, the new album Babe Rainbow turns out to be a true gem: Chadwick doesn't give up a certain guitar-pop immediacy, but, with the help of producer Warne Livesey (also co-writer of some of the songs), decides to "dirty up" the perhaps overly polished sound of the previous record with murky, restless atmospheres, returning to the band's post-punk and psychedelic roots - and, as if to underline this desire to return to their origins, old friend Andrea Heukamp appears again among the guests.

The album's title refers to a print by Peter Blake (the English pop artist famous for devising the iconic cover of the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"), which at the time was kept at Pete Townshend's Eel Pie Studios, where House Of Love's fourth album was recorded. The brightly coloured, scantily clad Babe Rainbow can be seen in the background of the album cover, in disorienting contrast with the near-monochrome of the rest of the image, shot by photographer Suzie Gibbons. The tracklist opens with "You Don't Understand", which, with its Eastern-tinged guitars and essentially radio-friendly immediacy, seems to foreshadow the future debut of Kula Shaker; "Crush Me" is pop with dark undertones, releasing fragments of unease with every note; "Cruel" is pure, unadulterated psychedelia, the kind the band hadn't produced in a (too) long time, perhaps the masterpiece of the collection, alongside the torrential, dark post-punk of the unforgettable "High In Your Face" that follows it; "Fade Away" is a gentle, melancholy electro-acoustic ballad that serves as a brief interlude before the airier, more "open" atmosphere of "Feel"; "Girl With The Loneliest Eyes" chases after (barely grazing) the mirage of perfect jangle-pop, while the ghost of psychedelia comes back to rattle its chains across the relentless six minutes of "Burn Down The World", which, together with the over four minutes of the magnificent Brit-rock of "Philly Phile" and the equally long, epic "Yer Eyes", form a devastating sequence that closes out a dark, beautiful album - untameable and sadly underrated.

On Babe Rainbow, House Of Love seem to have poured in all the lurking anxieties and tensions undermining the band's stability, putting its very existence at risk. The general indifference of both the public and the specialist press towards the four singles lifted from the album, and towards the subsequent American tour alongside Ocean Colour Scene and Catherine Wheel, is a hard blow to the band's self-esteem and lays the groundwork for a new, minimal revolution.

In something of a confirmation of the old saying that haste makes waste, Guy Chadwick decides to exorcise the commercial failure of Babe Rainbow by going straight back into the studio to work on a new album. In an attempt to introduce some previously unheard-of internal democracy, the frontman decides to make room for his bandmates, allowing Chris Groothuizen and Pete Evans to take part in the creative process and songwriting. The result proves disastrous and effectively amounts to an epitaph for the first phase of the band's history. Audience With The Mind comes out in 1993 and is a shapeless mess in which it's genuinely hard to find anything worth saving - a record that never takes flight, suspended on wax wings of half-sketched, poorly realised ideas, an artistic disaster and a genuine commercial collapse.

Track after track goes by, anonymous and indistinguishable, much like the series of identical sculptures photographed (once again by Suzie Gibbons) on the album's bleak cover. Everything sounds dull and monotonous: the more electric tracks ("Sweet Anatomy", "Erosion", "Call Me", "Corridors") lack any bite and fail to leave a mark, some even come across as overreaching (the long, inconclusive "Into The Tunnel"), while the ballads ("Audience With The Mind", "Shining On") feel bland and insignificant. It's hardly surprising, then, that not a single track is lifted as a single from the record. Fontana, without much ceremony, drops House Of Love, who, having reached a dead end and by now forgotten by both the public and critics, decide to split up - by a cruel irony of fate, just moments before Brit-rock achieves worldwide success.

Orphaned of his longtime bandmates and probably haunted by the demons of a success that had faded far too quickly, Guy Chadwick goes through a long period spent largely spinning his wheels. He first forms Madonnas, then Eyedreams, but both groups fall apart without managing to release so much as a single recording. The English musician only emerges from this inconclusive phase in 1997, with the release of a solo EP for the Setanta label, followed the next year by a full-length album, produced with the invaluable help of his friend Robin Guthrie of the Cocteau Twins. The album's title, Lazy, Soft & Slow, proves decidedly programmatic: lazy, soft and slow, just like the eleven predominantly acoustic wonders that make it up - genuine indie-pop delights that, sadly, few people noticed. The seductive "One Of These Days", the lively "In Her Heart" and the sinuous "Song For Gala" rank among the most enjoyable tracks on a record whose only electric scratch comes courtesy of the splendid "You've Really Got A Hold On Me". On the cover, a sepia-toned portrait of the author, now forty-two, wearing an expression of disillusionment, or perhaps simply of peace made with the turmoil of the past. Behind him, a fireplace; in the foreground, flowers, as if to further underline the collection's bucolic tone.

Meanwhile, Terry Bickers had also been through some difficult years. After leaving House Of Love, the guitarist threw himself headlong into the Levitation project, but the new band never really took off, despite a busy stretch in the studio that produced a couple of albums and a few EPs between '91 and '94. Cradle, formed right after, was also short-lived, and, at yet another crossroads in a restless existence, the guitarist reconnected with his old friend Guy Chadwick, with whom he shared not only countless memories but also a long struggle against the demons of a depression that had never fully gone away. For both of them, it's a clarifying encounter: free from the excesses and old conflicts that had undermined their partnership, the two rediscover the desire to make music together and to put the old band back together. Pete Evans immediately joins the initiative, while Chris Groothuizen, by then a full-time architect, turns down the offer; bassist Matt Jury is brought in in his place.

Tellingly, House Of Love's fifth collection of new material is titled Days Run Away and is released in 2005 on Art & Industry, the label of old friend (and for a while the band's agent) Mick Griffiths. The reunion is rounded out by photographer Suzie Gibbons, who once again takes charge of the album's cover - a red-tinted portrait of Terry Bickers, as if to underline the centrality of the London guitarist's role as the returning prodigal son. The record recaptures the rustic serenity already evoked on Chadwick's successful solo album and threads it through with the dense electric textures of Bickers' guitar, resulting in a thoroughly enjoyable record - perhaps House Of Love's most "American"-sounding work.

"Love You Too Much", playful and upbeat, is a sort of curious reworking of Prince's "Girls & Boys" (from "Parade", 1986), openly referenced in both the lyrics and the chorus; "Gotta Be That Way" is a fluid piece of folk-rock, punctuated by the band's classic jingle-jangle; "Maybe You Know" is straightforward and immediate, while "Kinda Love", by contrast, is twisting and restless; "Money And Time" is a (genuinely splendid) excursion down West Coast roads that bursts into an epic, stirring finale; the title track and "Wheels" are sparkling power-pop, "Already Gone" is pleasant folk, "Kit Carter" intense guitar-rock; "Anyday I Want" is a relaxed acoustic divertissement placed at the end of a sunny, easygoing record that seems to dissolve the excesses and dependencies of a turbulent past into the simple pleasure of being together and making music.

Days Run Away goes largely unnoticed, peaking at a modest 189 in the UK charts, but no matter: House Of Love are back.

The following years are devoted, in a sense, to celebrating the band's glorious past: 2007 finally brings the already-mentioned reissues of the German Album and the 1988 self-titled debut, followed in 2009 by Live At The BBC, featuring live recordings from the early '90s, and, at the end of 2012, a lavish, all-encompassing triple-CD reissue of the Creation-era material, packed with demos, unreleased tracks and alternate versions, courtesy of Cherry Red Records.

For the same label and with the same line-up as the previous record, early 2013 sees the release of She Paints Words In Red, House Of Love's sixth collection of new material. Evidently the 2005 reunion was not to be dismissed as a mere flash in the pan, but rather the relaunch of a musical dream that had weathered the storms of the past to arrive at a more serene future, all while keeping all its freshness and its thousand colours intact - nicely summed up in a pictorial artwork once again courtesy of Suzie Gibbons. Produced by the band together with old associate Pat Collier, who had also been involved in the making of Days Run Away, the new album even improves on its predecessor, coming across as noticeably sharper and, at times, closer to the band's "classic" sound.

"A Baby Got Back On Its Feet" is a real heart-tugger, a kind of "Shine On" updated for the new millennium; also worth noting are "Hemingway", "She Paints Words In Red" and "Lost In The Blues", while "Trouble In Mind" is a relaxed slice of indie-pop, interspersed with the lurking tension of the driving "PKR" (a reworking of an old 1991 B-side), the evocative folk of "Low Black Clouds" (probably to be counted among the album's masterpieces) and the excellent "Money Man", with its superb guitar-rock that winks at the beloved Sixties - much like, for that matter, the spirited power-pop of the delightful "Never Again".

"Sunshine Out In The Rain" immerses the listener in that special melancholy that runs like a red thread through the entire output of Chadwick and co.; "Holy River" is a flowing stream of folk-rock beauty you wish would never end, while the closing slot on the record is given over to the guitar crescendo of the pensive, magnificent "Eye Dream".

By now the music of House Of Love is a delicacy for the few, for diehard nostalgics of an era when a great song could genuinely change your life rather than just serving as background noise while you scroll the internet, but blessed are those few: on the threshold of 57, in an autumn of life that still carries the sweetness of spring, Guy Chadwick gives himself (and us) a delightfully timeless collection, to be treasured as something precious.

The rest of the House Of Love story is recent history: in late 2014, the band allows itself another small moment of self-celebration with the release of a new live album, Live At The Lexington 13-11-13, while Terry Bickers begins a collaboration with Pete Fij of Adorable, which yields two records, "Broken Heart Surgery" (2014) and "We Are Millionaires" (2017).

And so, at least for now, the story of House Of Love comes to a close. From the black hole of depression, excess, addiction and illusory dreams of glory that seemed to have swallowed them whole, Guy Chadwick and Terry Bickers have finally re-emerged into the light of a serenity long pursued and hard-won. We eagerly await new chapters in this long and precious catharsis.

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