Glove - The Surrealists of Neo-Psychedelia

“Robert and I spent hours and hours living in the recording studio during that period. I came out of it alive, but I'm not sure Smith can say the same about himself”

(Steven Severin)

The cover of the album Blue Sunshine (from 1983, their only release aside from two singles) nicely reflects the project's pop-psychedelic aesthetic, appearing as a brightly colored collage depicting the glove from the film “Yellow Submarine”, trailing a stream of tiny figures as it flies, all set against two photos of Smith and Severin with altered colors.

To record the vocal parts the pair enlisted dancer Jeanette Laundray, since Smith's contract with Fiction Records barred him from being the lead voice of any group other than Cure. Laundray's singing is closely related to Siouxsie's shamanic style, but her timbre is more childlike, always balanced on the thin line between sensuality and enchanted trance, perfect for delivering Smith and Severin's dark lyrics.

The turbulent single “Like An Animal” sums up the band's style in five minutes: a constant ping-pong of bass, electronic effects, celestial keyboards and a percussive bed built from layering acoustic drums over an electronic backing track (this rhythmic duality is one of their main trademarks); the lyrics are notable too, touching on bulimia through surreal visual imagery that softens its rawness.

The record unfolds like a cabaret of absurd, disorienting performances one after another: the morbid, blood-soaked wave of “Sex-Eye-Make-Up”, the fairy tale “Looking Glass Girl”, populated by enigmatic characters and enriched by orchestrations that veer between sunny and sinister, and the instrumental “A Blue In drag”, a dreamy, enchanted interlude built around a play of echoes and melancholy violins.

Another interesting side of the album is its tracks tied to the electronic pop dominating the charts of the era, a genre the duo reinterprets through a sadder, more oppressive lens in keeping with their own background: the love song “Punish Me With Kisses” reveals the darkest, most miserable side of a relationship consumed by jealousy, while the more epic “This Green City” is a sci-fi elegy strewn with malevolent guitars and bursts of electronic bubbles, yet one that still leaves room for majestic openings. The experimental “Orgy”, in step with the trends of the time, explores the tribal, ritualistic dimension of exotic music.

The project's masterpiece is “Mr. Alphabet Says”, one of the two tracks sung by Smith. The song is a marvel of chamber arrangements grafted onto a pop structure: a rickety piano follows the vocal line, while a constant trill on the keyboard's highest keys slips subliminally into the pauses of a string quartet (courtesy of Martin McCarrick, future collaborator of the Banshees, Marc Almond and Bryan Ferry, among many others), giving rise to a precious gothic nursery rhyme.

Closing things out is one of the project's statement pieces, a second instrumental, “Relax”, which, despite its name, carves out a sinister ethnic-psychedelic weave studded with unsettling sampled voices and swirls of flanger.

Included on the CD reissue of Blue Sunshine (originally the b-side of the single “Like An Animal”), “Mouth To Mouth” makes concessions to dance music, pairing guitar riffs with dreamy, melancholy keyboards.

The brief chapter of Glove closes with just one album to its name, a project often underrated even by diehard fans of Cure and Siouxsie & The Banshees, yet one that managed to take stock of certain alternative British trends of the early Eighties, sounding at once unique and unrepeatable and, above all, blessed with Smith's melodic gift and Severin's visionary touch.

That same year, the hyperactive Smith would unleash the Cure's landmark singles of their pop turn, the ones that made their look and aesthetic famous: "The Walk" and "The Lovecats". The following year he contributed to Siouxsie & The Banshees' "Hyaena", while also making good on his promise, recording almost entirely by himself "The Top" (only Lol Tolhurst co-wrote two songs), his most psychedelic work as well as his last release before the reunion with Simon Gallup.

(27/06/2010)

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