02 October 2015

Love and Rockets "Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven" (1985)

org. cover
Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven [debut]
release date: Oct. 11, 1985
format: cd (2000 remaster)
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,66]
producer: John A. Rivers, Love and Rockets
label: Beggars Banquet - nationality: England, UK

Track highlights: 1. "If There's a Heaven Above" - 2. "A Private Future" - 3. "The Dog-End of a Day Gone By" - 6. "Haunted When the Minutes Drag" - 7. "Saudade"

Studio debut album by the trio Love and Rockets consisting of Daniel Ash on vocals and guitar, David J on bass and backing vocals, and Kevin Haskins on drums. All three band members formed the band in 1985 after the demise of Bauhaus. Actually, Ash had already formed the project-band, Tones on Tail in '82 together with (Bauhaus roadie) Glenn Campling, with whom Ash had attended art school, and when Bauhaus disbanded in '83, Kevin Haskins joined the two.
The music is rather far from what the three played while in Bauhaus. There's hardly any gothic rock references here at all and instead the band plays a new form of psychedelic rock and alt. rock that would come to be labelled neo-psychedelia. The music is heavily built on Daniel Ash's distorted guitar sound but also by a vast repertoire of instruments, though it's all kept quite simple. There are long almost progressive parts without the tracks seem too long - held together by various passages of simple repetitive loops and bits of choruses here and there. It's a surprisingly strong release.
I used to have the original album on cassette and now is left with a 2000 remaster cd issue of the album containing 6 bonus tracks.
[ allmusic.com 3,5 / 5 stars ]


2000 remaster