release date: Mar. 1988
format: digital
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,68]
producer: Simon Rogers
label: Beggars Banquet - nationality: England, UK
Track highlights: 1. "All Night Long" - 3. "Dragnet Drag" - 5. "Indigo Eyes" - 6. "Time Has Got Nothing to Do With It" - 7. "Blind Sublime" - 8. "My Last Two Weeks"
2nd studio album by Peter Murphy following his acclaimed debut Should the World Fail to Fall Apart (1986) after the disbandment of Bauhaus. Where the debut consisted mainly of music written by multi-instrumentalist Howard Hughes, Love Hysteria is an album where Murphy has teamed up with another established composer in the form of guitarist and composer Paul Stratham (of B-Movie) with whom Murphy has written most of the tracks, and together with Simon Rogers from The Fall and a new backing band called The Hundred Men, the album marks quite naturally a change of sound. The album includes a cover of "Funtime" by Bowie and Iggy Pop, originally included on the 77 album The Idiot by Iggy Pop.
The dominant art pop touch Murphy demonstrated his interest for with the project Dalis Car as well as on his solo debut, has stepped into the background for a style, which instead combines Murphy's taste for melodrama rooted in the gothic rock scene, which characterised the Bauhaus period and older styles based on his obvious fascination and inspiration in glam rock, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, and with hints of Tom Verlaine, which also had been a component of the Bauhaus era. On the one hand, you'll find hints of a continuation of a will to explore bright pop-melody structures as found on his debut, but more layers appear on this one, both containing a darker tone but also points in new stylistic directions.
With Love Hysteria, Murphy aims his solo career for an audience with a taste for the darker sides of Bauhaus as opposed to complex rhythms and art pop, as he demonstrated on the otherwise fine Should the World Fail to Fall Apart (1986). The new album garnered quite positive reviews, where it was noted that Murphy partly continues to show his influence from Bowie, but also that he has made his so far most solid release since leaving Bauhaus. My initial verdict was experienced as a disappointment because he hadn't continued in his new-found style of the debut, but that sensation wore off after a while, and when comparing with his later releases, there's no doubt that this very album stands stronger than what his more detached and impersonal debut turned out to be.
Putting Murphy's Bowie-imitating style aside, Love Hysteria is quite a solid and distinctive album that stands the test of time and actually may be his very best.
[ allmusic.com 4 / 5 stars ]
