Love and Rockets
Express

THE REVIEW

It doesn't matter which guitar he holds in his hands; it can be a sharp Telecaster or a more delicate twelve-string acoustic, the tone can be distorted or without effects, what is certain is that a character with total charisma like Daniel Ash will send some shivers down our spine if we play "Express", an album where he is also featured as a singer, besides playing the sax. Not that the companions onboard this express train are any less: incisive as always is the drumming of Kevin Haskins, mysterious as always—behind his dark glasses—is David J, Kevin's brother, completing the overall sound of the three-piece band with his bass. They were once a quartet and called themselves Bauhaus; in the '80s, they continued their journey without the original frontman and called themselves Love and Rockets.

"Express" is their second album, released in 1986. There is no lack of ideas in this work, where one can breathe a less tense atmosphere compared to the Bauhaus period, and a transition, all things considered understandable, towards less dark music, which tries to be captivating without falling into banality. And even, in certain episodes like "All in My Mind" or the closing "American Dream", opening up to dreamy and almost psychedelic sounds that we will find in abundance in the third album. Or again, giving space to perfect dance floor hits like "Ball of Confusion", a metaphor for the chaos of today's world ("Ball of confusion / that's what the world is today, hey hey").

Anyway, in the ten or so tracks that make up the album, there is still room for killer guitar riffs and pounding drums without restraint as in "Kundalini Express", the esoteric train on which Love and Rockets invite us to board: in Hinduism, kundalini is the term that indicates bodily energy symbolized by a serpent coiled at the base of our spine, which can be awakened through appropriate meditation practices; the goal is to achieve union with the Divine, in a state of perfect bliss.

So, do you see why at the beginning of the review I talked about shivers down the spine?