Love And Rockets
Seventh Dream Of Teenage Heaven

THE REVIEW

I Love And Rockets are nothing more than Bauhaus without Peter Murphy. And here someone might say: "That's saying something...". Certainly, Murphy represented an icon of English dark-punk, but what is contained in this record is more refined than the entire Bauhaus production. It dates back to 1985 and represents the debut of the new formation. The sound is a precious weave of psychedelia, electronic elements, and vaguely danceable rhythms. But it's especially the atmosphere that represents the real novelty of the record. A somnambulistic trance, a sense of transcendence that has a hint of shoegazing. There's a narcotic, overwhelming mood. The result is achieved through the use of hypnotizing keyboard riffs, walls of background guitars, and choral singing that amplifies the sense of desolation.

Beware, we are not dealing with a dark album: sometimes the atmospheres can also be gloomy, but always wrapped in a dreamy patina of great charm.
In short, 7 extended tracks (rarely dropping below 6 minutes) that significantly contributed to foreshadowing what the '90s would be.

"If There's A Heaven Above" is, for example, a piece of rare elegance, as if Pink Floyd had decided to fill the disco clubs. A clean and crystalline sound, that doesn't tire you out, doesn't go to your head, precisely because of its latent content. And this speaks volumes about the album's sophistication. The celestial guitar riff that opens "A Private Future" wonderfully mixes with a lazy and sluggish rhythm, the atmosphere gradually starts to become shadowy, between sharp drum machine beats and funereal synth swathes, everything then recomposes to make the sky clear again as before. The martial "The Dog-End Of A Toy Gone By" is a dark ceremonial with avalanche strokes, always contended between hell and heaven. Their ambiguity is one of the key points of the entire record. Their sound never takes a precise direction, never completely reveals itself, but above all, it never becomes predictable or trivial.
The gloomy minor notes that announce "The Game" set off a recitation that seems the skimmed and spiced version with new ingredients of what was "In The Flat Fields". The synthetic alarms of the title track on subliminal suspense rhythm foreshadow the deep groove of "Haunted When The Minutes Drag," a track with two faces: a leaden march marked by electronic whiplashes rises on an epic choir, then fades into a subtle and dreamy melody with a vaguely retro flavor.
The melancholic "Saudade," for acoustic guitar and synthesizer, ends one of the most beautiful journeys of '80s music.

A pleasant and welcomed surprise, heralding very important novelties, and perhaps, indeed without perhaps, unfairly underrated.