Red Lorry Yellow Lorry
Talk About the Weather

You go out with friends in the evening. It's not boredom gripping your throat, but a bat. The usual bite on the usual jugular.

You visit your trusted doctor, Dr. Asl, who immediately understands the situation. He advises you to change your strictly vegetarian diet and avoid going out during the day. This despite his assistant, Dr. Cameron, being convinced you have lupus. Dr. Cuddy says nothing, but you can't avoid staring at her neckline.

Obviously, you also change your musical tastes, more suited to your new nightlife. No more pop, long live goth becomes your motto. 

To start with, I recommend this "Talk About The Weather" by Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, perhaps in the edition released by "Red Cherry" enriched with no less than eleven bonus tracks (but, alas, not remastered), which I simply consider among the 30 most important albums of the genre.  

The Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, a Leeds group led by Chris Reed, more or less contemporaneous with the various Sisters Of Mercy, Mission, Cult, and Fields Of The Nephilim, are important for having steered gothic, born under the sign of post-punk, towards more decidedly rock, garage shores ("He's Read"), sometimes even hard ("See The Fire"), effectively codifying some "trademarks" that will stick to the genre forever.

Just think of the way of singing "tuned two tones lower," which makes people like Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen seem like choirboys, and if you don't believe it, listen to the vocal "solo" at the end of "Feel A Piece". Unlike death rock (Christian Death, Sex Gang Children, Alien Sex Fiend, etc.), more tribal and acidic, the sound becomes more harmonious, enveloping. The desire for epicness increases ("Hollow Eyes"), the care of arrangements, the proximity to the song format.

The past, of course, is still around the corner: the grated guitar riffs ("Silence"), the dry sound of the drums ("Talk About The Weather"), the liquid synths ("Strange Dream"), are all wave material. "Happy" is practically a Killing Joke song. In "I'm Still Waiting", on the other hand, Red Lorry Yellow Lorry quote the Velvet Underground more times than the Jesus And Mary Chain do in their entire career. In "Beating My Head" they borrow the sax from Psychedelic Furs. Reed's group avoids the trap of boredom, a congenital flaw of the genre, thanks to short, agile compositions: thus they give us timeless classics like "Hollow Eyes", "Talk About The Weather", "See The Fire", "Push", "He's Read", "Feel A Piece" and "Russia". 

There would still be so much to say about this album (and also about the next one, the equally valid "Paint Your Wagon"): but it's night again, and you have a date with a girl. Her blood type: B Rh positive.

Your favorite.

SCORE 9/10