The alternative rock band The House of Love is like a treasure hidden in the UK’s music scene. The band had gone through a famous break-up in 1993 after their early successful singles such as “Christine” and “Shine On”. The break-up between lead singer Guy Chadwick and lead guitarist Terry Bicker inevitably held their career back to some degree. After their reformation in 2003, the band announced their coming back with new album “She Paints Words in Red”, and shows what matters most in music for them— splashes of solitude mixed with lovingness in everyday life. The fact that they are not big names such as Radiohead and The Smiths gives them a great deal of affinity. When promoting their new album in 2013, the band received a fan’s regards on Tom Robinson’s radio session. “Steven the fan” told the band that he saw Terry Bickers in his hometown in the 1980s, and now he would go to their show and “stock” them with his son. This kind of chitchat removes the rock star halo from the band. While the anecdote amuses everybody, it gives the music a great deal of intimacy that probably could only be found in The House of Love. Compared with their early live performance in the 80s BBC studios, new era’s neon lights and synthetic fog in the venue apparently suits better with The House of Love’s psychedelic ambiance. Almost twenty years of ups and downs turned these nerdy, lost boys into more attractive men with vicissitudes of life.
What counts as “talent” in a musician is that he could display the emotions everybody’s heart with wonderful melody. The House of Love sure is talented in a sense that their performance could be interpreted as the musical version of London life—sentimental, fragmented, melancholic but more importantly, full of love and tenderness. Polished by years of chaos, The House of Love becomes a shinier pearl among British rock bands.
Kurt Vile
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