The House of Love – She Paints Words in Red (2013)

THE HOUSE OF LOVE were one of the most critically acclaimed Indie Rock bands of the late 80s/early 1990s.

 

Their eponymous Creation Records debut album was cited as one of the best albums of 1988 (November 2012’s 3-CD deluxe edition has enjoyed rave reviews and impressive sales).

 

SHE PAINTS WORDS IN RED is a brand new studio album by the band, still fronted by the band’s singer/songwriter/guitarist Guy Chadwick with lead guitarist Terry Bickers, drummer Pete Evans and bassist Matt Jury.


 Since reuniting a decade ago, frontmen Terry Bickers and Guy Chadwick have spent most of their time looking back; the songs on She Paints Words in Red are their first new work in eight years. The older they get, the softer the band sound: there is a dark streak of anguish in Chadwick's lyrics to Hemingway and Trouble in Mind, but the guitars are lambent, pastel-pretty on the former, gentle as a lullaby on the latter. True to its name, Sunshine Out of the Rain sets a troubled romance to guitars that glimmer like sunlit pools. Despite this loveliness, it's hard not to feel a nostalgic pang for their youth. You glimpse it in the chugging riff of A Baby Got Back on Its Feet and in the needling notes of Low Black Clouds, but only PKR maintains the tension. Tellingly, it predates everything else by two decades.