Shine On

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Few bands remind me of early ‘90s Berlin as much as this self-titled record from The House of Love (formed in London, 1986), and this one is such a great album.

Cover Design

As you’ll see in the mention below, Trevor Key is the photographer and designer of the cover of this album. A quick search on Discogs reveals that Mr. Key mad done quite a bit of work in the music industry including Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel, New Order, OMD, and a few other artists you’ve likely heard of. He was a part of the design firm Cooke Key Associates with Brian Cooke, and they are likely most notable for designing the logo for Virgin. Speaking of New Order, Mr. Key found himself working quite a bit with Peter Saville and Factory Records who went on to work at Pentagram in Los Angeles. They were best friends.

Now this is what you call a body of work. Expansive.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=virgin+logo&t=osx&ia=web

Mr. Key was also instrumental in creating the look of punk rock when they were asked to design the covers for bands such as the Sex Pistols. Their provocative designs defined a new world in music via art and design, and fans wanted it so bad they bought anything that came out with the bands name on it, proving the power of marketing and human nature, even despite having swastikas on the album cover.

https://www.discogs.com/artist/1847755-Cooke-Key

https://www.trevorkey.com/

Mr. Key passed away too early at the age of 48 from a brain tumor.

Butterfly

What wasn’t clear is who the artist is on the butterfly artwork. But I did find that a few places Key is credited for ‘creating’ the artwork of the butterfly, which, considering his remarkable talent, is likely true.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_House_of_Love_(1990_album)

The Recordings

I finally picked this one up on vinyl as it was reissued. I should actually write more about it, but here are some interesting tidbits I found, including learning from wikipedia that the recording process for the album passed through several hands before finishing.

This reissue is a limited 180gm vinyl LP, and at the time of recording The House of Love were:

• Guitar / vocals — Guy Chadwick
• Lead guitar — Terry Bickers
• Bass — Chris Groothuizen
• Drums — Pete Evans

Descriptions of this recording are not very available online, so what follows is a mixture of description bullet-points, apparently, mixed with story::

Chadwick had been around the music industry for several years, but was energised seeing The Jesus And Mary Chain, inspiring him to form the band.

Signing to Creation, The House of Love were greeted enthusiastically by the music press and their single, Shine On and self-titled debut album became indie disco classics. By 1989, the band were big news and had signed to Fontana, part of the PolyGram group.

The group’s debut album for Fontana, also confusingly entitled The House of Love, was released in February 1990. Known often as ‘The Butterfly Album’ after Trevor Key’s distinctive artwork, much was made at the time of its protracted birth and the weight of expectation, and the fact it was produced by five different people. Years later, it sounds assured and confident commercial indie, bursting with invention and melody.

The re-recording of their Creation calling card, Shine On, gave them a UK Top 20 hit and Beatles And The Stones points the way to the gentler side of Oasis some years later.

— compiled from a few write-ups online, no author credited

And on their website, I found this quote from Guy Chadwick, the singer, about this album:

That difficult second album! Two years in the making after signing to Fontana, including a six week stint at Abbey Road’s Studio 2 of which most of the recordings were discarded!

We then spent six weeks with Stephen Hague at Ad Vision and those recordings were also discarded! We finally connected with Dave Meeghan who produced the majority of the record, plus a couple of Tim Palmer productions (Shine On and Never) to the relief of everyone involved. At Ad Vision, Wet Wet Wet were also recording and Marti Pellow mistook me for the gopher and asked me to make him a cuppa. I told him to F off, which was quite brave of me considering he is a very hard Glaswegian.”

— Guy Chadwick, https://www.thehouseoflove.co.uk/discography

The other notes I found about the band was that the five (make that four, as one had already left) band members at the time started to diverge because of the differing goals they had, which, considering they were starting to have some good success, may lay bare the sharp pointy bits that test your artistic integrity and emerge as fangs into full view. The higher the success, the higher the strain of success, I imagine. And it seems like it was happening for them during this album.

Tracks

Despite the rumblings, this album is fantastic. From the intro track, which is really captivating, Hannah, and then into Shine On, this is a moody and bass & guitar-forward album with lots of drum brushes, this album can be put on loop at least three times before you realize it’s looped.

Beatles and Stones was a popular single track off of this album and if you speak to someone about The House of Love they’ll likely remember that one, but Blind is likely my favorite here.

Good stuff. Great album.

Thanks for reading.

—L