Craig Stephen looks at House of Love frontman Guy
Chadwick’s all too easily overlooked solo debut …
“Is it today I’m going crazy, come and help me lose
my mind, who knows what we might find, maybe ourselves.”
So begins Lazy Soft and Slow, and with it the start
of Guy Chadwick’s solo career, a project that promised so much but petered out
rather abruptly and would ultimately be a one-album adventure.
The story up to this point is this: the House of
Love fizzled out following the underwhelming Audience With the Mind in 1993,
and Guy attempted new projects in The Madonnas and then Eye Dream, neither of
which managed to take off. However, The Madonnas’ gigs had featured a number of
new songs, which would later find a new lease of life on the solo album,
notably ‘Crystal Love Song’ and ‘One of These Days’.
The logical next move for Chadwick was to establish himself as a solo artist. Could he become a Julian Cope who’s post Teardrop Explodes career was startlingly successful for a decade-and-a-half, or would the project go the way of Ian McCulloch’s?
Just getting to this stage had taken a considerable
effort with Keith Cullen of Setanta Records instrumental in prompting the evidently
reticent frontman to record an album.
So, over four years after the band split, Chadwick
was ready and motivated to do his own thing. Country music and Leonard Cohen
were on the speakers in the house at the time and inevitably rubbed off during
the writing and recording sessions.
Suitably, an acoustic guitar was used for the demo
sessions. The intention was to go back to a more mellow, softer sound - as the
title testifies.
Robin Guthrie of the Cocteau Twins was roped in as Chadwick’s
producer and mixer, with Giles Hall the engineer. Guthrie was the perfect choice:
Chadwick didn’t want to make a House of Love record, while Guthrie didn’t want
to make a Cocteau Twins record. Two birds, one stone, as it were. Guthrie would
also play bass on the new album.
The first fruits of Lazy, Soft & Slow was the
single ‘This Strength’, released in November 1997, backed by ‘Wasted In Song’
and ‘Faraway’. The latter B-side also featured on the album, re-recorded and
slightly shorter.
A few months passed, bypassing the traditional
compilation and big star albums for Christmas and the January fallow period. Then,
in February 1998, Lazy Soft & Slow was piled onto record store shelves. Since
this was a period when CD was king, there was no LP version. Sadly, that
remains the case.
It is not an album that jumps out of the speakers on
first listen, or even the second. It’s for those moments when you don’t want
robust vocals, or amped-up guitars. It requires the kind of mood as you would be
in for a Nick Drake album. ‘Close Your Eyes’ and ‘One of These Days’ fit very
much into the aura of the album; languid and beautifully written songs with final
track ‘Close Your Eyes’ taking the listener into a hypnotic state.
There are, however, some more athletic tracks,
notably ‘You’ve Really Got a Hold of Me’, which celebrates a strong relationship
as Chadwick paints a picture of that special someone. “I’m a passenger on a
ship of dreams, on a course of love, I think I’m going down.”
There’s a surprise version of Iggy Pop’s ‘Fall In
Love With Me’ which first appeared on 1977’s Lust For Life. The original is
upbeat, captures the essence of 1970s decadent west Berlin, and has the magical
Bowie touch – he co-wrote it after all. Chadwick strips it back by a more than
two minutes (gasp!), and turns it into a campfire and toasted marshmallows type
of song.
With such ravishing words throughout Lazy, Soft
& Slow, Chadwick was reminding the world that he was one of the most
talented writers of the era. Of any era, in fact. The entire album displays his
knack for lyricism, and despite perhaps not having the dry humour of Morrissey,
Chadwick matches the moody, and sadly now conspiracy theorist extraordinaire
Mancunian, for captivating vernacularism.
If I’m honest, Lazy, Soft & Slow is an album I
have jumped into less regularly than the House of Love albums. Partly due to it
needing a certain state of mind, but also because vinyl is now played more
commonly to my cat and child.
This is something that needs to be rectified. Many
CD-only releases of the 1990s and noughties have been given the vinyl
treatment. So should LSS.
Yes, it’s an odd one and it may not be to everyone’s
taste, but with it being out of print since 1998, surely someone in the world
of music can give it another airing, complete with outtakes, B-sides and
what-have-yous. It deserves nothing less.
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