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There
is too much music around. It is written about too much, televised too much
and heard on the radio far too easily. The most basic idea of difficulty
in rock music (viz it is difficult to hear because some find it
threatening) is almost totally lacking. The Glove are a small reminder of
this fact.
It seems almost appallingly obvious to say it, but it is the truth that if
the Glove weren't those two, Mssrs (real messers!) Severin and Smith, then
this album's worth of abject baloney would not have seen the light of day.
There, I said it; and it is the sadly predictable truth!
Siouxsie has produced an unhealthy fetishism around herself: it has been
the only reason she's hung around so long. Her side-kick Severin, of
course, bathes in this reflected 'glory' while Robert Smith could be said
to have become a latterday male Siouxsie. He sells large amounts of
records, largely because of his image it would seem (a kind of bed- sit
glam rock). Thus revealing the worst excess of fan worship, 'Blue
Sunshine' is the work of privilege rather than of a hardly containable
creative desire.
The Glove project reminds me of Yes solo splinters of days gone past,
particularly those of Steve Howe and Chris Squires. At least they had the
good sense not to include lyrics on their awful solo outpourings - they
just rambled on. The Glove ramble on, but they also have an anonymous girl
vocalist, one Landray, screaming away on top. What she screams are
presumably young Smith's words, and they are pretty dreadful. Smith has
either lost his mind, is having a privileged joke at his fans' expense, or
drug abuse of the headier kind really has come into mode again.
The songs on 'Blue Sunshine' are chiefly about marmalade, goldfish and
white mice, it is like Tiny Tim meets Magnus Pike: "The umbrella man
is shouting/we take his paper hands/There's mirrors down beneath our feet
so/'Let's shake down the street..."
Rubbish, Robert, complete rubbish.
The attempt to emulate bits of Traffic, Family and New Order (wasn't that
last Cure 45 a New Order lift?), while providing, especially early on in
the proceedings, an interesting backing-track, never finds the cohesion
necessary to take it out of the realms of mere privilege. For instance, Ms
Landray's vocalising is far too formal and English for that determinedly
way out backing-track, and those incomprehensible lyrics surely must have
given the poor girl nightmares!
I'm all for letting go, breaking new territory, allowing Severin and Smith
to adventure. But in this case, a good opportunity has been self-
indulgently wasted. The Glove are well named; one glove is useless without
a pair. It is something to be thrown away and forgotten about.
2/5
Dave McCullough
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