Lush – Spooky (2023 Remaster) (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Lush – Spooky (2023 Remaster) (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 48:27 minutes | 1,09 GB | Genre: Indie Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © 4AD

Expectations were high for Lush’s debut album. Although 1990’s Gala compilation was, for U.S. audiences especially, the first real, full-length exposure to the London band, that set brought together three very different EPs and was more a catalog of a young band’s genesis and rapid evolution. With production from the Cocteau Twins’ Robin Guthrie—who, at the time, was in the midst of his main band nearly breaking up over his substance abuse issues—and the music press hype machine swirling into overdrive about the shoegaze scene, Spooky was supposed to be a diaphanous bit of jangle-pop confection that fused together the prettiest and pushiest bits of Gala into a more cohesive form. Instead, it turned out that Guthrie rarely turned up to the recording sessions, leaving the band and two “assistant” engineers to put together an album that wound up being a coherent, complete, and current statement of who Lush was as a band. That band was a surprisingly daring one. Chordally and structurally, few of the cuts on Spooky proceed in a predictable manner. In fact, surprises abound, whether it’s when the angels-on-speed aggression of “Superblast!” collapses at its climax into a flanged-out whirlpool of weirdness or when the chiming vibrato of “Take” actually turns out to be a bit of feminist post-punk. To be sure, there’s enough gauzy guitar work and multi-tracked vocal harmony to easily warrant the album’s position at or near the top of any ranking of Best Shoegaze Albums Ever, but the prickly tension that defined Lush’s earliest recordings is still present throughout Spooky. That tension manifests on the rhythmic, staccato open chords of “Tiny Smiles” just as much as it does in the straight-ahead punkiness of “Laura” which, weirdly, is the most aggressive and the most beautiful song on the whole album. Ultimately Spooky recasts much of the “shoegazey-ness” as off-kilter individualism, rather than a de rigeur textural choice. The result is an album that managed to subvert those initial expectations while simultaneously exceeding them; it’s not only the best album in Lush’s catalog, but it ranks among one of the strongest debut albums of the ’90s. – Jason Ferguson

Tracklist:
1-1. Lush – Stray (2023 Remaster) (02:07)
1-2. Lush – Nothing Natural (2023 Remaster) (05:54)
1-3. Lush – Tiny Smiles (2023 Remaster) (04:26)
1-4. Lush – Covert (2023 Remaster) (03:34)
1-5. Lush – Ocean (2023 Remaster) (04:49)
1-6. Lush – For Love (2023 Remaster) (03:29)
1-7. Lush – Superblast! (2023 Remaster) (04:07)
1-8. Lush – Untogether (2023 Remaster) (03:33)
1-9. Lush – Fantasy (2023 Remaster) (04:27)
1-10. Lush – Take (2023 Remaster) (03:28)
1-11. Lush – Laura (2023 Remaster) (03:22)
1-12. Lush – Monochrome (2023 Remaster) (05:06)

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