Friday, 20 December 2019

Love Club - Lime Twigs And Treachery


What we have here is a female fronted Goth band from San Francisco, very much akin to the likes of Sunshine Blind, another US-based band who followed shortly after. Lime Twigs and Treachery is Love Clubs only album released in 1990 when they signed to Popular Metaphysics who were branded by MCA records. In terms of band type MCA's primary emphasis in 1990 was on metal and commercial hard rock. The label did however try to aim at the alternative rock market that year when it signed Love Club, who’s Lime Twigs and Treachery should have been much better known. Chances are that the band caught the label’s attention but didn’t perform as expected yet the person who does the most to make this left-of-centre release so exciting is Deborah Borchers; the lead singer is as intoxicating as she is frenzied on such abstract, intensely eerie fare as "Holding Heaven's Hand," "Killing Ground," and "Distant." As much as Love Club thrives on dissonance, the band also has a fine melodic sense. Hard hitting tracks like “One Last Kiss” and “Holding Heaven’s Hand” should feel right at home for any late 80s darkwave collection, and are worth the price of admission alone. I must warn you though: the second half of this album may be a little too Tori Amos-esque for some readers, but Love Club tends to be more aggressive, as well as more accessible. Had this neglected album been released three or four years later; when alternative rock was king and major labels were aggressively promoting this type of music; it might have enjoyed a lot more commercial success.


Ripped from the 1990 CD release to intensely eerie MP3 @ 320kbps

Love Club; Lime Twigs And Treachery

1.      One Last Kiss
2.      Corpses In The Sand
3.      Holding Heavens Hand
4.      The Mirror
5.      Killing Ground
6.      Sad Eyes
7.      Distant
8.      Eternity
9.      The Thief

 


7 comments:

  1. Heard this recently and thought you might like it, AJ:
    https://idlehandspdx.bandcamp.com/album/mana

    Idle Hands is a goth metal band, and their album "Mana" made quite a few lists of the best metal releases of 2019. I hear the Damned (circa Phantasmagoria) and the Lords of the New Church in their sound.

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    1. It's like Paradise Lost had a bastard Goth offspring (should I inflict some Paradise Lost on the good readers of this blog??)

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  2. Speaking of the Damned, the new EP of holiday themed punk parodies by Angry Snowmans starts with a rewrite of "Love Song". (They also once did "Melody Lee" as "Trimming The Tree").

    https://angrysnowmans.bandcamp.com/album/snow-means-snow-ep

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    1. Just for you, here's a gift card...M'eh!

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    2. I imagine you would be even less impressed by Angry Snowmans' reimagining of "New Rose" ("Red Nose").

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