Love - Disc of the day

Love
The Blue Thumb Recordings

(Hip-O-Select/Universal, 2007)

Much-maligned late line-up’s two LPs from ’69 and ’71 plus previously unreleased Live In London 1970 set.

Forever Changes purists look away now. The line-up that Arthur Lee put together in 1968 after disbanding the original band in a fit of pique when their orchestral masterpiece failed to sell in the US, are not an inferior version of Love. And so productive were the new band’s studio sessions for 1969’s Four Sail (Love’s final album for Elektra) that they also gleaned the double LP Out There, released by new label Blue Thumb just three months later. Doggone’s canine subject matter and epic drum solo may have dated, but the romantic Willow Willow is ravishing, while the closing Gather ‘Round features an Arthur lyric as unfathomable and deceptively beautiful as Andmoreagain’s one about the snot caked against his pants. The live set from 1970 shows the new line-up tackle all five albums with aplomb (an achingly tragic Signed DC especially). Clearly at home to the smog and dissolute London vibe, Love stayed in the UK to record the uncharacteristically good-natured False Start, featuring a certain Jimi Hendrix on explosive opener The Everlasting First. But the good vibes were short lived and Love broke up a few weeks after False Start came out. Shame!

Jenny Bulley

Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 6:00 AM GMT 25/04/2008