Love And Rockets, Express

By Less Lee Moore

Every Mardi Gras, the suburban kids in Metairie, Louisiana would congregate in the 7-11 parking lot on the corner of Bonnabel and Veterans Boulevard to “watch the parades.” It was mostly an excuse to escape the watchful eyes of parents and hang out with fellow miscreants and misfits. For many, it was a way to smoke dope or huff amyl nitrate. But for me, it was a way to rub shoulders with the only new wave and punk rock kids I could find.

One of these kids used to wear a Bauhaus T-shirt. In those pre-Internet days, I didn’t know what Bauhaus was, but when I finally found out, I became an instant fan. It took me years to admit that although Bauhaus may have been cool, they just weren’t as good as Love And Rockets, which consisted of everyone in Bauhaus BUT singer Peter Murphy.

I’d heard songs from Love And Rockets’ debut album, Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven, on college radio, but Express, which came out in 1986, was the first album of theirs I owned. It was glorious; one of those albums that you thought about all day long and then put on the stereo as soon as the bus dropped you off from another boring day of high school.

It helped that the album was supported by the three incredibly stimulating videos for “All In My Mind,” “Yin and Yang (The Flowerpot Man),” and “Ball of Confusion.” I taped the first one from MTV and I must have watched it a thousand times. “Yin and Yang” is actually a better song: when Daniel Ash sings “alcohol is your yoga, baby” and David J.’s bassline throbs behind him, it’s a sublime moment. I didn’t quite get “Ball of Confusion” then, but with time I realized what a fantastic cover of The Temptations’ hit it is.

This was all just window dressing for the full album, however. In the early 1980s, I associated saxophones with Foreigner and Steve Winwood, so it shocked me that the opening strains of “It Could Be Sunshine” were so sexy. The hard edit into the heavy drumbeats and keyboard swirls of the second half of the song still gives me goosebumps.

The mystic vibe continues with “Kundalini Express” (another term I didn’t understand in those Internet-less years). In fact, the whole album gives such a respectful nod to Pink Floyd (one of the b-sides was a cover of their “Lucifer Sam”) and other psychedelic greats of that era, it fits right in with that whole 80s revival of the 60s.

Both “Life In Laralay” and “An American Dream” seem to be reflections on culture shock from the band, who were English expats living in L.A. The ironic jabs of “Life In Laralay” are buttressed by heavy guitars, drums, and feedback, but the restraint of “An American Dream,” with its wistful, melancholy acoustics and Daniel Ash’s plaintive singing, drives the point home in a much more profound fashion, while simultaneously recalling the beautiful album-closer from their previous effort, “Saudade.”

With so many great songs, it seems a ballsy move for the band to cover one of the album’s songs on the very same album, but both versions of “All In My Mind” are fantastic, the second one capitalizing on the breathy opener of the first and providing a nice follow-up from the incredibly sensuous “Love Me” (and showing that Bauhaus’ spectacular “Slice Of Life” was not some aberration).

The band would attempt another “Love Me” with “So Alive” a few years later, but by that point, they’d already released their wretched appeal to mainstream radio—Earth Sun Moon—and so it just sounded pathetic. Sure, it was a hit, but all it did was remind me of how great Express was, and still is.

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