Love and Rockets

April 1, 1999
Web posted at: 1:38 p.m. EST (1838 GMT)

By Donna Freydkin
Special to CNN Interactive

In this story: So alive Bauhaus, redux Looking for 'another hit single' RELATED STORIES, SITES

(CNN) -- They've had one top-10 hit, and earned their fair share of critical acclaim and cult devotion. But after more than a decade, the glam-rock trio Love and Rockets is ready to finally reach K-mart shoppers.

"We would love to have hits. We're not against that at all," says sometime vocalist and bassist David J. "But it has to be on our own terms. It has to come from a place that's true, not contrived."

The band best known for the 1989 single "So Alive," which peaked at No. 3 on the U.S. charts, is hoping that their seventh album, the optimistically titled "Lift," will resurrect some of the old magic. After their losing their way on their two previous albums, which were virtually invisible from both a critical and a commercial standpoint, Love and Rockets hopes there is indeed a new tale to tell.

"I want it to sell. We want to have a platinum disc," David J says of "Lift."

Throughout their long musical tenure, the boys that descended from goth-rock pioneers Bauhaus have toyed with glam rock, pop, acid house and electronica. But they see "Lift," a densely harmonious, extremely accessible blend of electronica and pop, as their most fully realized release to date.

"It's an encapsulation of our ongoing fascination with electronic music," adds David J.

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Listen to a clip of "Holy Fool" 115k WAV (Courtesy Red Ant)

From the mid-1980s on, Love and Rockets made a name for themselves by dabbling in T. Rex and David Bowie-esque glam-pop and electronica.

The British trio -- David J, guitarist/vocalist Daniel Ash and drummer Kevin Haskins -- formed from the fractured remnants of pioneering, enigmatic goth band Bauhaus, which broke up in the early 1980s after singer Peter Murphy launched a solo career. Once fully formed, Love and Rockets infused the shadowy, introverted sound of Bauhaus with elements of pop, R&B and psychedelia.

The band's U.K. debut "Seventh Dream of the Teenage Heaven" was an underground hit, and they followed it up with 1986's "Express" and 1987's "Earth, Sun, Moon." But it was the group's 1989 eponymous album that hurtled them into the charts with the single "So Alive." The left-of-field hit peaked at No. 3 on the U.S. singles charts, while the album went gold that same year.

"That song was our biggest hit ever," laughs Haskins, somewhat ruefully.

"It was completely spontaneous. We had no idea it was going to be a single or anything. The whole thing was written, conceived and produced in a day," adds David J. "We were just trying to make a good track."

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But instead of following up the success of the album with a similar pop potion, Love and Rockets broke up instead, afraid of succumbing to the commercialism that endangered their music. The members pursued various solo projects, but reformed in 1994 and released "Hot Trip to Heaven," an experimental kaleidoscope of psych-pop that barely made a dent with either critics or fans, but actually predated the electronica revolution by several years.

"Hot Trip to Heaven" was fueled by the band's fascination with the acid house scene, and the members' need to somehow take it on board and reinvent themselves, they say now.

"The idea was just to slip out in American Records, very low-key, and follow it up with an album that had electronic elements but was more of a pop album," says David J. "But it was so low-key that it was practically invisible, and we were a bit perturbed by that."

In 1996, they released "Sweet F.A.," another album that toyed with the electronica explored by their earliest influences -- Suicide, Kraftwerk and Can -- but failed to explode with either critics or listeners. So last year, the trio regrouped and went back to the studio with producer Doug DeAngelis (known for his remix work with the Pet Shop Boys, Janet Jackson and New Order) to work on the forthcoming album.

"He became almost like a fourth member," says Haskins. "He helped us shape the songs."

And after the album was done -- whether to promote it or generate some dough -- Love and Rockets reunited with Murphy and went on the road in 1998 as Bauhaus. The tour (proving yet again that no band is immune from the reunion bug) seemed to give Love and Rockets a jolt of much-needed adrenaline. It was a smash, and the band released "Lift" in the midst of it.

"We had lost our way a little bit and we had to regain our confidence and our vision as far as electronic music was concerned for this 'Lift' record and really hone the whole thing back again," says David J. "We wanted to make it more of a cohesive record, but very much in the realm of electronica as it has become called."

The moody, melodious album includes the hypnotic "Deep Deep Down," groovy "Pink Flamingo" and eerie "Party's Not Over Yet," which was created with a broken piano and toy guitar. "Resurrection Hex" blends samples of Adam Ant's "Kings of the Wild Frontier" and Bauhaus' "Stigmata Martyr." But among the best tracks is the polished, loungy "Holy Fool," which features a pulsating bass groove and the unmistakable slinky backup vocals of Luscious Jackson's Jill Cunniff.

"This album picks up on all the other records we had made. It picks up elements from acoustic to psychedelia to out-and-out rock, but it's under this electronica blanker," says David J.

The Love and Rockets path may prove a hard one for their longtime fans -- as well as Bauhaus followers -- to follow, but for the band, the album represented a need to reinvent themselves while sticking to their electronic roots. So far, they say the album has been well received, especially during their current U.S. tour. And they hope that "Lift" proves as commercially viable as the most recent offerings from Fatboy Slim and the Chemical Brothers.

Love and Rockets say they're not in the business of cranking out radio-ready fare, but say they're ready to taste the limelight again.

"We're in this for the music, but we'd love to have another hit single," concludes David J.