Love Spit Love

views updated

Love Spit Love

Alternative rock band

The raspy, darkly unique voice of Richard Butler, former frontman for the Psychedelic Furs, reemerged in the 1990s with Love Spit Love, a band he named after a piece of art he once saw at someone’s home. Ironically, both sales and serious appraisal for each of Love Spit Love’s releases—their self-titled 1994 debut and 1997’s Trysome Eatone— have never been able to match the retro appeal that the Furs’ music still incites.

Throughout the 1980s, the English-born Butler’s scraping voice, combined with the arch, quasi-literary lyrics he penned, gave the Furs its distinctive sound and made them one of the most successful of British post-punk acts in the United States. Billboard editor Craig Rosen summed up the Furs’ seminal 1980 self-titled debut as a blend of “the rage and raw power of the Sex Pistols with the sophisticated cool of David Bowie and Roxy Music.” Butler’s talents shone through on a string of alternative gems such as “India” and “Alice’s House,” but it was for the Furs’ more pop-anchored songs like “Love My Way” and “Pretty in Pink” that the band gained mass fandom. They continued to record until the early 1990s; as publicity materials on Love Spit Love reported, eventually Butler “admitted that it had just gotten to the point where he knew what the albums would sound like before they even recorded them.”

During the Furs’ final tour, Butler struck up a friendship with Richard Fortus, the guitarist for their opening act, Pale Divine.” I got to know Richard over the course of the tour and I had this feeling that a combination of my voice and sense of melody and his versatility and musical strength would be really interesting,” Butler recalled in a press release. “When I made the decision to start a new band, he was the first person I called.” That moment came shortly after the 1991 tour, and the pair began writing songs together, recruiting New York City musician Frank Ferrer as drummer. Ferrer had played with a band called The Beautiful; when some labels expressed interest in the project, Butler and his new cohorts scrambled to find a compatible bass player to round out what would become Love Spit Love. Butler dragooned his brother Tim into the band, and they departed for Los Angeles to record their debut in early 1994.

Love Spit Love was released in 1994 on the Imago label. It was produced by Dave Jerden, whose resume included projects with Jane’s Addiction and the Talking Heads. Comparisons with Butler’s former band were inevitable. “Whereas the Psychedelic Furs were the epitome of textured post-punk British pop,” wrote Brian Q. New-comb in Billboard, “with Love Spit Love, Butler’s voice and Fortus’ potent acoustic and electric guitar work have produced a more direct rock sensibility, without sacrificing any of Butler’s sense of challenging melody.” A cello and mandolin surfaced on some tracks, evidence of Fortus’s range of musical abilities. The album’s single “Am I Wrong?” did relatively well, reaching No. 3 on Billboards modern-rock charts, but reviewers were less than effusive in their judgment. Melody Makerwriter Cathi Unsworth called Love Spit Love’s debut “glamour on ice,” saddled with a “production as thick as varnish.” She gave it a mixed assessment, but did find a gem in the song “Codeine”—”only this once does Butler manage to crawl under your skin,” her review noted.

On another of Love Spit Love’s tracks, “Seventeen,” Butler relinquished his trademark raspy voice and sang in falsetto. The switch was blasted by Rolling Stone reviewer Geoffrey Welchman, who likened it “a bad Monty Python impression.” However, Welchman also lavished praise upon “Codeine,” deeming it a song that “demonstrates the best this band is capable of.” Unfortunately, Love Spit Love’s debut release would suffer further indignities: the band’s Imago label found itself in corporate distress and at one point lost their distribution deal with media conglomerate BMG.

Meanwhile, other labels were finding sales healthy for a series of Psychedelic Furs re-issues, capitalizing on the mid-Nineties nostalgia for the music of the previous decade. Even the music press poked fun at the cottage Furs industry with headlines such as, “Oh Look! It’s Another Psychedelic Furs Compilation!” Younger fans

For the Record…

Original members include Richard Butler, vocals; Tim Butler (left band, c. 1996), bass; Chris Wilson (joined band 1996), bass; Frank Ferrer, drums; • Richard Fortus, guitar, cello, mandolin.

Butler was a founding member and lead singer of the British new-wave band the Psychedelic Furs; Fortus formerly played guitar in Pale Divine; Ferrer had once been the drummer for The Beautiful.

Band formed, 1991, after a joint Psychedelic Furs/Pale Divine tour; signed to Imago Records, c. 1993; released Love Spit Love, 1994; signed to Maverick Records, c. 1996; released second album, Trysome Eatone, 1997.

Addresses: Record company —Maverick Records, 8000 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90048.

who were introduced to Butler’s unique style with the Love Spit Love singles—or on his appearance singing “I Am Anastasia” on Sponge’s Wax Ecstatic LP—could revisit the Furs experience with such packages as In the Pink or Radio One Sessions.

After the problems with Imago, Butler and Love Spit Love found a new corporate home with Maverick Records, usually referred to as “Madonna’s label.” Still, it was nice, cozy quarters for any band, especially given Maverick’s success with Alanis Morissette and Prodigy. When it came time to record a follow-up, the band recruited famed producer Ben Grosse, who had worked with both Republica and the Rollins Band. They ensconced themselves in a Massachusetts studio for several weeks to complete Trysome Eatone, released the late summer of 1997.

Again, Butler abandoned his usual abrasive growl for a falsetto on the tracks “Believe” and “Little Fist.” He told Billboard’s Rosen that “it was just something that happened on this record…. Most of these songs were written around my apartment with Richard Fortus, and a lot on acoustic guitar,” Butler said. “When he played [‘Little Fist’] it just seemed natural to go into that voice.” Home for Butler is New York’s East Village, and the roughness of the neighborhood—not as tidy and cool as the streets of next-door Greenwich Village—inspired some lyrical visions. “St. Marks [Place] is almost like a Third World street in some ways,” Butler told Rosen. “There’s this hotel, the St. Marks Hotel, where there’s a death every four or five days. ‘Little Fist’ is about some of the people you see walking in and out of there.”

Perhaps uncoincidentally, Trysome Eatone coincided with fall 1997 release of the penultimate Psychedelic Furs greatest-hits package, the double CD Should God Forget: A Retrospective. Meanwhile, Love Spit Love were ready to embark on a U.S. tour before an early 1998 overseas release for Trysome Eatone. They planned to cover some old Furs tunes live. “We didn’t on the first tour, because we didn’t want people to think they were going to get their favorite hits from the Psychedelic Furs,” Butler told Billboard. “But having established this as a band, I think it’s safe to try a couple of Psychedelic Furs songs if I feel like it.”