Plunder the Tombs: Gene Loves Jezebel – Promise (Situation Two, 1983)

Friday, September 17, 2010

Gene Loves Jezebel – Promise (Situation Two, 1983)

I first encountered Gene Loves Jezebel in 1990 when they were performing their very MTV-friendly “Jealous”, so it was quite the little mind-fuck to discover a few years later that back in the day they’d been a band right at the cutting edge of early Goth.

Formed by the identical twin Aston brothers Jay and Michael, the band began in 1980, and released their first single, the individualistic and aggressive “Shaving My Neck” (1982) now readily available on the compilation Gothic Rock (Jungle, 1992).

The first full length album Promise and its accompanying singles “Bruises”, “Screaming for Emmalene” and “Influenza” followed, with bass provided by Julianne Regan who would depart soon after to form All About Eve. Although interspersed with intervals of slow & desolate introspection, for the most part this little beast of an album fair gallops along with catchy alternative pop sensibilities all the while exuding a miasma of bleak neuroticism. If there seems to be a certain recycling of musical ideas throughout the album, it matters little since those recycled ideas are very good ones indeed. Standout tracks include “Bruises”, “Pop Tarantula”, “Screaming for Emmalene” and “Psychological Problems”.

By 1985, the band would go on to do the very Cultesque “Desire”, which sadly would become the song they would be remembered for, the live video leaning drunkenly towards the pop-metal fad of the day, the band displaying a far more glam look and musically baring absolutely no resemblance to their early years. The increasingly commercial directions Gene Loves Jezebel was taking evidently did not please Michael, and the brothers terminated their musical partnership in 1989.

Gene Loves Jezebel shambles onward to this day as two distinct entities, each controlled by the respective Ashton brothers. However, the likelihood of either outfit ever again recording anything remotely like the left-field brilliance displayed on Promise seems an unlikely proposition indeed.

Bruises: An indisputably brilliant song and an indisputably awful video clip - oh well.

Track List:

Upstairs
Bruises
Pop Tarantula
Screaming for Emmalene
Scheming
Bread From Heaven
Influenza
Shower me with bristle punches
Wraps and Arms
Psychological Problems

The 2005 CD re-release through Beggars Banquet contains an entire second disc of bonus tracks.

Line up: Michael Ashton (vocals), Jay Aston (guitar, backing vocals), Ian C. Hudson (guitar), Julianne Regan (bass, piano, backing vocals), with drums and percussion provided by Steve Goulding, Richard Hawkins, and John “Johnny Genius “Murphy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Loves_Jezebel

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A Welcome and Introduction

Plunder the Tombs was started back in 2010 by way of looking back on a musical past that I felt in sore need of curation.

It was a strange and sad time when what passed for “Goth” in clubs seemed a pale imitator of what once was, following first a decade of cookie-cutter Sisters of the Nephilim clone bands and then another decade of industrial dance being palmed off to younger audiences as a type of faux goth. When on rare occasion DJs in “Goth” clubs did finally become brave enough to play something like Bauhaus it was not untypical to have the dance floor clear, and it became obvious that the memory, meaning and legacy of much that had gone before had been lost.

It’s probably safe to say that the boundaries of what was “Goth” were never clearly defined. An absolute blessing for those bands on the original scene before it had a name pinned to the donkey, but an outright curse for those who came later and found rules had been imposed to dictate that which was and that which was not acceptable. Worse still was to come in the 90s from a lazy and unquestioning media who simply assumed that anything that wore black and make up was by definition “Goth”, thus allowing all manner of pretenders licence, and maximising confusion as to what the term actually referred to.

This has gone on for way too long and its time is at an end. Neo Post-Punk bands now proliferate across Europe, old long dead Goth bands rise from their crypts in the UK, and new deathrock bands are breeding like rabbits up the west coast of America. It is time to reclaim our scene back from metal bands and ravers in disguise.

While the Plunder the Tombs of old focused on what had gone before, there are now far too many exciting new things to ignore. We roar back to life in a reboot, covering past , present and things yet to come.

Let us plunder the tombs….