Ciao, Lush!

DOWNLOAD: LUSH, “CIAO! (F. JARVIS COCKER)”, FROM LOVELIFE

“It’s flattering that anybody gives a shit,” Miki Berenyi of Lush writes in an e-mail interview. “Not sure how enthusiastic the support would be if they realized that bringing back Miki Berenyi would deliver a 40-year-old office employee with graying hair who’s still struggling to shift the weight from her last pregnancy.”

Doing a bit of internet rabbitholing while eating dinner tonight and ended up wandering down the road of a band called Lush, who I’d enjoyed thoroughly in the mid ’90s and about which I had since completely forgotten.

Originally a shoegaze band in late 80s / early 90s, Lush had eventually morphed into a Britpop band by the release of their final record Lovelife, which is the point they came into my life in 1996. This point in time was for me sort of the foothills of soon-to-be mountainous fascination with modern life in England. I bought the album from Columbia House after seeing Trainspotting, though I honestly can’t remember what prompted me to do so, not having access to MTV or and Lush not quite having the cultural cache of Britpop stars Oasis, Blur or Pulp. I had just gotten obsessed with Elastica and as another girl-fronted Britpop band, I might have read about Lush in Rolling Stone and wanted in, but it’s also entirely possible that I simply saw a photo of atomicred-haired lead singer Miki Berenyi somewhere and bought for that reason alone (see: Ween, Chocolate and Cheese).

Either way, Lovelife turned out to be a fairly significant record for me, in particular with this song “Ciao!”, a lovely duet featuring Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker, which led me to go out and buy Pulp’s Different Class and a host of other British records in the ’90s.

I haven’t even thought about putting on Lush in over 10 years, but listening now, I feel like Lovelife hasn’t really aged any worse than most Britpop from the period and there’s something that feels quaint and pleasant about it now, especially both “Ciao!” and the excellent single “Ladykillers” (future Rottweiler the Best cover perhaps?).

Lastly… I said i’d been rabbitholing, and the most significant find was probably this interview from 2008 with Lush singer Miki Berenyi, conducted by an obsessive Lush fan who started a “Bring Back Miki!” campaign (…yeah). The interview is sweet, given that utter niceness and humility of Berenyi, and filled with a few amusing quotes, including the bit below. Read the whole interview here and enjoy.

Miki:“[The photo above is an] Interview with ‘Kennedy’ at the MTV Weenie Roast – a big production stadium gig that’s comparable to various media-run roadshows, but this is in a fucking huge stadium. There was a revolving stage so that as one band played, the next band could set up. That was the theory anyway. We were on after The Fugees who, clearly, had been booked into that slot shortly before they spent about a million weeks in the top ten with Killing Me Softly. As a consequence, they weren’t too keen on playing so low down on the bill and turned up late, spent ages setting up and then failed to leave the stage after their third song, a 15-minute rendition of No Woman No Cry. By this time the MTV organisation had had enough and as Lauryn Hill’s soulful vocals released the first strains of their hit song the stage started to revolve slowly and the rapturous cheering turned to boos as Lush appeared, startled and apologetic. Possibly the most Spinal Tap moment of my entire music career.”