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I have been reminded about my love of Miki Berenyi’s voice this weekend. Piroshka released the single ‘Everlastingly Yours’ in advance of their 2019 debut album Brickbat. The Lush guitarist is on vocals, ably assisted by Moose’s KJ McKillop on guitar Elastica’s Justin Welch on drums, and Modern English’s Michael Conroy on bass. The super(nostalgic)group are signed to beloved indie stable Bella Union. Have a great week.
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For a shoegazing band from Leeds, it is amusing that I fundamentally remember Pale Saints for a Nancy Sinatra cover. The band formed in 1987 with Ian Masters on bass/vocals, Graeme Naysmith on guitar and Chris Cooper on drums. In late 1990, Meriel Barham, the original vocalist of Lush, joined the band as second guitarist and vocalist. The next year, the band released the EP Flesh Balloon and on its flipside was the their unexpected cover of ‘Kinky Love’. It managed to balance the psychedelic jangly riffs with Barham’s soothing and sophisticated vocals that did enough to honour Sinatra’s original.
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‘I Follow You’ opens Melody’s Echo Chamber’s eponymous debut album. And what a start it is too – lush guitar hook, melancholic vocals and an overtly psychedelic production. It may sound a little bit like Lush, but this is in fact the musical collision of Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker and My Bee’s Garden’s Melody Prochet. The result was Melody’s Echo Chamber and the collaboration was more than just musical.
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The Cocteau Twins were Robin Guthrie, Will Heggie and the signature vocals of Elizabeth Fraser. In 1990, they released the charming ‘Iceblink Luck’. As with Lush’s ‘De-Luxe‘, this was a full year before My Bloody Valentine released the shoegazing manual Loveless. Like Lush, the band was already combining distorted guitars with haunting vocals to great effect. Unlike The Twins, Fraser’s vocals were almost intelligible.
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Before Britpop killed of the excesses of shoegazing, Lush were at the vanguard of the introspective genre. Off the 1990 Mad Love E.P., ‘De-Luxe’ showed off the Lush sound of cascading guitars and Miki Berenyi’s blended vocals. The band broke up not long after the suicide of their drummer, Chris Acland (pictured behind the red bonce of Berenyi) in 1996.
Samuelsounds 