Album: The House of Love

Days Run Away, ART AND INDUSTRY

Days run away, and the next thing you know, they've turned into decades. Nothing has been heard of The House of Love since 1993's Audience of the Mind, though by then the initial spark that illuminated their 1988 debut and made them the hottest tip for the Nineties had long since been extinguished. Their methodical pop was overtaken by successive waves of Madchester baggy dance-rock and Britpop - though in truth, they were never the same once guitarist Terry Bickers jumped ship after the first album to form his own, equally ill-fated, psychedelic band Levitation. He's reunited with singer Guy Chadwick for this comeback, which finds them in the invidious position of going from next-big-things to resuscitated has-beens, without occupying the gap in between. And frankly, Days Run Away doesn't extend their musical legacy any further: there's no indication here that music might have changed at all in the intervening decade, so tightly do they stick to their old formula of plangent psychedelic

Days run away, and the next thing you know, they've turned into decades. Nothing has been heard of The House of Love since 1993's Audience of the Mind, though by then the initial spark that illuminated their 1988 debut and made them the hottest tip for the Nineties had long since been extinguished. Their methodical pop was overtaken by successive waves of Madchester baggy dance-rock and Britpop - though in truth, they were never the same once guitarist Terry Bickers jumped ship after the first album to form his own, equally ill-fated, psychedelic band Levitation. He's reunited with singer Guy Chadwick for this comeback, which finds them in the invidious position of going from next-big-things to resuscitated has-beens, without occupying the gap in between. And frankly, Days Run Away doesn't extend their musical legacy any further: there's no indication here that music might have changed at all in the intervening decade, so tightly do they stick to their old formula of plangent psychedelic pop with bland harmonies. Listening to the mild folk-rock of "Already Gone", it's hard not to regard lyrics like "Is it easier to freefall, or simply stay away/ Are you sane, are you mad, are you ever gonna change?" as begging obvious questions about their own situation.