#17 Lush – Spooky
Well I can lay one thing to rest by stating that this is my favorite album of the early 90’s era. It was the “Goto Album” so to speak and part of it probably had to do with the fact that I had a huge crush on Miki Berenyi.
Her cherry-red dyed hair and siren singing style wooed me in to the point it was constantly playing in my Pontiac stationwagon. The shoegazing along with the vocals of both her and bandmate Emma Anderson essentially started my love for “Shoegaze” music. It all started on this album. For what it’s worth, Spooky was their first official album that was not a compilation and while I have always been a fan of Gala, it was Spooky that hit a chord with me.
On songs such as ‘Covert’ offered an emotional whallop to a 20 year old. A sound that was still in a relative infancy, coupled by my own naivete, and well also for the simple fact of being 20. I could not fathom the amount of time that I spent driving around to this album.
Songs like ‘Covert’ rip your insides up. “Untogether” …well you pretty much get the idea from the title. Berenyi and Anderson would just kick me in the face with their vocals and you realize that you have been maimed by rock and roll.
What I appreciated about Spooky more than the follow-ups was for the vocals to become part of the music, this exotic siren songs where the emotion of the music took over. As the band had matured, their sound did as well and I felt ruined some of the magic of their earlier recordings. I wanted them to remain that band where you could only make out every third word rather than have to get the message.