A Reminder - Guy Chadwick - Lazy, Soft & Slow From 1998

"One of these days the sun is gonna shine for you, the time is gonna come for you, one of these days. One of these days the world is gonna change for you, a holy, holy love for two, one of these days. Would it be such a crime? Couldn't it be this time? You could be the light falling on my eyes, you could be the life filling up my mind, one of these days. One of these days, I'm gonna rearrange you, make you feel and take the pain from you, one of these days."

"One Of These Days" Lyrics

Then

In House Of Love, GUY CHADWICK was a rum old bugger. Now he's solo and guess what? He's still a rum old bugger. Thank God...

Listen again to those gloriously bombastic early singles ("Destroy the Heart", "I Don't Know Why I Love You") and it's easy to see why, after spending the mid-eighties picking apart the deadening affects of Britain's suburbs, everyone wanted to relocate to the passionate, moody Mediterranean towns House Of Love evoked.

Then Terry Bickers, the Bernard Butler of his day, departed, the band left Creation for Fontana (when that sort of thing still mattered) and then a re-recorded, inferior, version of "Shine On" charted. The House Of Love's finest moments were already behind them. Subsequently glossy production and meandering albums suffocated (still great) songs and defeat was dragged, agonisingly slowly, from the jaws of victory. After such an ignominious decline, quite who will be interested in Guy Chadwick's "Lazy, Soft and Slow" is a moot point.

Now

Musical verbosity often smothered the House Of Love's good intentions and Chadwick clearly realises this. His core talent is for making idiosyncratic pop songs and he allows that to shine through by keeping the arrangements here refreshingly simple. "Song For Gala" is a Gaelic jitterbug, all accordion and bongos, "Soft and Slow" is languorous country-tinged stuff kept on the right track by simple voice harmonies, while "Wasted In Song" transcends its All About Eve-ness by dint of its lush harmonies. "One Of These Days" trembles to the sound of warm Hammond waves and illustrates that, while Chadwick's lyrics are often obscure nonsense, he can also come up with: "I'm gonna rearrange you, make you feel and take the pain away from you" when he wants to.

Laid-back pastoral shimmies that positively ached with their deceptively vague tales of intense, claustrophobic romance were one of the things that attracted us to Chadwick in the first place. Anyone who felt that pull, will love the heaving sigh of "Close Your Eyes". "I want to hold you till the morning" he sings over the sort of glistening muted guitars HOL made their own. "Mirrored In My Mind" is pretty charming too.

Not that there isn't wastage. The small production sound, which works so well elsewhere, turns "You've Really Got A Hold On Me" into T-Rex lite (if that's possible) and squanders a chorus worthy of Creation-era HOL. And "In Her Heart" is half an idea, like the worst of Morrissey's solo catalogue, stretched over a whole song.

Perversely, while it certainly doesn't come close to the heart-stopping urgency of HOL's best, "Lazy, Soft and Slow" actually forms a more complete whole than any HOL album. Maybe Setanta will allow Chadwick, like Edwyn Collins before him, the space to follow his muse, oblivious to the vagaries of fashion, not to mention sales. Here's hoping.

Reviewed By TONY NAYLOR for Melody Maker 21st February 1998.

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