ROCK&ROLL
30 | Rolling Stone | RollingStoneAus.com May, 2016
Lush Return From the Abyss
British indie rockers release
first new music in 20 years,
prepforalivereturn
COMEBACK
ForPotential, his follow-up to
2013 debutNonfiction, 27-year-
old producer James Hinton
figures he spent “hundreds of
hours” combing YouTube to
find vocal performance videos
that he would scour for samples
to use on his atmospheric, emo-
tive electronic tracks. More than
just a gimmick, Hinton’s use
of the technique comes froma genuine place of wanting to
understand what makes others
tick. “The idea is that each
person is going through some
kind of catharsis or working
through an idea...that’sreally
what I was drawn to and I think
that emotional thread is what
connects a lot of the vocal
samples on the record for me,”
Hinton says.
Also coming later in the year
isSuperimpose, a documentary
about the making ofPotential
and Hinton’s eforts to meet his
unwitting YouTube collabora-tors. “My idea is to get at the
core question of why do people
post on YouTube, and what
does that mean to their greater
life. A lot of people assume
others do it because they want
to be famous, but my idea is
that people do it for so many
diferent reasons – mostly
because they feel compelled to
from some sort of otherworldly
thing. I’m just happy that the
record will stand as an example
to the contrary to [what people
normally] read about YouTube.”
JAMES JENNINGSPUTTING YOUTUBE TO GOOD USE
TheRange’snewLP
features vocalists from
obscure YouTube clipsF
ormed in the late eighties
andsignedtoiconicart-rocklabel
4AD, London quartet Lush con-
founded tidy genre tags during
themedia’sobsessionwithbothshoe-
gazeandBritpop.Theyweredreamy and
poppy, but also melancholy and subversive.
Andtheirsongsholdupremarkablywell
today,whetherit’sstinginganthemslike
theopenlyfeminist“Ladykill-
ers”,airyconfectionlike
“500 (Shake Baby Shake)”
or noise-swept vistas like
“Nothing Natural”.
Lush have reconvened
fortheirfirstmaterialin
twodecades,afterthe1996
suicideofdrummerChris
Aclandefectively ended the
band’s output. They’re play-
ing their first reunion shows
this month – including a
spot at Coachella – and are
releasingarichlytextured
EP,Blind Spot.Coinciding
withanewvinylboxsetplusarepressing
ofapreviousboxset,Blind Spotcontin-
ues the band’s talent for combining surre-
al,efects-warpedguitar-popwithsharp-
tongued lyrics.
HavingrecruitedElasticadrummer
Justin Welch, Lush’s remaining mem-
bers–singer-guitaristsMikiBerenyiand
EmmaAnderson,andbassistPhilKing–
areeasingbackintobeingaband.That
means juggling rehears-
als and songwriting with
parenting and careers.
Anderson wrote the EP’s
four new songs while Berenyi
penned the lyrics, meditating on raising
a teenager (“Out of Control”, the bullying-
inspired “Rosebud”), the disorientation
of young love (“Burnham Beeches”) and a
recentdreamshehadabouttheirformer
drummer (“Lost Boy”).
“Itwastricky.Icameupwithalotof
firstdraftsthatwere...notverygood,”
says Berenyi. “But eventually I started
feelingbetteraboutit.Itwaslikeget-ting the old machinery
cranked up.”
Lush had talked about re-
uniting before, but seeing
Nineties contemporaries
like Slowdive do it tasteful-
ly helped bring them around
to the idea. “I always thought
therewassomethingabitshit
aboutre-forming,”saysBere-
nyi. “But when they did it, it
wasareallypositivethingand
they had a really good time.”
Still, she worried about
ruining the band’s legacy:
“There was a discussion about
doing an album immediate-
ly, but the lifeblood drained
out of me at the thought of
it. I think we needed to start
piecemeal. Doing four tracks
wasagoodwaytogetback
into it without it feeling
daunting and immediately
aburden.”
Before their first shows, there’s the
smallmatteroffiguringouthowtoplayall
these songs again. “I can’t remember how
half of them go,” says Berenyi. “I’ll have to
comb YouTube for all kinds of live perfor-
mances to figure out what the bloody hell
I’m doing.”
Despite her hesitation,Blind Spotfits
comfortably into the treasured Lush
canon, though it’s quieter and subtler than
the band’s best-known singles. “It felt like
Lush immediately,” Berenyi agrees. “It
wasn’t like we were coming back as a jazz/
funkband.Iquitelikedthat,pickingup
almost where we left of.” DOUG WALLENEASE INTO IT
Lush today (Berenyi
centre); and, left,
Berenyi in 1996.fJames Hinton,
aka The RangeFROM TOP: COURTESY; GETTY IMAGES; COURTESY