Love And Rockets – Lift

I strongly suspect the ownership of the recordings is in IP rights hell. There are a handful of records like this that the ownership is so murky that they will likely never get a re-issue (The The’s masterpiece Dusk comes to mind, De La Soul was stuck here for many years). There is a rich bootleg market someone needs to jump on. Sadly I missed out on the Dusk 2023 bootleg.

What other records have disappeared due to rights woes?

I'm a completest and not having this hurts my soul... diminishes my quality of life. Please Daniel, David and Kevin make this happen.

This needs a reissue. Great record. Probably my fav L&R.

Such a hidden treasure - Love And Rockets at the peak of their creative powers. "Lift" is almost too much to take in one sitting. By the time the listener reaches the highest points of the album - "My Drug" and "Deep Deep Down" - they're already ten tracks in. "My Drug" alone makes "Lift" an essential part of any Love And Rockets collection. Next to "Express", "Lift" is arguably their greatest recorded accomplishment as a group. It is an absolute classic, with undeserved obscurity.

A stronger, remixed version of lead single "R.I.P. 20 C." can be found only on a one-track promo CD of the same name. "The Millennium Mix" of "R.I.P. 20 C." would've fit better on "Lift" than the too-abrasive-to-be-popular version used on the album. Other great remixes can be found on the variant editions of the "Resurrection Hex" single. "Resurrection Hex" was a funny choice for a single - it's another of the heavier, harsher songs on the album. "Too Much Choice" is catchier, and would've been a fine single. It's one of their best songs, sounding a little like something from musical contemporaries Cocteau Twins' final release "Milk And Kisses".

"Deep Deep Down" is a unique track on a very unique album - and it deserves special attention. Love And Rockets strove for transcendence on all their records - and they captured lightning with "Deep Deep Down". Beauty and bliss - build-up, climax, and sweet drift. Truly amazing.

"Lift" sounds wonderful on vinyl and CD - both listening experiences are recommended.

What are the chances of a vinyl reissue of this album? Since the record label went bust i guess pretty slim. Very underrated record.

The 1990s were not kind to Love and Rockets, though they went into them on top of the world thanks to "So Alive" their subsequent albums were routinely ignored by both the music press and the majority of their fans. After being scorned for 'Hot Trip to Heaven' and surviving a fire during the recording of 'Sweet F.A.' you'd have been forgiven for thinking they'd had enough. Not the case.

David, Daniel and Kevin had one more record in them and this was it.

After the attempt to bridge their classic sound with the more experimental tendencies they were increasingly favoring drew a withering response from the audience and their record label, they returned to wrap up what they'd begun in 1994. With an increased focus on excess.

As the lead single "Resurrection Hex" demonstrated, they were more than happy to integrate their musical legacy in Bauhaus into the proceedings. They even chucked in a bit of Adam and The Ants for good measure; remember, in the late 90s people still managed to sample without having the shit sued out of them. The background of this particular tune is also gone into at some length by David J in his remarkable book, have a look at it sometime. One of the stranger reads out there.

There was no longer any reason to be as they'd been before; when the album did come out it didn't draw much notice. This was mainly due to the aforementioned Bauhaus playing the first of their reunion dates a few weeks earlier. Love and Rockets, ironically, were old news to a lot of people. An entire generation who'd been burning their black candles and wearing out their copies of 'Mask' now had seen their idols resurrected.

Did it matter that 3/4 of the band had had a uniquely different sort of musical career? No, not really. Just shut up and play "Bela", I've almost got the words down enough to sing along... hope it sounds like it did in 1979.

Love and Rockets' final release had the authenticity you get from veterans who have seen it all and have had enough. Only an outfit like this trio could have gone from the breakbeat-driven hysteria of "RIP 20C" into the sinuous leering of "Holy Fool" and then followed it up with a soul searching dirge like "Too Much Choice". This was the most varied LP the band ever made and if you require more convincing then go to the tube and check out "Delicious Ocean", "My Drug" or "Deep Deep Down".

Both "Holy Fool" and "RIP 20C" were singles as well. The former was released while the other didn't get out there officially but some of us found copies. Tsk tsk, such naughtiness... and speaking of that, if the asshole who stole the soundboard recordings of their final show in 1999 is reading this: give them back to the band.

'Lift's emphasis was on hedonism, celebrity and the effects they can have when overdone, "Ghosts of the Multiple Feature" could be J's finest lyrical hour in the band. Alternating between sober reflection and sexual abandon, the song is a tour de force wrought out of heavy house beats and bizarrely chosen chord structures. Actually, 'Lift' is the personification of what they'd been out to do for many years: to create an electronic/acoustic work which somehow had a soul. This was achieved handily and if their label had not collapsed I think people would have eventually got into what was going on.

It was not to be, however, and although many have opined that the implosion of Red Ant was what did them in I said then and still maintain now that they were just through. They still are, you know. Love and Rockets are on the extremely exclusive list of bands who will never return, the others would be The Smiths and the Cocteau Twins. I managed to see J, Ash and Haskins three times and was always ecstatic to do so. There may have just been a clue as to the main fuel behind 'Lift' in that last sentence, who knows though, maybe they just recorded this in Minerva's temple and got carried away absorbing all the wisdom humankind had forgotten.

One thing is for certain, however. The finest track on here is right near the end and it sums up Love and Rockets with terrifying clarity: Party's Not Over. The fishtank is no longer haunted but the mothership is above your head and I just want to do this...

Forever.

Lift and Hot Trip to Heaven are ahead of their times. If _anyone_ is tailor-made for electronic music, it's Love and Rockets. Just listen to their acoustic albums for hints at this heady stuff. "This Heaven" from HTTH and "Deep Deep Down" from this album further the band's transcendental message. The instrumental part on the latter is sublime. "Holy Fool" should have been a hit on par with "So Alive". They were leaning in an electronic direction on the "Love and Rockets" album, anyway. The missing link in the whole chain of events is Daniel Ash's work with Natacha Atlas, specifically the solo album, "Coming Down". I can not tell you how much one is missing by disregarding these two albums. I have been listening to all forms of electronic music for just over twenty years and I feel these albums are as good as anything released contemporaneously in the genre. Both deserve another listen. Time has proved more than kind and it's a pity Love and Rockets disbanded. They had countless releases in them, still. notchfiend 8/28/2010