THE HOUSE OF LOVE Best Of (Fontana)

Contemporaries of The Stone Roses and The La's, The House Of Love seemed to have factored themselves out of the equation when the talk is of classic British guitar bands through a combination of internal bickerings, record company-related strife and the prevailing trend winds. This "Best Of" CD draws from all their four studio albums, adding a few relevant A and B-sides along the way. As such it's possibly the perfect vehicle for rediscovering The House Of Love's unfairly ignored genius: there are just too many moments of six-string delicacy here that make much of the first Stone Roses album look like a work of ham-fisted thuggery. How about "Destroy The Heart", for a kick off - all of it, from Terry Bickers' adrenaline rush guitar fade-in to the chorus line "I need her more than I need air"? Or the swamp fog melancholy of "The Beatles And The Stones" who "Sucked the marrow out of bone/Made it good to be alone"? I could go on...there are at least half-a-dozen certified classic British pop (and emphatically not Britpop, whatever that was!) songs here that you probably haven't heard, songs that rank alongside The Stone Roses or Shack at their peak. What probably sank The House Of Love as a commercial prospect (they logged one top 20 single before drifting off into chart obscurity) is the quality that makes their music so great: these songs need concentrated listening. It may take four or five plays before they burrow down deep into your subconscious, and you won't even notice until you find yourself humming then uncontrollably! That, for me, is one of the watermarks of great music, a property that The House Of Love share with the mighty Shack and, on occasion., Wilco, and reason enough for you to let some House Of Love into your life before their memory fades away forever.