Lush: The most underrated band of the Britpop boom
The phrase ‘golden age’ is at risk of being overutilised in musical discourse, but there doesn’t seem to be any other way to describe the musical landscape of England during the 1990s. While American rockers were preoccupied with grunge, and teenagers in Britain were dancing the night away at ecstasy-fueled warehouses, a vibrant revolution was brewing, the likes of which had not been seen since the punk boom of the 1970s. This new movement was erroneously dubbed ‘Britpop’, and it came to define the cultural output of this sceptred isle for the years that followed.
The mainstream discourse surrounding the Britpop age invariably consisted of the manufactured feud between Manchester’s Oasis and London’s Blur. While it is true that these bands came to define the focal sound of Britpop through unimaginably successful records like Definitely Maybe and Parklife, these groups barely scratch the surface of the countless bands that came and went over the course of this particularly exciting period in British music.
Up and down the nation, hundreds of incredible new bands sprung up, each with their own unique sound and musical manifesto. Within that oversaturated scene, there were few groups who could stand up against Lush. Originally formed in 1987 and led by Miki Berenyi, Lush were initially disciples of post-punk, garage rock, and the blossoming shoegaze movement. In fact, if you look at the early discography of the group, they produced some of the finest British shoegaze records of the late 1980s, in stark contrast to future Britpop giants Blur.
Lush was a ruthlessly original group, pursuing musical expression and exploration as a necessity; Berenyi and company never seemed to be in it for any kind of fame or fortune; they merely had a message to spread and a deeply ingrained love of music. Conversely, when the Britpop scene began to dominate the musical mainstream during the mid-1990s, many prominent groups seemed to judge quality by record sales – a depressing reality, particularly given the independent, DIY origins of groups like Oasis or Blur.
What’s more, the prevailing image of Britpop soon became invariably linked to lad culture: football, colossal egos, heavy drinking, and misogyny. Unfortunately, these attributes came to define the movement, spurred along by the laddish reputations of people like the Gallagher brothers. Although this reputation, quite rightly, made the Britpop term the ire of bands like Lush, it does also mean that their importance and musical genius have largely gone overlooked.
Not only did Lush pen some of the most enduring and original tracks of the Britpop age, but they also provided a vital voice for women in a musical landscape oversaturated by white men and misogynistic lad culture. Of course, these were topics that the band tackled head-on, most notably in their song ‘Ladykillers’ from 1994’s Lovelife. Almost a parody of Britpop, the song uses the common theme of a night out in Camden – the centre of the Britpop boom – to discuss the prevailing levels of misogyny and chauvinism within the music scene of the time.
While it seems a little reductive to refer to Lush solely as a Britpop band, given their impressive credentials in shoegaze, post-punk, and noise pop, Lovelife shares a lot in common with the emerging artists of the period in terms of sound. Far from being a sign of the band ‘selling out’, however, this switch-up in sound demonstrated both their ability to adapt to the times and their willingness to denounce a musical movement that was becoming increasingly problematic.
Even if you remove the social importance of a female-led band like Lush in the Britpop years, their music and songwriting have arguably stood the test of time far better than most other bands of the period. Lush was never a group that relied on simple rhyming structures, plagiarised chord progressions, or a laddish attitude problem to earn them acclaim; they existed solely on defiant musical expression, inventive songwriting, and a rebellious manifesto which harked back to the original wave of post-punk back in the 1970s.
