Love Battery always sounded a little sideways to me.
I mean that as a compliment.
They were definitely part of the Seattle thing, but there was something else floating around in there.
Psychedelia. Garage rock. Punk. Big fuzzy guitars.
Sometimes it sounded like somebody had left a stack of old records melting in the sun and decided to make a band out of whatever came out.
I first heard them before I moved here.
Somebody at the store back in Queens had Dayglo and put it on one afternoon.
“Out of Focus” came first.
Then “Foot.”
By the time the title track rolled around I was already looking at the sleeve trying to figure out who these guys were.
Seattle.
Sub Pop.
Of course.
I bought a copy.
Another one for the pile.
Dayglo is still probably my favorite Love Battery record.
There's a weird haze hanging over the whole thing. Kevin Whitworth and Ron Nine could pile guitars on top of each other without turning everything into mud, and Jim Tillman's bass somehow keeps moving underneath all of it.
Jason Finn on drums.
Another name that turns up everywhere around here.
That's one of the fun things about trying to make sense of Seattle bands from this period.
You start drawing a family tree and eventually you need another wall.
Love Battery started in ’89 with Ron Nine, Kevin Whitworth, Tommy Simpson and Dan Peters from Mudhoney.
Dan didn't stay long.
Jason Finn came in after Skin Yard.
Jim Tillman from the U-Men played bass during the Dayglo period.
Then Jim left.
Tommy came back for a bit.
Then Bruce Fairweather showed up.
Green River.
Mother Love Bone.
See what I mean about the wall?
Their first single was “Between the Eyes.”
Great song.
They recorded it at Reciprocal with Jack Endino in ’89, which might be the most Seattle sentence I've written anywhere on this website.
There was a Between the Eyes record after that too, and if you're trying to collect Love Battery stuff, that's where things start getting annoying.
Different releases. Different track listings. Different labels.
We'll get to that.
Then came Dayglo in ’92.
Sub Pop even advertised the thing with:
BLOTTER NOT INCLUDED.
Yeah.
Subtle.
I moved to Seattle later that year, and Love Battery were one of those bands I was excited to finally catch.
I saw them more than once around town.
I'm not going to give you an exact date because I don't trust my memory enough anymore.
What I remember is the guitars.
On record they could sound hazy and almost dreamy.
Live, they were a lot nastier.
That's what surprised me.
Same songs, but with the fuzz pushed right into your face.
Far Gone came out in ’93.
That's a strange one.
They'd been getting some attention after Dayglo, and it looked like the major-label machinery was starting to circle.
Then label and contract bullshit got in the way and Sub Pop ended up putting the record out.
I've heard people dismiss Far Gone for years.
I don't.
Is it Dayglo?
No.
So what?
“Searching for Rose.”
“Nehru Jacket.”
“Split in Two.”
There's plenty on there worth hearing.
Eventually they did make the jump to a major.
Atlas.
Straight Freak Ticket came out in ’95.
By then the whole Seattle gold rush was already starting to look pretty stupid.
Every label wanted the next Nirvana until suddenly nobody wanted the next Nirvana anymore.
Love Battery got caught somewhere in that mess.
Which is a shame because Straight Freak Ticket is a good fucking record.
“Fuzz Factory.”
“Straight Freak Show.”
“Harold's Pink Room.”
I sold plenty of records in the ’90s that got ten times the attention and weren't half as interesting.
That's how it goes.
They eventually ended up back on C/Z and put out Confusion Au Go Go near the end of the decade.
By then almost nobody outside the people who'd been following them seemed to notice.
Again:
their loss.
That's one reason I'm putting bands like Love Battery on this site.
If you only remember Seattle through MTV, you get maybe five bands and a couple of videos.
That's not a scene.
A scene is Love Battery.
It's Skin Yard and the U-Men.
It's somebody from Mudhoney playing drums for a while.
It's Bruce Fairweather turning up after Green River and Mother Love Bone.
It's Jack Endino recording another single at Reciprocal.
It's a Sub Pop record you bought because the cover looked interesting and then played until you knew every scratch.
That's the stuff I miss.
As far as I know, Love Battery are still technically around.
They don't seem to do much these days, but I'm not writing an obituary for a band that hasn't told me it's dead.
Maybe they'll make another record.
Maybe they won't.
Either way, Dayglo isn't going anywhere.
Put that one on loud.
Blotter still not included.
