Lost Classics: Therapy? – Infernal Love
Posted on 27th May 10 by Mike McGrath Bryan | 
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After the success of 1994′s pop-laced opus Troublegum, Northern Ireland’s Therapy? were in a tricky position. Viewed cynically by their label as the next Nirvana, a belief spurred on by Troublegum‘s accessibility and black humour, and in the shadow of Britpop and its slew of scenesters, shitehawks and careerists, the follow-on to their breakthrough album [...]
After the success of 1994′s pop-laced opus Troublegum, Northern Ireland’s Therapy? were in a tricky position. Viewed cynically by their label as the next Nirvana, a belief spurred on by Troublegum‘s accessibility and black humour, and in the shadow of Britpop and its slew of scenesters, shitehawks and careerists, the follow-on to their breakthrough album had a lot of weight on its shoulders. If you were in Los Angeles in early 1995, you may have heard random wailing and screaming. This most likely emanated from A&M‘s offices, as their nice, safe alternateen investment turned into something else altogether…
“Love songs for the damned” was the eventual marketing pitch agreed upon. Truth being told, that was a very simplistic description of a very complicated album.
Released in June 1995, Infernal Love was immediately panned by critics still reeling from Troublegum‘s directness and balance between pop and aggression. It would seem a collection of more “cinematic” (as the band put it) songs, ranging from ballads to jazz-inflected, volatile pop-metal, dipping in influences as wildly varied as Nick Cave and Husker Du, linked together by electronics (courtesy of one David Holmes), was not the soup du jour. Balls to that. Infernal Love ranks among the band’s greatest work, and it’s not hard to see why.
Epilepsy is as potent an opener as ever an album has had, drilling your head with harsh electronics, kicking you around with a riff as head-wrecking as only classic Therapy? could be, before slinking its way into your brain and seducing you with its elegiac, almost sexy chorus. Stories is the album’s real mover, as infectious as the common cold and infinitely more fun, contrasting sax-laden ska-esque choruses with tales of louche debauchery and lazy excess: “I woke up late and I rolled the stone/Laziness and death in one”. A Moment of Clarity smoulders in a fashion similar to Nick Cave, building up tension and slowly crawling to a climax.
Jude the Obscene rings with trauma, echoing frontman Andy Cairns‘ troubled schoolboy nightmares, an irresistible punk-inflected paean to childhood scars running on a rhythm like shattered nerves. Bowels of Love crawls along, sleazy and string-laden, Cairns crooning and wailing unrestrained and wretching about love turned sour (and ejaculate).
The sounds of a helicopter landing precede a riff designed to frustrate everyone who hears it into a human wrecking ball. Misery is a slinky, yet vitriolic rail (“You always left me wanting, now I want you to leave”) at manipulative exes that works away at a pace that drills it into your skull. At the opposite end altogether lays Me vs. You, a string-shredding, almost predatory pop gem that raises goosebumps with its intensity, its lyrics verging on disturbing: “I watched you torture yourself days/Then fucking you got boring when it didn’t feel so wrong”.
Bad Mother is the album’s centrepiece, a contientious cello riff sawing away in the background as Cairns soberly analyzes his mental state at the time, lost in a miasma of fame and decadence as it was, all the while moving to a steady half-time/reggae-esque rhythm before drilling ahead into a solid Therapy? chorus.
Of course, we all know Diane. A raucous, cello-shredding chamber-pop cover of Minneapolitan punks Husker Du‘s classic murder ballad, Martin McCarrick‘s gifts as a musician shine on this album, it must be said, but no more so than here. As Cairns squalls like a man possessed, it’s hard to tell which is more unsettling: the fit of the lyrics with stately arrangement, or the fact that Cairns is clearly enjoying himself the entire way through. And if the ballads and electro had wrecked your head, along comes a fierce and paranoid punk bullet in 30 Seconds, a Pulp Fiction-inflected raz through the mess of high times and hard living, notable for one of the greatest lyrics your reviewer has come across: “How did we get from the Blue Lamp Disco to crackin’ up in San Fransisco?/I look at myself in a sober light: I’m not Elvis but I’m alright”. Genius with a grin, wide across its grinding jaw.
As mentioned at the beginning, at the time, Infernal Love was considered a commercial suicide attempt, handily brushing aside pop-punk tendencies in favour of what was really happening and inspiring the band at the time: excess, mayhem and lots of crazy experiments. True genius never is appreciated in its lifetime, and the fact is this, without this album, Therapy? would have gone on to be a pop-punk joke, before fading into obscurity. Instead, they surged forward, as they always have, and into new territory, establishing the band as a creative powerhouse, an innovative and engaging force that continues to this day. In committing craze harakiri, they established themselves as rock “lifers”. Let’s see if any of today’s scene kids will be so bold when their third album rolls along.
(And let’s be honest: HIM had to have heard this album at some point early in the band).
Tags: Andy Cairns, David Holmes, HUSKER DU, Infernal Love, Michael McKeegan, therapy?
