Love Is Here To Stay

Time, as they say, is a great healer. Just ask House Of Love’s Guy Chadwick, who is preparing to tour the band’s first album in 11 years, Days Run Away.

“It kind of happened itself really,” he muses of the much-lauded reunion. “I got talking to a mate and he suggested that me and Terry (Bickers) got back together and I said, ‘yeah, if you can start a conversation, let’s do it’.”
During their hey-day in the early 90s, the band were known as much for Chadwick and Bickers’…well, bickering, as they were for their contributions to the UK shoegazer movement. With their spats being the stuff of music weekly legend, surely such a reunion could only be described as ‘charged’.
“Getting back in the studio was quite hard, actually,” concedes Chadwick. “I mean, there was a long gap there and it wasn’t easy. The music was there straightaway, but the creative relationship is so sensitive. It was quite hard because there was no way we were going to hold any punches. To do something properly you have to be honest.”
It’ll be interesting to see how latter-day audiences respond to the band’s unique brand of guitar esoterica, a sound that saw them regularly likened to Creation label-mates My Bloody Valentine.
“It was a coincidence, I think,” offers Chadwick. “We did sound similar but we were never trying to outdo each other or anything. I guess we had the same influences at the time. Dinosaur Jr, Sonic Youth, Pixies, the Mary Chain; they were the bands that affected us.”
Along with Felt’s Lawrence Hayward, Chadwick and Kevin Shields were commonly regarded as a Holy Trinity of enigmatic indie troubadours. For his part, Chadwick subsequently became almost as infamous a recluse as Shields was.
“When I was on Setanta I didn’t get out very much; it wasn’t a very happy time for me,” he admits. “It’s not that I was trying to be reclusive. There’s nothing deliberate about it, but then again I’ve had nothing to say.”
While the House Of Love once appeared to thrive on their own sophomoric chaos, Days Run Away promises to be an entirely more grown-up affair.
“I think that the thing this record needed was the norm of discipline, attention to detail and making sure it was done really well. It wouldn’t have happened if I had been drunk or stoned all the time. We wouldn’t have stayed the course.”
With that Chadwick hints that he needed some time to get to grips with those various neuroses acquired from the band’s days of yore.
“I’ve thought about a lot of demons in the times since, the things I’ve needed to stop doing, the trouble I’ve gotten into,” he admits. “I was far too self-indulgent for a long time and made it very difficult for me to work creatively. I had to stop and sort myself out. It took longer than I thought it would, but I did it and I’m really pleased about it. I wouldn’t change anything.”

The House Of Love play The Limelight, Belfast, on Januray 26; The Nerve Centre, Derry (27); The Village, Dublin (28); Cyprus Avenue, Cork (29).