The House Of Love

With their shimmering guitars, effortless melodicism, and cavernous production, the House of Love swirled into the hearts of British music fans and critics in the late 1980s. On a series of well-received singles and a stunning '87 debut album on the influential Creation Records label, they embodied the darkly romantic aesthetics of the shoegazer movement. A move to the Fontana label produced another long-player that charted high in the U.K., but subsequent line-up changes and inter-member strife began to take their toll on the band's creative output. By the turn of the decade, the more stripped-down approach of grunge and the dance-happy thrust of rave culture made the band's reverb-y poeticism seem a little passe for the fickle British music press, but the band soldiered on 'til their demise in 1993. A 2005 reunion album of the original line-up garnered great reviews.

• rock
• pop