Brighton’s very own Concorde 2 have today announced the welcome return of The House Of Love to the venue where they last performed on 23rd September 2022. The date this time around will be Thursday 3rd December, and special guests on the night will be Miki Berenyi Trio. Tickets will be going on sale at 10am on Friday 17th April from HERE.
The House Of Love who were one of the great bands of the proto-Britpop era of the late 1980s and early 1990s. In fact they formed in London as a quintet in 1986 and consisted of Guy Chadwick (vocals, guitar), Terry Bickers (guitar), Andrea Heukamp (guitar, vocals), Chris Groothuizen (bass) and Pete Evans (drums), however the following year Heukamp (now RIP) left the outfit and they have mostly been a quartet ever since.
Following their critically acclaimed 1988 Creation Records’ debut, The House Of Love signed to Fontana Recordings the following year and embarked on four years of non-stop recording and touring that would take them into the mainstream. Early singles such as ‘Shine On’, ‘Christine’ and ‘Destroy The Heart’ were followed in the Fontana years with more classics such as ‘Never’, ‘I Don’t Know Why I Love You’, ‘Beatles And The Stones’, ‘Shine On (new version)’, ‘The Girl With The Loneliest Eyes’, ‘Crush Me’ and more.
There’s been quite a few other coming and goings ever since their initial success with Bickers departing late 1989 and being replaced by Simon Walker (guitar), who himself left in early 1992 and was replaced by Simon Mawby (guitar), but Mawby quit the band before the end of the year. They all then called it a day in 1993, but The House Of Love were resurrected around a decade later with Chadwick, Bickers, Evans and Matt Jury (bass), but then in 2021 Chadwick disbanded the 2005 line-up and recruited three new members to tour the US and record a new album, released in 2022. The current lineup is believed to comprise Guy Chadwick (vocals, guitar), Keith Osborne (lead guitar), Harry Osborne (bass) and Hugo Degenhardt (drums).
We last caught up with Miki Berenyi Trio in Studio 36 at Rockaway Beach last year. Our reviewer Mark Kelly was very much looking forward to seeing Miki again as their paths hadn’t crossed since he saw Lush at Glastonbury back in 1990.
The Miki Berenyi Trio have been operational for around three years and they comprise Miki on guitar and vocals, Kevin ‘Moose’ McKillop on guitar and Oliver Cherer from Aircooled on bass. That evening there was no drummer, as the drums were on the backing track. Mark reported that, not surprisingly, all of the songs in the set sounded a lot like Lush. The performance featured a mix of Miki Berenyi Trio songs, Piroshka songs and indeed, Lush songs.
Miki was in great voice and played what appears to be a 12 string Stratocaster. He informed the crowd that she was going to “get absolutely shitfaced afterwards” which certainly brought down any barriers between band and punters. The band showed no sign of nerves that evening and that set thankfully concluded with Lush’s most famous moment, ‘Ladykillers’, a tune in the past which Miki wouldn’t play as it was “too obvious”. It’s a cracking set by the way, in case you were wondering.
