Honeymoon in Red

Infobox Album
Name = Honeymoon In Red
Type = studio
Artist = Lydia Lunch


Released = 1987
Recorded =
Genre =
Length =
Label =
Producer =
Reviews =
Last album =
This album = Honeymoon In Red
Next album =

"Honeymoon In Red" is a concept album released in 1987 as a Lydia Lunch album. Honeymoon In Red is sometimes referred to as a band or alternately as a collaboration between Lydia Lunch and The Birthday Party.

Music

It was musically eclectic, combining elements of Burlesque, No Wave, sixties pop singer Jacques Brel, American Underground, the use of a "varispeed" for atmospherics, a song by country pop songwriter Lee Hazlewood, dissonant piano and guitar and muscular bass guitar and the darkly charismatic personas of Nick Cave and Lydia Lunch.

The album generally resembles the angular pop of The Birthday Party's "Prayers On Fire", although the song "Dead In The Head" recalls the strident guitar playing of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. Unlike The Birthday Party, "Honeymoon In Red" emphasises vernacular speech akin to 1970s American television and film, instead of emulating the Southern Gothic literary genre. In a 1983 television interview, Lunch spoke of the experimental music as "religious music" that was "not rock".

Personnel

1982 session

*Lydia Lunch - vocals
*Rowland S. Howard - guitar, vocals
*Genevieve McGuckin - piano, organ
*Murray Mitchell - guitar
*Tracy Pew - bass
*Nick Cave - vocals (credited only as "Her dead twin" and "A drunk cowboy junkie")
*Mick Harvey - drums, piano (credited only as "Anonymous", "Scatman Cramden", "Howie Dewitt", "Dick Strum", "Ralf Bellow", "Spencer Turk", & "Frank Leer")
*Steve Montgomery - mix

1987 remix session

*Thurston Moore - guitar
*J.G. Thirlwell AKA Clint Ruin - mix
* Martin Bisi - mix

Bonus track

"Some Velvet Morning"
* Lydia Lunch - vocal
* Rowland S. Howard - vocal, guitar
* Genevieve McGuckin - piano
* Barry Adamson - bass
* Mick Harvey - drums
* Peter Williams - engineer

Track listing

#"Come Fall" (Howard)
#"So Your Heart" (Lunch/Clint Ruin/Thurston Moore)
#"Dead River" (Lunch/Harvey)
#"Three Kings" (McGuckin)
#"Done Dun" (Lunch/Cave/Mitchell)
#"Still Burning" (Howard)
#"Fields of Fire" (Lunch/Howard)
#"Dead in the Head" (Lunch/Cave/Howard)
#"Some Velvet Morning" (Lee Hazelwood) - CD bonus track

Album cover

The album's graphic design resembled a lurid 1950s Saul Bass movie poster, with cockfighting motifs. The liner notes from Lunch titled "THE TERRORTORY", comments on commercial and religious puritanical attitudes. It included an Annie Sprinkle (Post-Porn Modernist) photograph of Lydia Lunch's body superimposed onto a rural roadmap, also a photograph by a Chris Stein of Lunch wearing a suicide-blonde wig and heavy make up, holding up a large pistol.

Fallout and release

Mick Harvey has stated that the project was originally conceived as a new band; a collaboration between Lunch, Cave, Mitchell and Howard. After the initial recording sessions in Berlin in June 1982, the tapes languished without a release. In 1987 Lunch readied the tapes for release on her own Widowspeak label, with added contributions by Thirlwell and Moore. Lunch had already fallen out with Cave and Harvey, and they insisted that their names not appear on the release, as they had no hand in the remix and overdubbing. Lunch subsequently used pseudonyms for Cave and Harvey (including "A drunk cowboy junkie" and "Dick Strum", respectively) and obliquely criticized them in her liner notes as "tight asses" and "Sheep in wolf's clothing".

A 12" Single of "Done Dun" (a Cave/Lunch duet) was released on side B of the Lydia Lunch/Thurston Moore/Clint Ruin single "The Crumb", and referred to "The Honeymoon In Red Orchestra".

References

* Ian Johnston, "The Bad Seed"