LPs from the Attic: Love Battery — Dayglo

Love Battery — Dayglo (Sub Pop/Caroline, 1992)

I'm going upside down / My sixes are nines / Infinities a sideways eight / Don't ask me to grow up / I'm doing just fine

Maybe there’s some coincidental tongue-in-cheekiness to it, but the band’s pervy-sounding name derives from a techy metaphor for the heart, rather than any kind of naughty “marital aid.” Come to think of it, maybe it isn’t coincidental, as the heart is often a willing accessory to crimes involving lower organs.

Matters of the heart figure prominently in Dayglo, a neon-pink collection of ten of Love Battery’s “23 Modern Stories.” Relationships that have gone “Out of Focus” preoccupy minds disturbed and “Damaged” by such love at the edge.

These songs don’t deal with this precariousness in slow-tempo sad-sackery. Any self-doubt, accusations, vacillation, and grief in Ron Nine’s vocals work their way out through up-tempo guitar licks by Nine and Kevin Whitworth. Jim Tillman (bass) and Jason Finn (drums) keep things propulsive and crisp. Love Battery energizes with its tight rhythms, psych-tinged guitar work, and compelling pop sensibility. Rather than wallowing in bad times, Dayglo deals and heals by engaging and staying connected, by moving on at full charge.

This album–LB’s first full-length offering–got very little attention back in 1992. While stylistically different, label-mates Nirvana stole their thunder; You may have heard of them. They do share some artistic similarities: Whereas Nirvana hewed closer to punk aesthetics, and Love Battery draws more from psychedelic hard rock, both took melodic inspiration from the Beatles.

Check out Dayglo now that the coffin dust has settled on “grunge.” This record could have been a contender. I wish I hadn’t missed it the first time around. It would have been a better use of my youthful listening time than, say, oh I dunno, The Offspring’s first album. Ugh.