Gene Loves Jezebel
SITUATION TWO 1984
A-side: ‘Influenza (Relapse)’
Deep soul wails from Welsh goth twins.
A goth band that time forgot, Gene Loves Jezebel did their greatest work in the shadows. It may be their Welshness but the band fronted by identical twins Michael and Jay Aston were outliers even in their heyday, eschewing regulation black rags for colourful dresses, robes and scarves, their long manes intersected with knitting needles, panda eyes smeared with kohl. Their music was slightly to the left too, as the A-side’s woozy, lopsided mix of organs and glockenspiel proved. Like many of their early B-sides, ‘Stephen’ felt loose and improvised, a mystical semi-dirge whose detuned guitar figures resembled drunken jews harps. Packed with yearning, the burnished homo-erotica of its chief refrain (“When Stephen smiles my heart just seems to grow”) cast lead singer Michael as a grittier, more ragged Bono. GLJ clearly felt an affinity for ‘Stephen’, reprising it on their second LP Immigrant with more mannered intent as its more obvious highlights (‘Shame’, ‘The Cow’) began to impact on US college radio. As with other rock siblings, the road ahead proved bumpy, the Aston brothers parting ways in 1989 and forming two ongoing variants of Gene Loves Jezebel that are billed differently in the UK and US, following litigation in 2008.