“This “No New Tale to Tell” by Love and Rockets is more rock ‘n roll than rock ‘n roll.
For those who don’t know, Love and Rockets is a band that emerged in 1985 featuring former Bauhaus members, including Daniel Ash on guitar, saxophone and vocals, David J on bass and Kevin Haskins on drums and synths.
They’ve made some remarkable songs, like “Ball of Confusion,” which, surprisingly, is a cover of a song by The Temptations. I bet that wasn’t on your alt-rock Bingo card. Their “Haunted When the Minutes Drag” is a stylish ode to that old one-two punch, heartbreak and obsession. “So Alive” is a classic come-on.
Daniel Ash somehow overcomes an intro that sounds like the melodramatic organ soundtrack for an old Vincent Price horror flick–perhaps a nod to the group’s Gothic past–to make a song as much about lust as Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me.”
I would argue that “No New Tale to Tell” off Love and Rockets’ third album Earth, Sun, Moon is their greatest banger.
We’ve got Daniel Ash in a state of glamorous ennui as he plays the scritchy-scratchy, strum-heavy earworm riff around which the tune is built.
David J’s delivery of the song’s koan-like lyrics is a masterpiece of understatement. Ash joins in, singing along with the pleasantly confrontational chorus.
I have OCD and ADHD, so from time to time I have song lyrics circulate through my brain. Okay, it happens on the regular. Mulling over the words to “No New Tale to Tell,” however, is quite the satisfying compulsion.
The lyrics address the way humans try to separate themselves from the birds and beasts, and overestimate our importance and impact. About how we think we can escape history, and that all our ideas are novel and scintillating.
Mr. J proposes a more fatalistic path: “You cannot go against nature, because when you do, to go against nature is part of nature too.”
Our protagonist continues with oxymorons like, “Our little lives get complicated. It’s a simple thing. Simple as a flower–now that’s a complicated thing.”
The latter is certainly true. Nature is complicated, and it will, as chaos expert Dr. Ian Malcolm of Jurassic Park fame can attest, “find a way.”
As for our lives being little, it’s a concept that’s hard to accept, given we’re all the stars of our respective sit-coms. Once you do, though, you’re halfway to ego death. It’s a rather appropriate state, given that it’s spurred by a super-group comprised of dark-wave, death-rock royalty.
–Sarah Torribio
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