EROTIC ANTIQUES

Erotic Antiques gathers together more or less the entire recorded output of LaHost - a little-known band from the 1980s neo-prog scene who rose from the ashes of Airbridge, one of the scene's pioneers. The first four tracks hail from the band's first demo, dubbed simply "The Host" (which was apparently their name before they decided to make it a bit fancier). On the strength of this first demo, vocalist Mark Spencer may unfortunately have been the weak link in the group, who otherwise seem to have quickly arrived at a sound which comes across as a somewhat more Genesis- influenced Twelfth Night, with the prog theatricalism of the former informing the new wave/prog mashup of the latter.

The next tranche of four tracks offer up the Another Song About Death - Live! demo tape. This shows marked improvement over the past demo, with Mark Spencer's vocals in particular sounding more confident and settling into a dramatica and evocative style. This is showcased magnificently on the pensive, haunting The Drowning Pool - it's still very Genesis influenced, with passages that could have come from the eeriest moments of the Gabriel era, but this makes it no less compelling. The rest of the demo, alas, is fairly forgettable - and one kind of wishes that LaHost had stopped, taken a breath, and then rebuilt their sound from the ground up based on the kernel of a good idea they had in The Drowning Pool.

Also on here are the A and B-side of the band's sole single release. This was a make or break moment for the group, with the poppy Just Breaking Away and the more atmospheric (but still accessible) The Big Sleep suggesting a direction similar to that Pendragon would take in the mid-1980s, which I suppose makes sense given that Fudge Smith provided drums here.

The remainder of this release offers some odds and ends, the most significant being Blood and Roses, the band's contribution to the Fire In Harmony compilation. This was put out through Elusive Records and distributed by EMI - Elusive being the umbrella under which Marillion manager John Arnison had put out Pendragon's Fly High Fall Far EP and their debut album, The Jewel. Fire In Harmony seems to have been put together both to keep Pendragon in the spotlight and to showcase the other groups involved - but little came of it. Elusive would shutter not long after it came out - and a good chunk of the bands contributing would either split up or go into a significant hiatus to boot.

For many of them, like LaHost, it was their last firm stab at getting noticed - but LaHost, for their part, seem to have already given up, Blood and Roses being a rather drab affair which feels like them trying to play up their sonic commonalities with Pendragon, to the extent that they seem to be doing much of anything. An inessential alternate version of The Drowning Pool and a live number round things out.

On the whole, Erotic Antiques showcases LaHost as a band who were alright, but hadn't quite found a path to becoming more than alright. It's something of an improvement over the debut album by Airbridge, and they seem to have been on a path to improvement up to the Another Song About Death demo, but alas this steady course was not fast enough to yield truly distinctive results during their brief span, and there's some signs that their creative path was heading down a dead end towards the end of their run.