One week at number one on 11th April 1987
By the late eighties, the goth movement – if it could sensibly be called a "movement" – had become one of the most unbudging aspects of alternative music. I’ve now spent over two years writing this blog, covering six years worth of music; goth was there from the off with Bauhaus and The Birthday Party, and their surviving (metaphorical) kin and offspring only seemed to get stronger and reach ever-larger audiences following their demise. Goth didn’t fade from view like anarcho-punk or the quirkier jolts of New Wave, it sat enigmatically in the corner of the nightclub recruiting more and more people to its cause.
As the decade progressed, a pattern emerged which is typical of most sub-genres and movements; there were groups deemed goth royalty whom nobody was allowed to blaspheme against, whose inevitable second-week chart peak appearances on Top of the Pops were deemed victories for the sect. Beneath those honoured few, however, lay scores of bands who might, if they were lucky and a fair wind was behind them on a Spring afternoon, score a high placing indie chart entry. Despite this, they would never be radio playlisted or let close to any television programme which wasn’t The Tube or the Oxford Roadshow, and as such would remain fringe concerns. Your Dad might have sung along to The Cure’s “The Lovecats” when it came on the radio, but he wasn’t getting anywhere near Red Lorry Yellow Lorry’s “Open Up” (though nor would you have wanted him to - I mean, imagine that).
Sometimes, if the indie charts were soft and not much else was happening, they might even score a number one. We saw this with the March Violets in the typically sleepy August of 1984, and Rose of Avalanche repeat the trick again close to the Easter period of 1987. They were always one of the more straightforward goth bands; loyal to their leaden, reverb-heavy and spartan drumbeats, sombre melodies and slowly scaling ideas which sometimes stretched beyond the five minute mark (their single prior to this one, “Velveteen”, was an epic tribute to Nico which is probably their most enduring song in both length and subsequent reputation).
In common with many goth bands, they disputed ever being part of the movement, and in this case I’ll sympathise. They often seemed like university students who had tried too hard to impress the kids who dressed like Velvet Underground members in their first year, and found themselves shunned and dealing with their next closest compatriots instead. Never quite hip enough, always wondering what might have happened if they’d just played it a bit cooler during Fresher’s Week.
They were, to all intents and purposes, a band who could just as easily have been on Creation and hanging out with Pete Astor and Bobby Gillespie. They loved psychedelic rock and The Doors, they wore leather jackets and sunglasses at night, and they weren’t against wearing paisley clothing. As you’d therefore expect, their music occasionally lifted its head out of the mourning bow to shuffle, boogie and stride; they were never averse to a simple garage rock chorus or an airy, stoned rock-out.
Which is essentially where we come in with “Always There”, which sadly isn't a cover of Marti Webb's version of the "Howard's Way" theme, but a pretty jangle and stride through verses and choruses you wouldn’t be surprised to find on a sixties obscurities compilation. If the chorus of “I know death won’t find us” is very goth indeed, its surrounding melodies, harmonies and production would have been equally at home on a House Of Love single. Their only drawback is their straightforwardness – where Terry Bickers would have found space to scrape and wail around unpredictably, The Rose of Avalanche are steadfastly loyal to the central rhythm and riff, seeming afraid to wander too far off the track in case they lose grip of the plot.
In that sense, then, they were very goth; the band themselves acknowledged this paradox, calling themselves “too rock for goths, too goth for rockers”. Many of the minor goth acts clutched on to their basic ideas and drum machine patterns tightly, offering a shady safeness from guitar hero licks or skittering dancefloor rhythms; there’s a reason that many goths held Joy Division close to their bosoms but could be faintly sniffy about New Order, and it had everything to do with the way the latter used their drum machine to lift feet off the floor rather than keep them anchored with a dead weight.