The Comedy of Errors: Love Child - He’s So Sensitive (13 June 1992)

Buy this on Discogs

I find myself chuckling with rueful self-regret while listening to this track from New York trio, Love Child’s Okay? album. Because for a period of about a year from June 1992 to August 1993, I found myself wondering whether “sensitivity” might be the key that would unlock my way in the Kingdom of the Girlfriend.  Prior to this, I was trying to use humour to smooth my path towards the fairer sex but as 1992 progressed, I learnt that I needed extra tricks and emotions to access. Certainly, once I left school and started studying a BTEC diploma in Performing Arts, surrounded by girls who were a few years older than me and in some cases, damaged by life and fate, the ability to be sympathetic to their problems and attentive to their needs led me into some interesting discussions and set-ups.  The frustrating thing was though that too often, my shoulder was all these girls wanted.  And no one seemed to be extolling my virtues the way that Rebecca Odes does of her new beau in He’s So Sensitive.

Those who find New York rock a bit too affected for their tastes may not want to linger here too long, for all the tropes associated with that city’s rock scene can be heard here. The production is pindrop sharp, but it sounds like it was recorded in a Tribeca loft (though the band came together when its members were studying at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie).  The guitar sound from Alan Licht has that curious and oxymoronic staccato looseness so prevalent on the CBGB/No Wave scene.  Leo Baum’s drumming contains a breakout moment which you can imagine him practising while reading one of his college textbooks, while Odes’s vocals contain just the right degree of blank-eyed sincerity.  It’s also completely unrepresentative of what Love Child’s sound was and could be.  The Okay? album is currently sitting in full on YouTube and it blew me away.  21 tracks over 45 minutes and not an ounce of filler on there.  Even the throwaways are perfect little nuggets and like all great bands, they realised that variety was everything if you were going to throw that many songs in a concentrated period of time.  The majority of the tracks on it are angular, noisy, contained thrashes with Licht taking the lead vocal but filled with ideas, invention and emotion.  Along the way, cropping up like rest stops on the journey, we get lighter, poppier moments like He’s So Sensitive and the switch in tempo and intensity makes perfect sense rather than seeming to jar.  Love Child were only around for two albums, 1992’s Witchcraft album would be their final release, but on the evidence so far, they could turn their hands to anything.  Track the album down if you can, I definitely intend to buy a copy soon.

Video courtesy of attilio tomoselli