Rocktrospectiva: The Eminently Listeneable "Cleopatra Grip" Turns 35

Released on 14 August 1990, "Cleopatra Grip" was the debut album by the English band The Heart Throbs. The album made the top 10 on the Billboard Alternative Albums chart, and the single "Dreamtime" peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart. Other singles from the album were "I Wonder Why" And "She's In A Trance". 

 

Produced by Martin Hannett, with Gil Norton assisting. and like all of the Heart Throbs' records, the album title employs slang for female genitalia. The lyrics of "White Laughter" were inspired by the film Gimme Shelter. The Heart Throbs was a band commanded by the Pete Dr Freitas (Echo And The Bunnymen) twin sisters, unfortunately for Pete, he never managed to listen to the record caused he died before the released. 

 

Now back in the day, and despite many considered not a perfect debut, this album is loaded with upbeat indie pop and deceptively dark lyrics sung by charmingly adequate female vocalists with an influence pot full of vague twee, noise, and dream pop traits. Under the heavily influenced by The Smiths, The Primitives and other seminal bands of Brit Rock from the mid-end 80's. The band's vocalist had a passionate voice that reminded Sonya Madan of Echobelly or Toni Halliday of Curve or even Miki Berenyi of Lush but she's had an energy all her own. 

 

The songs on the record shifted from dreamy ballads to melodic, gazy sounds althought not so noisier as certain bands of dream pop and shoegaze but The Heart Throbs but as an alternative band the band was on its own, it had a similar style to all these bands influenced by My Bloody Valentine, like Lush or Curve, but more epic and with some MOR influences. 

 

Highlights tracks "Big Commotion" a nice simply pop full of guitar walls, the intense "I Wonder Why" almost like a hymn for the band and the Rose Carlotti voice at her best, the beautiful lament you can hear on "In Vain", the relaxed pop in "Slip And Slide" and the charming "Blood From A Stone", the interesting "She's Is A Trance" and the incredible closer "White Laughter". 

 

Perhaps other songs such as "Here And Hide" lacks of certain personality, or seemed to lost like the noisy "Calavera", great lyrics full of feminist and sexual content, that might remind the first albums of the iconical PJ Harvey.  

 

Critics were mixed considered the band as one of the brand new outfits back then, meshing memorable melodies and guitar lines with lyrics that mix clarity and enigma, edgy and sexy indie pop sound, considered music for the Twin Peaks generation: moody, self-indulgent, streaked with ethereal synthesizer sounds, seemingly residing in that shadowy state between dream and reality.

 

Cleopatra Grip Track List: 

 

1. Tossed Away

2. Dreamtime

3. Big Commotion

4. In Vain

5. Slip & Slide

6. Here I Hide

7. Calavera

8. I Wonder Why

9. She's In A Trance

10. Blood From Stone

11. Kiss Me When I'm Starving

12. White Laughter