Garbage Days Revisited #69: The Mission - "God's Own Medicine" (1986)

 

"Heaven and hell, I know them well but I haven't yet made my choice..." - The Mission - Wasteland

Well, we covered the Sisters of Mercy in this column last week, it seemed only right to turn our attention to their long-term rivals in the Leeds goth scene this time out. I'm aware that one must tread slightly carefully when covering the Mish especially as a latter day fan like myself. I have a fair few friends who read this 'zine who take this group VERY seriously and I realise I'm likely to get pulled up on any factual inaccuracies. So here goes...hopefully I've done my best with this!

Honestly, this was actually a bit of a difficult column to write - as with the Sisters, I was actually aware of the Mission back in the day after seeing them playing Deliverance on Top of the Pops as an 11-year-old. Similar to the Sisters' More which would come a few months later, I just loved how dark and ferocious it sounded (though lyrically it's a lot more peace, love and Paganism than Eldritch's none-more-dark musings) especially that chorus of "BROTHERS! SISTERS! GIVE ME GIVE ME DELIVERANCE!". I duly went out and bought it from the local Woolworths a couple of days afterwards but the truth is that it would be the Mish's last TOTP appearance for three years and they well and truly dropped off my radar soon afterwards. By the time they graced the TOTP studios again in 1994 with a re-release of Tower of Strength, it was Britpop, it was Britrock and my reaction was pretty much "oh yeah, I remember them, that was alright...anyway, are Terrorvision on this thing later then?"

But anyway, similar to a dormant virus that creeps back to the surface to get you again long after you've forgotten about it, I did indeed end up getting back into the Mission properly some twenty odd years later after seeing them supporting my long term favourites the Cult at Hammersmith Odeon (oh go on then, Apollo if you must). Honestly, I'd mostly gone along to see the Cult but the Mish well and truly nuked them that night with a fast and furious set of goth rock with every song hitting home like a pin missile as opposed to Astbury and co who just sounded heartbreakingly out of sorts and past it for their headline set. I quickly ended up going back and listening to those old records again and enjoying what I heard.

The tricky bit was this - I knew I wanted to write something on the Mish to follow up the Sisters column the other week but the question was...which album? There were two which came in for serious consideration - I originally thought that 1995's Neverland was an unexpectedly good comeback from a band which had just lost two key members but upon re-listening to it, while it does have some great moments (the sneering opener Raising Cain especially), there's also a bit of filler in there. The other was the band's 2013 comeback The Brightest Light which saw three quarters of the original line-up reunited after almost two decades. The faithful were expecting a return to the old sound but instead this turned out to be a group of veterans making the record they always wanted to make and it turned out to be an enjoyable and varied effort from the thunderous opener Black Cat Bone through the primal Everything But The Squeal and the Stonesy raunch of Girl In The Fur Skin Rug to the desolate lament of When The Trap Clicks Shut Behind Us. I'd even go so far as to say I'd put it in my top 3 albums by the band. Unfortunately it undeservedly went down like a cup of cold sick among the long term fans and the group rapidly back peddled on their next effort Another Fall From Grace (their most recent effort at time of going to press) which was a much more identifiable Mission sound but also a much more predictable album and to these ears it sounded more like "Mish by numbers" than anything. 

Realistically though, it had to be God's Own Medicine when all's said and done. It may seem a bit odd to pick arguably a band's best known album for their GDR entry but I'd argue that the Mission weren't ever really critics' favourites and this album has never quite gained the acclaim that say Floodland by the Sisters or Pornography by the Cure or The Sky's Gone Out by Bauhaus have in the goth music canon. And I think personally it's high time that changed.

Anyway, when we left off with Wayne Hussey and Craig Adams (interesting aside - Adams and fellow early Sisters member Ben Gunn both originally hail from Otley near Leeds, the same town as your friendly writer here grew up in) in last week's GDR, they'd just walked out of the Sisters of Mercy after irreconcilably falling out with Andrew Eldritch. The pair would bring in a couple of fellow Yorkshire goths in the form of drummer Mick Brown from Leeds' Red Lorry Yellow Lorry and guitarist Simon Hinkler from Sheffield post-punks Artery (Hinkler had also briefly served with Pulp around the time of their first album) to unleash the Mission. Initially signing to Chapter 22 (who also had Balaam & The Angel and Pop Will Eat Itself on their books and would later be the first stop off point for Ned's Atomic Dustbin), the group's singles would slowly creep up the charts (with them signing to major label Mercury en route) until their fourth effort Wasteland well and truly blew the doors off stopping just short of the Top 10 (as an aside, the Mish have a truly unlucky record when it comes to cracking the Top 10 with no less than three of their singles stalling at either number 11 or number 12 - Tower of Strength and Butterfly On A Wheel being the other two).

God's Own Medicine was pretty much a straight continuation of the album Hussey and Adams had done with the Sisters, First Last And Always but with even better tunes such as the ominous Wasteland and the yearning Severina. However, the likes of Bridges Burning also showed that they could kick loose to good effect when they wanted to and the album is a good solid mix of all their best elements from the string-drenched re-recording of early single Garden of Delight to the two-part epic Dance On Glass/And The Dance Goes On which is why it edges it over the two slightly better selling efforts that followed to these ears. It was clearly meant to be a statement of intent and it definitely succeeded on that front. For me, when it comes to goth albums this would almost certainly be in my Top 5, there's not a bad track on it yet the Mish always seem to get written off as too derivative and overblown compared to their fellows in the genre. Some folk just can't catch a break I guess.

The group would quickly make hay while the sun shone and follow up God's Own Medicine just a year later with their sophomore effort Children. However, while it's still got some good moments such as the sinister opener Beyond The Pale and the epic Tower Of Strength, to me this one is a bit less special. The group had roped in Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones as producer to go for a more straightforward rock vibe and to me some of the ethereal quality of their debut kind of got lost along the way (a comparison could be made with the Cult who'd gone from the dreamy goth rock of Love through the stripped down rock of Electric to the overblown Sonic Temple around this time). 1990's Carved In Sand (the one with Deliverance on it) was similarly "good but not great", about two thirds killer tunes and one third a bit anonymous.

As I mentioned earlier, the group were still performing respectably in the charts but it was at this point things started to unravel. The group had been drifting apart as people for a few years and Hinkler would suddenly leave the band on the eve of the American leg of the Carved In Sand tour after a fall-out with Hussey and Adams would follow him out of the door shortly after its follow-up, 1992's Masque, was completed (he would end up resurfacing in the Cult a couple of years later). The group would also find themselves labelless after being dropped by Mercury following Masque's underperformance in the charts. Masque was a brave attempt by the group to move their sound forwards (even if the final result again suffered from consistency issues) and saw them collaborating with the likes of Anthony Thistlethwaite from the Waterboys and Miles Hunt from the Wonder Stuff but by this point the bloom was off the rose a bit commercially - unfortunately the aftermath of grunge had seen the band dropped firmly on the wrong side of the "rockstar/anti-rockstar" line.

Hussey and Brown would put a Mk2 Mission line-up together completed by bassist Andy Cousin and keyboardist Rik Carter both poached from the wreckage of All About Eve plus young guitarist Mark Gemini Thwaite who would go on to work with the likes of Gary Numan, Peter Murphy, Al Jourgensen, Ginger Wildheart and Tricky and can currently be found with the Wonder Stuff. The resultant album, Neverland, was a good attempt to drag the classic Mission sound into the post-grunge era with the likes of Raising Cain, Sway and Afterglow being well worth tracking down. However, the tide had very much turned against the band by this point and it came out on a minor label to little or no fanfare. Blue, released the following year, was the sound of the band spluttering to a halt (they would split soon afterwards) and is probably their weakest effort with very little of note on there apart from possibly the epic That Tears Shall Drown The Wind.

The split would of course turn out to be temporary and Hussey would reform the band in 1999 with Thwaite and Adams rejoining and the latter bringing his former Cult bandmate Scott Garrett along for the ride (although both would leave again soon afterwards with Adams resurfacing in the Alarm and Spear of Destiny). A brace of albums, 2001's Aura and 2006's God Is A Bullet would result, both inconsistent but with some good moments worth seeking out (the latter is probably the stronger of the two). After a brief hiatus, 2010 would see Hinkler and Adams returning to the band (albeit with Brown leaving) and the arrival of the underappreciated The Brightest Light album and its follow-up, 2016's Another Fall From Grace. Which is where we came in. Sort of.

The Mission are, of course, still a going concern today and have just completed a post-lockdown tour (which your correspondent annoyingly missed as he got his dates mixed up and thought he was on holiday that week!) with Hussey also currently working on part 2 of his autobiogaphy (I'm currently reading part 1 Salad Daze and it's certainly an interesting insight into his early days). I've seen them two or three times since that re-introduction a decade or so ago and I'm pleased to report that they've been good value for money on both occasions. As far as I'm concerned, they should definitely be mentioned alongside the likes of Bauhaus, the Cure, the Banshees, the Cult and, yes, the Sisters when it comes to seminal goth bands - they added a new more strident take on the genre which to my ears was crucial to it evolving as the '80s turned into the '90s even though it's the album that's arguably the most trad-goth of theirs that's their strongest to these ears. But I'd argue that all of their albums (with the possible exception of Blue) are well worth a listen - they've all got plenty of great tunes and hooks in them that prove that this band's longevity is anything but a fluke. So yeah, to the unconverted, go out, explore the dark side and enjoy yourself.

(Author's note - special thanks to my old mate James Wright, long time Missionary, for being good enough to read this and helpfully point out a few bits your writer here had missed. Much appreciated bud)