Love Child – Never Meant To Be 1988-1993

I’m a sucker for a good, deep retrospective on a band that’s just missed the spotlight for years. The new compilation from 12xU, wrapping up the bulk of Love Child’s work, is just such a collection. For the ‘90s scourers and Homestead Heads, the name Love Child should already be familiar, but to the average scanners of ‘90s dials, the band was woefully missing from the limelight that shone on their peers. The band formed a Vassar College, bringing together Will Baum, Rebecca Odes, and Alan Licht, birthing a sound that was informed by Modern Lovers, Richard Hell, The Embarrassment, and The Heartbreakers. The band were often (rightfully) compared to Beat Happening, though they retain a much harder, more acerbic edge than the Northwesterners ever had. The band chews on riffs with a ragged ferocity, at times sounding like pre-Matador Pavement if they’d traded Mark Ibold for Kim Deal.

The band’s debut for Homestead was a barbed and blustery follow-up to an early cassette and a couple of singles that found them both finding their footing in the gnarled wilds of ‘90s Alternative and covering Moondog over two sides of a single. The early works found Baum at the helm, though both Odes and Licht made more than their fair stamp on the recordings on Okay?. Baum would leave the band following that album, though, with Licht taking over a more vocal role and drums being taken over by Brendan O’Malley. The sounds shift from the more brittle bashers that populated the debut to a bit more supple sound on 1992’s Witchcraft, marking a new era for the band tied to their early days through Licht’s nimble riffs. The comp culls nicely from both albums, but kicks in quite a bit more context, pulling from Peel Sessions, 7”s, a Radiation Records comp, and tracks recorded at KSPC in ’93.

Like many bands of the ‘90s, Love Child were sometimes bandied about as the next to break but sadly it was not to be. That makes this collection all the better. It’s the spotlight they’ve long deserved. Alan Licht would go on to great acclaim in more experimental circles, collaborating with Lee Ranaldo, Loren Connors, Tetuzi Akiyama, and others, while Rebecca Odes released solo works under the name Odes for Merge. This comp stands as an excellent document of the band’s tenure — a living being that was constantly in motion, evolving rapidly and extinguishing far too soon. Put this high atop the essential reissues list for 2024.

Support the artist. Buy it HERE.