Terminal Love is the second studio album by American musician Peter Ivers. It was released in 1974.
Style.
"Tucson Weekly" described it as a "pop/prog/avant-garde album". According to Josh Frank, "Terminal Love" "had clearly been attempting, at least, to be a pop album", noting that the songs were shorter and featured "standard variations on the verse-chorus-verse structure". He also noted a greater influence of blues and blues rock, with Ivers' erstwhile jazz and baroque influences buried "deep in the background". Jason Ankeny of AllMusic wrote that the album "suggests the work of Captain Beefheart; indeed, Magic Band/Frank Zappa collaborator Eliot Ingber appears on several tracks." "The album" wrote Jim Allen for "Bandcamp Daily", "was no wistful collection of gently introspective ballads: Its songs sport unorthodox structures, shifting tempos and time signatures, and arch, witty lyrics referencing everything from Freud, Adler, and Reich (“Holding the Cobra”) to time and space travel (“Alpha Centauri”) and physical entropy (the title track)." The article also noted Ivers' voice: "High and reedy enough to make Neil Young sound like Johnny Cash, it has more in common with future innovators like Television’s Tom Verlaine or The Violent Femmes’ Gordon Gano than any of Ivers’ contemporaries."
Reception.
"Rolling Stone" called "Terminal Love" an "uncomfortable album" which is populated by cynical and "bloodless characters". "Women's Wear Daily" described it as a "delicate blend of jagged frenzy".
David Lynch collaborated with Ivers on the "Eraserhead" soundtrack after listening to this album (resulting in the song "In Heaven").
Legacy.
In 2013, "The Guardian" included "Terminal Love" in their "101 Strangest Albums on Spotify" series. The newspaper noted that 30 years on, "Ivers' oddball leanings sound entirely contemporary. Those same arrangements that seemed so off-putting in 1974 feel rich and comfortable now, and the passing of time has leant "Terminal Love" a delicious hipster twang it couldn't possibly have enjoyed as a new release." "Entertainment Weekly" noted that "the idiosyncratic tunes [had] more in common with the new-wave sound of the late ’70s than anything popular at the time."
Yura Yura Teikoku lead singer Shintaro Sakamoto called it his favorite album of all time, writing: ""Terminal Love" sounded to me like music from a completely mysterious world. It sounded both cosmic and microscopic at the same time, and very sexy too. And though I listened to it over and over again, I never got tired of it. To this day, I’m not aware of another record like this, and if anybody knows, I’d like to be informed." In a 2010 piece for "NME", Danger Mouse listed "Terminal Love" as one of his favorite "underrated records."
References.
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