Love Is Hell

The debut Kitchens of Distinction full-length remains a remarkable listen thematically as much as musically; Patrick Fitzgerald’s forthrightness about his life as a gay man and his lyrics that resulted meant he carved out what was still far too lonely a road even in the late 1980s UK. But that made the resonant music all the more rich, with Julian Swales’s sweeping, lively guitar, partway between classic rock and postpunk, informing the impact of such songs as the dramatic “Prize” and the intense emotion of “The 3rd Time We Opened the Capsule” and “Hammer.”