Sunday, March 26, 2023

The Reds, Pinks & Purples - The Town That Cursed Your Name

 

Modern musical conyeyor belts. They're difficult things to process even for someone who likes listening to new music as much as I do. King Gizzard, Guide by Voices, increasingly it seems Lana Del Ray. If you're after wistful indie, Reds, Pinks & Purples. Why do these people put out so many records, another one apparently appearing up the pike every few months. Couldn't they exercise a little more restraint, some quality control. Give the rest of the musical world a chance. Give the listening world a rest.

As someone who writes a blog like this one, posting something every day, all this activity on the parts of some, hyperactivity some might call it, leads to a dilemma on my part whenever a new King Gizzard, GBV or Lana album shows up. I'm partial to a lesser or greater extent to all of these artists. I just think they put out too much product to allow the listening audience to fully digest and process it all.

Back in the day, (the days when I was growing up), this was quite normal behaviour. Bands were expected to stay on the conveyor belt, and churn out singles every three months, albums twice a year and tour the rest of the time or else risk redundancy. But times have changed and you can't help feeling that artistic behaviour should change along with it.

As far as The Reds, Pinks & Purples are concerned, I'm always pleased when I hear another one of their records. They, (and by 'they' I mean Glen Donaldson, the middle aged San Franciscan who plots their course), map out narratives that I'm particularly prone to. Teenage or twentysomething  rites of passage, rites of heartbreak, relived in middle age, soundtracked by strummed guitars and pained if resigned vocals. The Go-Betweens, The Smiths, The Feelies, Guided By Voices. Them again.

Latest album, The Town That Cursed Your Name,( and what a name for a record that is), does what you'd expect it to. It's the seventh album Donaldson has put out under the Reds, Pinks & Purples moniker on Slumberland Records since 2018. Now that is ridiculously, ridiculously prolific.

It's a very good record of its sort. Some absolutely masterful lyrics that describe a certain ennui that owes everything to early Morrissey and The Smiths. Whether it's the Reds, Pinks & Purples record you need, I'll leave that to others. It's literary, melodic investigation of the behaviour of the human heart. A series of finely wrought short stories set to song. That will never go out of fashion.

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