Further Listening:

5. The Reds, Pinks and Purples Put A Song Up This Week

The Bay Area-based project of songwriter Glenn Donaldson, The Reds, Pinks and Purples have amassed eight increasingly well-received LPs in just five years, working with the indie-label double-whammy of Tough Love and Slumberland Records. During that period Glenn and his band have made a number of attempts to tour the UK, only to have them scuppered by circumstances outside of their control. All of that is set to change next June with a ten-date UK tour announced this week, an event celebrated with the digital release of the previously vinyl-only singles, Dull Panic & Sunday Gloom and Did You Put Your Song Up Today?

While Dull Panic & Sunday Gloom is a classic indie-pop song, resplendent with twitching keyboards and melancholy melody, my pick of the pair is Did You Put Your Song Up Today? The track races in on a skittering flourish of snare drum, before Glenn seems to sigh into view on a topic he obviously knows very well, sharing both your self and your music with the world. Atop a fuzzy lead guitar line, latterly adorned with a beautiful wall-of-sound squall, Glenn muses on the importance of being heard and the importance of just sticking to what you love, “did you give your song up to the world? Don’t you know it’s all been done before?” While it could easily become a self-indulgent pity track, the song is saved from that by his sheer willingness to keep on going, to keep on sharing his music, “took it to the label but they shut you down, keep on trying ’til you get that sound, keep on trying all your life”. The dice might be loaded, the odds stacked against success, but that’s not stopping The Reds, Pinks And Purples from giving it all they’ve got, so upload that track, dream that dream, and don’t worry about how many people listened to it, figures are for accountants to worry about.

Dull Panic & Sunday Gloom / Did You Put Your Song Up Today? are out now via Tough Love / Slumberland Records. For more information on The Reds, Pinks and Purples visit https://linktr.ee/glenndonaldson

4. Happy Just To See You Are Coping

Happy Just To See You are a four-piece band based out of Manchester, New Hampshire, who emerged at the start of 2020 with the release of their self-titled debut album. Back in May, they shared Three New Songs, an on-the-nose titled first glimpse of where the band’s music could be headed next. With the promise of, “very special things to come”, this week the band shared their new single Ways To Cope, recorded with acclaimed producer Brad Krieger at his Big Nice Studio, where records I love by the likes of Dan Wriggins, Squirrel Flower and NOVA ONE were recorded.

Discussing their music, songwriter Evan Benoit cites the influence of 90’s indie-rock, drawing comparison to the sonic ambition of Frightened Rabbit or The Weakerthans. Here they draw too from a sound of stadium-sized Americana, as the initially wiry guitar, giving way to swooping strings, booming drum rhythms and soaring, impassioned vocal melodies in the mould of Good Looks or Horse Thief. Atop it all Evan sings out his straight-talking message, “I’m not looking for ways to cope, I’m asking ’cause I want to know, are you happy?” While the exact circumstances might not be writ large, the feeling of something slipping away, and wanting someone to just know you’re there for them are evident both in the words of support, and the passionate vocal delivery. Sometimes music makes you think, other times, like with Happy Just To See You, it seems to hit you right in the gut with its honest, open-hearted charms, whatever excitement they have in store for us, I for one can’t wait to see where this band’s journey takes them next.

Ways To Cope is out now. For more information on Happy Just To See You visit https://linktr.ee/hj2cu.

3. These Elephants Are Really Into Honey

Based in Glasgow, Elephant In Red is the musical brainchild of Loup Havenith, alongside a string of collaborators that includes members of the likes of Catholic Action, Wild Cabin and Casual Sex. The project first came to my attention a year ago with the single, Silver, a song that took the skeletal folk of Loup’s solo work and sent it spiralling into an inferno of Neil Young-like indie-rock. The subsequent year hasn’t seen any new music but has seen plenty of progress, with sold-out shows in Glasgow and Edinburgh supporting Quasi, and plenty of recording behind the scenes. This week they celebrated an upcoming string of festival shows by sharing their first material of the year, their new single, Honey.

Sometimes people ask that dreaded question, “So what sort of music do you like?”, and I’ve never quite known what to say, if they’d instead take a song as a representation then Honey might just be it. It’s got those gorgeous folk-influenced guitars, that lurching, hazy drum rhythm, the gorgeous twinkling adornments of piano and splashy cymbals. It’s a track that never feels in a hurry to get anywhere, it’s an aimless Autumnal walk, a quiet pint by a roaring fire, a black and white film on a rainy Sunday. It’s a track that’s just got “For The Rabbits’ kind of thing” written all over in big bold letters, and I couldn’t be happier about it. So what sort of music do I like? A double helping of Honey please, and if anyone knows how to put that feeling it gives me into words, well you’re a better writer than me.

Honey is out now. For more information on Elephant In Red visit https://linktr.ee/elephantinred

2. Jess Ribeiro’s Clinging Onto The Summer

One of a growing number of excellent folk-influenced Australian songwriters, Jess Ribeiro first appeared more than a decade ago with her acclaimed debut album, My Little River. With the Australian music-prize nominated follow-up Kill It Yourself and the New York-influenced retro 2019’s LOVE HATE. Since then Jess has been working on new material, including Summer Of Love, a song originally written in, “the heartbreaking Victorian summer of 2019-2020 at a solar powered shack”, which after many iterations this week was finally shared with the world.

Jess recalls how the song was originally, “born as an 80s pop song”, before a second life as, “a Velvet Underground-inspired rock number”, recorded with Bad Seeds/Birthday Party member, Mick Harvey. The final version seems to bear little resemblance to either of those, but it is where Jess wants it to be, at least for now, “this song has undergone many evolutions but this version suits where I’m at. It’s stripped back, vulnerable, reflective”. Here Jess is joined initially by just a gently picked-out procession of piano chords, they slowly grow in intensity around her melody-carrying vocal, before rich flourishes of strings and then a so subtle it’s barely there beaten snare drum adds a wonderful flourish to the outro. Lyrically, the song is perfect in its simplicity, the repeated refrain, “we need a summer of love”, delivered in a way where you’re not entirely sure whether she’s talking about a personal re-ignition of an old flame or a global season of healing, a moment for us all to reflect on climate change, forest fires, war, Covid or all the things that seem determined to spread distrust and hate, bring on the soothing sounds of Jess Ribeiro, a blueprint for better times, “we need a summer of love like no other, a gateway to good vibes with each other, we need a summer of love” – and other than the question of whether we need it sooner than the summer, well it’s hard to argue with that.

Summer Of Love is out now via Labelman. For more information on Jess Ribeiro visit https://www.jessribeiro.com/

1. Living Body Are Living Debt Free

Based out of Leeds, Living Body are a collective based around the songwriting of their American-immigrant bandleader Jeff T. Smith, previously known for his work under the Juffage moniker. Having burst onto the scene with their 2016 debut, Body Is Working, a period of quiet was broken earlier this year with their excellent single, Consumer. Since then they’ve been hitting the road with the band’s line-up currently including members of fellow West Yorkshire mavericks like Crake, Mayshe-Mayshe and Fig By Four. Following dates with Owen and Holiday Ghosts, the band are currently in the midst of a UK tour, and recently marked the occasion with their new single, No Debt.

Tackling the hugely under-represented-in-pop-songs topic of student debt, No Debt was written in the wake of the US election pledge to eliminate student debt, and its subsequent crumbling under the weight of right-wing opposition, as Jeff explains, “whether it be neuroscience, engineering, queer theory or 17th century textiles, there is inherent value in expanding the overall breadth and scope of human knowledge. Much in the way that no one should be in debt for receiving health care, no one should be in debt for learning something, anything!” The track is considerably more nuanced than a plea for free education now, this ever-thoughtful band dig deeper, scratching the surface of the creeping threat of major corporations, Artificial Intelligence and our collective relationship with the truth in the post-truth age. Musically, this feels like typical Living Body, urgent and rhythmically complex as their trademark double-drumming polyrhythms clatter and bounce beneath angular guitar rhythms, and Jeff’s half-spoken vocal repetitions. We live in an age where the future can seem distant and the present overloaded, and Living Body don’t shy away from it, they allow pessimism and hope, exhaustion and perseverance, to all sit hand in hand in this melting pot of modern living and find the little moments of joy that make this whole humanity thing to remain something worth hanging onto.

No Debt is out now via Kingfisher Bluez. For more information on Living Body visit https://livingbodylife.com/.

Header photo is Living Body by Matthew Sturgess