Singles have been the lifeblood of recorded music, since a small dog first cocked an ear at a gramophone. For 40 odd years 78s were all singles, then the 45 which was the way that new artists got a toe in the door of recording. Back in the day (1977/78) singles mattered, and I have my EMI Pistols, Stranglers EP, and other artifacts squirreled away still…
Do they matter now? According to some places no, and they don’t review them. Over at Fatea, we think differently and do our best to review everything of even marginal merit. In the last month we’ve looked at 40+ singles, you can find the latest batches here and here.
Despite saying I want to avoid becoming just a review blog there is so much good stuff about that we’ll start looking at singles every so often, and here is the first few…
The Veldt – ‘The Everlasting Gobstopper’ Bandcamp
I can’t get enough of a chorus drenched guitar, and this song produced in 1989 by Robin Guthrie comes from an unreleased album. They were one of the most notable first-wave shoegaze bands, formed in North Carolina in the 80s. They claim their “sound was influenced by Cocteau Twins as readily as Marvin Gaye and free-jazz warriors Sun Ra and Pharaoh Sanders.” Their 1994 album ‘Afrodisiac’ is brilliant, and you should hear it. This is an earlier, calmer version of the band but if you like guitar-based pop, try it.
Rodney Cromwell – ‘Rod, Jane & Freddy’ Bandcamp
This is actually the B-side of an EP of remixes of his single ‘The Winter Palace’, but deserves some recognition of its own. Plenty of people have tried to recreate the feel of early 80s “synthpop”. Sorry but it was a very particular time, and the fact that everyone was learning how to use the new-fangled kit makes it hard to capture that mix of messing about and great pop songs that made 1982 what it was. So don’t recreate, innovate. Combining heavy use of the Portamento knob with bigger, better drum sounds than we had in the earlier time this brings back that 1981 feel better than anything else I’ve heard. No prizes for remembering who Rod, Jane & Freddy were, and why did I sell my Roland SH09, Wasp, and Korg Monopoly…
Rodney Cromwell & Solemn Arcade – ‘Memory Box (Solemn Arcade Revision)’ Bandcamp
More Rodney Cromwell (whose mum knows him as Adam Cresswell). This time with MJ Langthorne, who in another life is responsible for the always interesting design work for Happy Robots Records. This time we are in the land of the more abstract bits of Kraftwerk, or Boards of Canada in cut up collage of sound. This is what Japan were hoping to sound like on some of their instrumentals I feel. Atmospheric and danceable.
Apricity – ‘Allison Wonderland’ Linktree
When my daughter was a pre-teen which seems like a long time ago now, she loved Avril Lavigne. I have to say of all the stuff I had to listen to in the car back then Avril was the one I could cope with best. And now we have Apricity who is 203’s less carefully curated version of Avril. The breezy single is full of the 90s pop/punk vibe, with rather better song writing. An earlier single was a rather fab version of the Scorpions Wind of Change. And it’s definitely time we were reminded of why that was such an important song in 1989…
Jody and the Jerms – ‘Intuition’ Bandcamp
I love Kirsty Mac Coll’s singing and this comes across as the great lost Kirsty single. Jangly guitars, and a string chorus what more do you need? Good od fashioned pop seems to be slowly creeping back into fashion, and this is as good as it gets. There is a whole album of this as well all of it quite wonderful, in fact the album is called Wonder. The press says, “loaded with a healthy dose of melodic crystallised indie pop that is heartfelt and honest” and I can’t disagree with that.
