EP Review – Unloveable Losers by The Reds, Pinks and Purples (Self released) (2023)
I once had something of a spat with a prolific artist who had requested my opinion as to why the sales of their music were not going in the positive direction they imagined. Honest to an absolute fault, I said, “You release too often”.
Therein lies the continuum that many artists, especially those with home studios and knob-twiddling skills, face. Do they release the music they so plainly love making into the world as soon as it is done, resulting in numerous (usually digital) releases competing with each other and risking their fans experiencing “artiste fatigue,” or do they store it into what old people, such as myself, love to call albums as they dig deep into their retro conscious?
Glenn Donaldson and his The Reds, Pinks, and Purples project have not only never asked my opinion (and why the heck should he?) but really seem to care little about the prospects of artist fatigue. Once more…and why the heck should he when the 19 albums and 47 EPs (the EPs are usually free on Bandcamp) he releases each year are always met with labels fighting over themselves to release his work, and the blocks under the Bandcamp release artwork that indicates sales always seem to shift off multiple pages into the ‘shit loads’ category?
Essentially Unloveable Losers is a clear indication of why ‘More will always be More’ (instead of less) for this act, as it typifies the dexterity that always guides his releases around any semblance of jaded prolificity.
Initially, his ‘free EPs” always seemed to be collections of tracks that really have no natural home in anything he had ever released before. As such, they always feel original without ever losing the uniformity that makes us love Donaldson’s aesthetic in the first place.
As such, the propensity of this release to dive further into the no-fi end of the lo-fi spectrum than Donaldson has ever done before is seen in the two bookends of the title track and Cleaner City Streets. Such tracks somehow flirt with and simultaneously ultimately dispel the notion of fuzz-pop in favor of a sensuous ‘haze’ that squeezes every ounce of emotionality out of Donaldson’s beautiful voice. It’s just that little bit different from anything that has gone before…and that different always /counts’ in abundance.
Similarly, this deep lo-fi adds a clarity to the jangled riffs of The World Should Be Ashamed and Only Life of Fun that is often slightly hidden amongst his usual sense of isolated spectral and slight gaze inflections. These tracks feel as close as The Reds, Pinks, and Purples might ever get to plaintive guitar-pop and add a specific ying to the yang of Best Sides and Richard in the Age of Corporation, which are all manner of brash indie-pop resplendent with percussion that edges towards battered as opposed to any semblance of the normal hushed.
One of Donaldson’s fans wrote a little review on Bandcamp stating that The Red’s, Pinks and Purples are ‘the best act in the world at the moment’. High praise indeed and a praise that you might not usually associate with Donaldson just because he is just so much a part of many indie-pop / jangle-pop fans lives on such a consistent basis.
Perhaps this act is not the best in the world but they are certainly the one we might miss the most if they were gone.
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