other titles...
- Too Late For An Early Grave
- Leave It All Behind
- Life In The Void
- Here Comes the Lunar Hand
- Burning Sunflowers
- Waiting On A Ghost To Haunt You
- What Is A Friend?
- Mistakes (Too Many To Name)
- Almost Changed
- The Town That Cursed Your Name
- I Still Owe You Everything
- Break Up The Band
The Reds, Pinks and Purples
The Town That Cursed Your Name
tough love
Whereas the 2022 collection 'Summer at Land’s End' was a softer, gauzier world, 'The Town That Cursed Your Name' is heavier, with fuzzed lines running through.
'The Town That Cursed Your Name' contemplates this problem with wryness, generosity, and the micro- and macroscopic realness Donaldson is known and loved for. 'Leave It All Behind' starts out with an amorphous whine but quickly launches into something both supremely melodic and buzzing at the edges. 'Here Comes the Lunar Hand' is an impressionist geometry that seems to capture the album’s themes without telling you how. Lyrically, Donaldson embraces the earnestness of his heroes Paul Westerberg and Grant McLennan. Sonically, late '80s college rock is filtered through song-forward lo-fi acts like East River Pipe and House of Tomorrow-era Magnetic Fields. Like the images that accompany his releases – flowers and residential street scenes are pushed to the breaking point with colour – Donaldson’s songs are at the same time dazzling and lurid, beautiful and burdened, not unlike life as a musician around here. In the liner notes, Donaldson dedicates the record “to everyone who ever tried to start a band in the Bay". There will be many knowing smiles at his title, 'It’s Too Late For An Early Grave'. But, this dedication captures something else about the particular strain of sincerity that laces the city water supply – the front man around here is on stage under those lights evincing the fervor not of the pop star but of the biggest fan. -Karina Gill RIYL: Sarah Records, Even As We Speak, The Field Mice, Blue Boy, The Clientele, early Belle & Sebastian