YEARNING (the) : 10"LP Still In Love

2013-RELEASES

Maddie Dobie takes the lead vocals again, and opens the A-side with an enchanting “Everybody Knows (I'm Still In Love With You)” which, with its hints of CAMERA OBSCURA and BELLE & SEBASTIAN, reaches our smiling faces through tremendous trombones, and gives us two unforgettable choruses. “Heart Beats A Little Bit Faster” is one of the prettiest songs we’ve heard in recent years, and one of the songs that best expresses the feeling of falling in love. It’s electrifying, it has sparks, it gives us goose bumps; equal parts THE BEACH BOYS and Jackie DeShannon. “If You Were My Boyfriend” brings us back to the warmth of doo-wop that Carole King or a young Chris Montez would have been proud to have written, with a delicious, sublime melody. “Eyes Of A Movie Star” caresses our skin so softly, with the glamour of Audrey Hepburn in “Breakfast At Tiffany’s”, and with the delicacy of Françoise Hardy or Claudine Longet, and it gives us a chorus that leaves us sighing inconsolably.

The B-side skips right past the prettiest parts of love and goes straight for the “pricklier” songs. It opens with “Why’s She Making Those Eyes At You?” an agile song that could perfectly be the music to a choreography between Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens, who are trying to seduce Diana Ross to the rhythm of THE COUNTOURS. “Jeremy” would be one of the songs the THE SCHOOL’s Liz would happily include in her repertoire, with dreamy vocal lines that THE DIXIE CUPS would adore, and it narrates those disputes that always happen in relationships. “See You Again” jumps into the rhythm of Northern Soul and Joe Moore uses the song to write a new treaty about love, the beauty of its birth, the doubts that grow with it, and the bitterness of its end, accompanied only by a harmonica that leaves a layer of strange melancholy over such a light song. “Pretty Lies” closes this Mini-LP, about the deceits that look for a way to avoid the pain, part castanets and part the inevitable trace of “Be My Baby” between tango steps: a song that Stuart Staples of TINDERSTICKS would undoubtedly include on the soundtrack of his life.