The Loves - ...Love You

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4...according to our Brian on Thu 20 Jan, 2011.

These Cardiff "kids", they're one of the most endearing celebratory bands I ever did see live, back in those crisp, innocent post-Millenium days when all there was was excitement & uncertainty. 3 guys & 2 girls making sham-a-lam-a psych pop, party glam & ditzy retro rock 'n' roll with a heady twist of rose-tinted indie naivity. Nice to see they're still rattling along, full of life & vigour. I've been told they've had as many members as The Fall so I know not who is still in the line-up from the days when I caught them? Theirs is the less serious side of 60s/70s revivalism so songs about bubblegum, STDs & King Kong are on the rider, songs that stomp, stagger, shamble & swing with a faintly delirious edge. Organ-led groovers rub shoulders with roughly hewn acoustic ballads & no-brainer school disco silliness. Generally coming across as a very likeable irreverent bunch, if you fancy some daft escapism then this CD has your name on it....

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ARTROCKER ALBUM OF THE MONTH. For Fans Of: The Beatles, The Stones, The Monkees, The Velvet Underground, Nuggets, Pocketbooks, The School, Still Flyin’. Revolver, Nevermind The Bollocks & Definitely Maybe - The Loves new LP ...Love You is shorter than all of these AND it's got a member of the Velvet Underground as the voice of Jesus on it! Formed in Cardiff in 2000, The Loves released their debut single on Radio One DJ Huw Stephens’ Boobytrap Singles Club in May 2001. Their second album on Technicolor was made Album Of The Week in The Sunday Times. The band recorded four Peel sessions and have recorded nearly as many again for Marc Riley on BBC 6music. This, The Love’s final LP before they call time on ten years at the top on Valentine’s Day 2011, was recorded at Soup Studios underneath East London’s Duke Of Uke shop, as were their last two albums Technicolour and Three. It was mixed and mastered by Rob Jones of The Voluntary Butler Scheme fame and is as shiny a pop record you will hear this year. Spector-ish lead single “December Boy” has a wall of backing vocals from Emma Hall of Pocketbooks and former Love (now head of The School) Liz Hunt. It was playlisted on BBC Radio 2 after winning Radcliffe & Maconie’s Track Of The Week. Elswehere Nathaniel Mayer’s 1966 soul single “I Want Love and Affection (Not The House Of Correction)” gets a Loves overhauling and made into a Merseybeat thing, while “O! My Gawd” features Mindy from the American group Still Flyin’ on vocals in what is The Loves version of hip-hop. The Stones-y ballad “I Lost My Doll To Rock’n’Roll” and the Led Zeppelin rock of “King Kong Blues” show a harder side to the band. Doug Yule from The Velvet Underground is the voice of Jesus’ answer-phone on “It’s…The End Of The World” to which producer Simon Trought contributes the Brian May harmony guitar solo at the end of the song. The LP closes with a cover of comedian Jake Yapp’s “The Very Stars Were Meant For Us”. This is The Loves’ final LP because…just because. 'A wide-eyed retro-chic indie-pop sextet that sound like The Monkees playing at being The Velvet Underground.' NME

Tracklisting:

1. WTF?
2. Bubblegum
3. O! My Gawd
4. I Lost My Doll To Rock & Roll
5. That Boy Is Mine
6. I Want Love & Affection (Not The House Of Correction)
7. King Kong Blues
8. December Boy
9. It's... The End Of The World
10. The Very Stars Were Meant For Us

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