Pastels & Tenniscoats Vivid Youth / About You (Domino)
3/5
By: Stephen Maughan
Mixing a legendary, but never quite succussfull, Scottish indie band with a hip Japanese experimental band from Tokyo may seem a slightly odd combination, but on the basis of this taster from their forthcoming collaboration, Two Sunsets, there could, just could, be some genius to mixing two apparently opposite sides of the musical spectre.
I say could, because ‘Vivid Youth’ sets the scene rather eloquently with its running heartbeat mini orchestra, hazy guitars, and soft vocals. Quite charming really. And then we have the Jesus and Mary Chain cover, ‘About You’. Hmmm. I'm all for interesting cover versions, but when after a few seconds of this I turned it off and ached to hear the original version to remind myself that it is actually a brilliant song, I knew something was wrong. What we have instead of an interesting version of a classic song, is something rather stale and flat. The vocals, if they don't send you to sleep, will certainly make your eyelids droop and the world will seem grey... Flip the record over though, and you're back in the light with the life of Vivid Youth. One good song, one bad song. This one could go either way...
Artists in this article: Pastels, Tenniscoats
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