News

A Parting Gift From The Loves

• 16th Feb 2011

I'll try not to get too emotional as I write this. Time for the hankies and the sad violin music. Today is the last EVER day that The Loves will exist. Sniff! Yesterday saw them being sent off with much affection, adulation and adoration at their last ever gig at London's The Lexington, rounding off a full day of bands old and new, hand picked by The Loves (including Comet Gain, The School and The Lovely Eggs). Today, Valentine's Day 2011 marks the end of their ten year stint, with Simon Love at the helm with a revolving door of guests, band members and go-go dancers. His creativity, humour and knack for writing catchy pop songs will be sorely missed.

To bow out, The Loves leave us with a special Valentine's Day download EP of covers as a farewell gift as well as offering the album track “It's… The End of The World” as a free download along with an emotional final video made, as always, as a 'feature' by Simon Love.

THE LOVES – VALENTINE'S DAY DOWNLOAD – The Loves “… Love You Too”

This can be downloaded here:
link

Here's a track list:
It's… The End Of The World
Guess I'm Falling In Love (The Velvet Underground)
Velvet Underground (Jonathan Richman and The Modern Lovers)
Bat Macumba (Os Mutantes)
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (Elton John)
My Life Is Starting Over Again (Daniel Johnston)

Here's the video for The Loves “It's… The End Of The World”: link

The Loves indeed do Love You. We Love You. We hope to spread the Love. Show the Loves some Love! Excuse me while I just… sob… ahem… sob…

link

Revolver by The Beatles, Nevermind The Bollocks Here’s The Sex Pistols and Oasis’ 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.

This, The Love’s final LP, was recorded at Soup Studios underneath East London’s Duke Of Uke shop, as were their last two albums Technicolour and Three. Unlike the last two LPs, however, …Love You was mostly recorded live. It was mixed and mastered by Rob Jones of The Voluntary Butler Scheme fame and because of his fingers, the album is as shiny a pop record you will hear this year (… made on this budget, anyway!).

Rejected LP titles included “So Long Fuckers”, “What?” and “The Pains Of Being Poor Through Art”

Lead single “December Boy” (which was released as a double A sided single with “Bubblegum” which does exactly what it’s title suggests) has real life violins on it and a wall of backing vocals from Emma Hall of the Pocketbooks former Love (now head of The School) Liz Hunt with whom Simon wrote the stomping number, “That Boy Is Mine”.

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 complete with caterwauling “singing”, nasal backing vocals and incessant handclaps.

“O! My Gawd” features Mindy from the American group Still Flyin’ on vocals in what is The Loves version of hip-hop – you’ve been warned. The debt to Tom-Tom Club is acknowledged in the backing vocals.

“I Lost My Doll To Rock’n’Roll” is the only song not to be recorded at Soup, as any version attempted could not capture the feeling of Simon’s original 8-track demo. He now wishes he had re-recorded it as a full band song.

The Loves go Led Zeppelin (sort of) on “King Kong Blues” with squally guitars & a “wep-weh-dow” guitar lick much loved by people who love Jimi Hendrix (Of which Simon Love is not one).

Doug Yule from The Velvet Underground is the voice of Jesus’ answer-phone on “It’s…The End Of The World” another song (like opener “WTF? or How I Realised I’d Wasted My Life”) about coming to terms with the fact that you’ll never amount to anything and is based on Simon’s one and only acid experience; “I thought when I took it I’d get some sort of cosmic answer but instead I got depressed and I thought I’d cut my hair because I found a pair of scissors with a single strand of hair next to them,” says the singing idiot. 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”, a song Simon first heard late one Sunday night on BBC 7 as he was drifting off to sleep and it serves as a short pick-me-up after the depressing futility of “It’s…The End Of The World”

This is The Loves’ final LP because…just because.