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One-Two-Three
My band The Loves have got a new single out next week on Fortuna Pop called "One-Two-Three". Seeing as it won't get reviewed on here here are some reviews from other places...
One has to wonder why the likes of The Loves are not huge popstars when the music industry falls over themselves to give us the download today gone tomorrow pop stars fresh from the conveyor belt world of reality tv. Capitalism eh?
The Loves have moved away from their indie and jangle pop beginnings highlighted on 2004's debut album and have moved on to a more psychedelic inspired sound summed up on the Sunday Times CD of the week album Technicolor. One-Two-Three sees The Loves going retro with this glam rock inspired floor stomper complete with the catchiest chorus this side of planet Mars. You will be clapping along before you know it! If T-Rex were on the C86 tape this is what they would have sounded like.
The other tracks include a live reworking of 2004's Chelsea Girl, a vicious and nasty tale of revenge on When I Get My Gun and a cover of Jonathan Richman's Pablo Picasso. Whilst they are all great tracks in their own right they all fail when held up against the splendour of the feel good lead track. Buy!
One-Two-Three is due out on 22 October 2007 via Fortuna Pop.
www.indie-mp3.co.uk/2007/10/loves-one-two-three.html
The Loves are part Monkees and part Os Mutantes but for ‘One-Two-Three’ they’re T-Rex. It’s a stupid/genius gram rock stomper with girl-group harmonies, an air-punching chorus and a sleezy groove so unashamedly retro it ought to come with free six-inch platform boots and a feather boa. Other songs on this excellent EP are the bittersweet ‘Chelsea Girl (2007)’, a version of a song from their 2004 debut album with much better singing from Jenna while ‘When I Get My Gun’ is a Dylanish revenge fantasy with full-on Velvet Underground blow out at the end. The EP finishes with the Loves’ glorious garage-punk version of ‘Pablo Picasso’, awash with groaning keyboards good enough to draw comparison with the Music Machine or the Seeds. However, there’s no disguising the fact that “asshole” sounds tougher in an accent from Boston Bay, not Cardiff Bay.
Try all the ECT you want, hapless punter. Attack your cerebral cortex with shards of broken glass if you must. But by cannily utilising the Jackson 5 hypothesis – that one-two-threes stick in your brain as easily as ABC – Simon Love has ensured there’s nothing in the entire spectrum of medical science that’ll get this one out of your head.
A football-chant simple glam-rock stomper so catchy it makes Rhianna’s 'Umbrella' sound like free jazz performed on out-of-tune instruments by tone-deaf chimpanzees. This one will be bouncing around your frontal lobes long after you’ve been admitted to the Sunset Home for Elderly Indie Popsters.
It sits alongside the country-punkish revenge fantasy 'When I Get My Gun', a revved-up cover of Jonathan Richman’s proto-punk classic, 'Pablo Picasso', and a chiming live version of 'Chelsea Girl', taken from the band’s first album, 'Love'.
Like a raucous family reunion in EP format, the songs are all different but clearly share the same DNA – melody in spades, spiced with punk rock aggression, and bristling with teenage energy.
“My favourite album is the Velvet Underground’s 'Loaded' because all the songs sound so different to each other. We try to do that and I think that’s why people don’t understand us; we haven’t got an overall sound,” explained Simon Love recently.
Prepare to carry on being misunderstood, Loves. And, on this showing, long may it continue.
www.pennyblackmusic.co.uk
Few bands have done the indie-pop thing so well and so literally in recent years, with such knowing humour and melodic mischief, and The Loves are seemingly getting better and better at it. This single sees them going deeper and deeper into literal pop sounds, and the results are fantastic.
Opening track here, One-Two-Three, rolls in pop heaven with irresistible call and response vocals and chugging guitars, and the B-sides are equally ace. In Chelsea Girl, Simon Love's co-singer Jenna belts out the lines with the sultry emotion of a lost girl-group chanteuse, all teary-eyed, beatific and grand, while When I get My Gun and a cover of Jonathan Richman's Pablo Picasso are so fitting of the band, quaintly fun-filled, sparklingly musical and smilingly epic.
The Loves are one of pop's best long-term secrets, and long may they continue to reign in the underground desert. Judging by these sounds, there's no more romantic place.
- Neil Jones
Mixing T Rex and Johnny B Goode, the Loves have cooked up the feel good song of the year. A chorus so good that you'll be singing before you've even heard the song "I love you/ You love me/ we'll be together/ One-Two-Three ugh-huh-huh!!"
The release also sees another reworking of a song from their debut Track and Field album, the simply titled "Love". It's Chelsea Girl this time that gets the make over, whereas last time the lovely aching, slow She'll Break Your Heart was sped up into a French Pop cover of the Velvet Underground, here they do the opposite, dragging it out, almost like Low if they were hippies with flowers in their hair, one to sing along to broken hearted and sat in the rain.
http://www.fatandconfused.blogspot.com/
A heady brew of T-Rex swagger, Super Fury's oddness and the jubilant pop-mindedness of The Zutons at their sweetest - The Loves certainly love the 60's & 70's, but this aint no Archies pastiche people - perfect for those missing a little ram-a-lama-ding-dong in their lives.
http://www.subba-cultcha.com/singles.php
Either I'm in a far better mood or The Loves have improved considerably. Whichever it is, the 'One-Two-Three EP' shows a marked improvement on their recent album. The title track is a piece of fine bubblegum pop, a live version of their own 'Chelsea Girl' evokes the spirit of Nico and the Velvets magnificently, 'When I Get My Gun' is filled with bile and finally Jonathan Richman's 'Pablo Picasso' is as if reinterpreted by Mark E. Smith.
http://www.russellsreviews.co.uk/
The long over due return to these pages of Cardiff cuties the Loves with not three (as the title suggests) but four prime servings of perky pop. Title cut 'one-two-three' is so unashamedly steeped in all glam references it comes adorned with glitter, big hair and even bigger boots (shiny ones mind you with stars on). In the wrong hands this could have gone teen tat cheesy thankfully instead it's a delirious dandy of a ditty that manages to shoehorn nods aplenty to Suzi Q, the Rubettes and most curiously the Beach Boys in surf mode and 'end of the century' era Ramones (I kid you not) while wiring into the mutant matrix some nifty touches of 50's bubblegum pop tendered with the essence of Spector while hoodwinking a spot of acutely faux Bolan-esque boogie while playfully cross fusing Glitters 'I love you love me' with the Bay City Rollers 'bye bye baby'. Its about as much fun you can have being all early 70's retro without suffering vertigo. 'Chelsea Girl' recorded live last year at St Andy's Church in Northern Quebec, stripped of the usual full on pop adornments this resonating fragile Velvet-esque finds itself equipped with a superbly statuesque demeanour that shimmers and sparkles amid tenderly crafted reposed 60's motifs. Described by the attending press release as Simon Love's 'nasty song of hatred and avengement' hey we've all been there though some of us are still brandishing the torch like a club with spikes - 'when I get my gun' is a tongue in cheek knockabout foot tapping acoustic babe that for the best part sounds like the Modern Lovers on chill pills until the final minute when all hell breaks loose are things get a little fried to say the least which is strange considering last cut of the set features a faithful re-tread of Jonathan Richman's (him of the Modern Lovers - well spooky) 'pablo Picasso' which is more than can be said for Dame Dave's ill conceived rehash fro m a year or three ago. Buy on sight. www.fortunapop.com
http://www.losingtoday.com