Sold Date: October 7, 2021
Start Date: June 30, 2021
Final Price: £15.63 (GBP)
Seller Feedback: 41523
Buyer Feedback: 78

From the many musical lives of artist Donaldson emerges The Reds, Pinks and Purples, a project that sifts out the purest elements of pop music and in the process chronicles the point of view of an assiduous San Francisco-based songwriter. The Reds, Pinks and Purples’ third album, called Uncommon Weather, is both an elusive portrait of San Francisco during one of its fluctuations as an untenable place for musicians and artists and also a self-portrait, however inverted, of a songwriter who has dispatched another treasured collection of timeless sounding DIY-pop songs. How The Reds, Pinks and Purples arrived here is a story with many roots, the most consequential of which is perhaps the musical aftermath of his earlier band, The Art Museums, whose brief tenure in the late ’00s coincided with an explosive period of the Bay Area rock scene and was followed by a hermetic musical period of Donaldson’s. Disenchanted with the dissolution of his band, Donaldson averted the DIY-pop sound with an instrumental, conceptual project called FWY! but meanwhile started a habitual songwriting practice, sharing nascent songs with friends in an email exchange. In 2013–2014, The Reds, Pinks and Purples took shape as the moniker for Glenn’s most direct expressions in the DIY-pop mode, enabled by this new disciplined output. Preceding the release of Uncommon Weather was the Reds, Pinks and Purples’ 2nd album, one of the record buying joys of 2020, You Might Be Happy Someday, and, earlier, their first proper full length Anxiety Art, a title that might nod to the classic Television Personalities song “Anxiety Block.” Donaldson’s music continuously reckons with the influence of Dan Treacy, whose own forays into drum-machines, echo, and reverb in the early 1990s is an important reference point for The Reds, Pinks and Purples’ musical template. Paul Weller, Robert Smith, and Sarah Records also come to mind. But, as important, Donaldson sees his projects as visual expressions too, often blurring the lines of records and physical art objects. 1. Don’t Ever Pray In the Church On My Street 2. I Hope I Never Fall In Love 3. The Biggest Fan 4. Uncommon Weather 5. A Kick in the Face (That’s Life) 6. I Wouldn’t Die for Anyone 7. I’m Sorry About Your Life 8. The Record Player and the Damage Done 9. Pictures of the World 10. Life at Parties 11. Sing Red Roses for Me 12. The Songs You Used to Write 13. Sympathetic