Brilliant Colors
“Introducing”
(Slumberland Records)
Being a sucker for quite o bit of twee pop, power pop, and girl group stuff I find myself really loving the whole C86 revival thing going on these days. I also feel I should mention that Slumberland Records is on a hot roll these days for releasing some really great records. I haven’t been disappointed in the last ten I purchased from them.
The new Brilliant Colors LP is no exception. I became intrigued with this band after hearing their previous two singles on “Make a Mess” and “Captured Tracks” but was a little reluctant to give them my super duper stamp of approval since the songs while good still left me wondering if they could bring the same kind of magic to the table on a full length album. I have to say that they succeeded and I found myself reaching for this record again and again. These three ladies are based in San Francisco and have a sound that you may compare to the Shop Assistants, Marine Girls, and other bands of that ilk. You get plenty of distorted guitar jangle and sweet icy vocal harmonies that are layered over very simplistic fuzzed out riffs. You get a sense that they draw influences all over the map from girl group sounds of the 60’s to post punk and wave of the late 70’s to mid 80’s. The Brilliant Colors also realize the attention span of their audience as the album clocks out at a little less than 25 minutes! Some people may be comparing this band to the Vivian Girls. I call bullshit on that as I don’t think they sound a thing alike aside from the genre of music their delving into. I’m even gonna go out on a limb and say that Brilliant Colors write better songs. If you don’t believe me then drop the needle down on the songs “English Cities”, “Mythic” and “Motherland”! If that doesn’t convert you then I feel bad for you… I really do.
