Loves - Just Like Bobby D

  by Gary Wollen

published: 9 / 5 / 2002

Label: Track And Field
Format: 7"

intro

"Audacious coalition of anything cool, sixties and underground" from former Inspiral Carpets' frontman Tom Hingley's new band, the Loves

This must be the illusive yet utterly ingenuous, thin, wild, mercury sound that the great man alluded to in interviews. The bass line may well be an old fashioned “sample” maybe from the Velvet Underground's 'European Son' but this is no pastiche or pale imitation of a sound long since gone. It merely acts as an indicator from which direction the band is coming from as much as a signpost to where they are heading. The guitars growl and howl and the drums kick in like a juggernaut pulling out of an overnight motorway service station. I guess that’s the idea. This song delights in its audacious coalition of anything cool, sixties and underground. It sounds as if everything is in one melting pot, yet surprisingly it avoids sounding like any of them. Instead it pushs, pulls, manipulates the boundaries of how far the sixties can be transplanted to the new century, but (and here’s the trick) it is not done in a detrimental, rose-tinted or heavy-handed way. The song speeds along like an exhilarating ride on Bobby’s Triumph. In fact, the sound of a motorcycle engine does appear on the record but its sounds more like the throaty roar from the Shangri-Las classic 'Leader of the Pack', but in the words of Eddie Corcoran “Who cares?” Trying to pin down something so exciting, charged and perfectly formed, as this would be self defeating as well as pointless. Just turn on, tune in and don’t drop out. This is the perfect song for driving fast as the car engine effortlessly tunes itself in to the organ sound, which is gaudy, garish and as unsophisticated as anything you will hear. The song is rawer and rougher for my money than The Strokes and The Hives put together. There I think is both the allure because I feel this is a big, bold, unpretentious rousing single. I love the Loves, I love the total refusal on their part to apparently either acknowledge or accommodate subtlety and sophistication, the more robust and unskilled the better. I loved their last single 'Boom-a-bang-bang-bang' and it would be a crime if this song… oh stuff this! It really doesn’t need writing about; I’m off to play it again.

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