The Reds, Pinks & Purples announces new LP, ‘The Town That Cursed Your Name,’ due on Slumberland in March

“It’s ok to play out of time”

Music toys with time. Or, maybe songs reflect back that time is always
toying with us. The world of a song takes hold of us like an eternity to
be lost in, with its repetitions and variations, but ultimately, as with
everything else, it has a start and then ends. And there’s no place to
lose time like San Francisco, where there are no seasons and all the
seasons occur within one day; where the fog takes the space where your
plans might have been; where there’s insane wealth all around and
everyone you know and love is hanging on at the periphery and making art
on any given Tuesday night. About Glenn Donaldson’s new record, The
Town That Cursed Your Name, he says, “I realized as I was piecing it
together that it’s a song cycle about trying to live while also feeling
called to make music.” It’s a double life when it works and a deeper
doubleness to mirror the Gemini nature of songs themselves. The Town
That Cursed Your Name contemplates this problem with wryness,
generosity, and the micro- and macroscopic realness Donaldson is known
and loved for.

Whereas the 2022 collection Summer at Land’s End was a softer, gauzier
world, The Town That Cursed Your Name is heavier, with fuzzed lines
running through. “Leave It All Behind” starts out with an amorphous
whine but quickly launches into something both supremely melodic and
buzzing at the edges. “Here Comes the Lunar Hand” is an impressionist
geometry that seems to capture the album’s themes without telling you
how. Lyrically, Donaldson embraces the earnestness of his heroes Paul
Westerberg and Grant McLennan. Sonically, late 80s college rock is
filtered through song-forward lo-fi acts like East River Pipe and House
of Tomorrow-era Magnetic Fields. Like the images that accompany his
releases – flowers and residential street scenes are pushed to the
breaking point with color – Donaldson’s songs are at the same time
dazzling and lurid, beautiful and burdened, not unlike life as a
musician around here.

In the liner notes, Donaldson dedicates the record “to everyone who ever
tried to start a band in the Bay.” There will be many knowing smiles at
his title “Too Late For An Early Grave.” But, this dedication captures
something else about the particular strain of sincerity that laces the
city water supply – the front man around here is on stage under those
lights evincing the fervor not of the pop star but of the biggest fan. -Karina Gill

TOUR DATES:

Thu 5/4 – Atlanta, GA – The Earl #
Fri 5/5 – Asheville, NC – The Grey Eagle #
Sat 5/6 – Carrboro, NC – Cat’s Cradle #
Sun 5/7 – Richmond, VA – Richmond Music Hall #
Mon 5/8 – Baltimore, MA – Ottobar #
Tue 5/9 – Hamden, CT – Space Ballroom #
Thu 5/11 – Burlington, VT – Higher Ground #
Fri 5/12 – Woodstock, NY – Levon Helm Studios #

# = w/ Destroyer (solo)