The Town That Cursed Your Name/Limited Pastel Green Vinyl

Description

References: Sarah Records, Even As We Speak, The Field Mice, Blue Boy, The Clientele, early Belle & Sebastian. It's normal to play outside of time. Music plays with time. Or perhaps the songs reflect that time always plays with us. The world of a song seizes us like an eternity in which we can get lost, with its repetitions and variations, but ultimately, like everything else, it has a beginning and an end. While 2022's Summer at Land's End collection was a gentler, more left-leaning world, The Town That Cursed Your Name is heavier, deeper. Lyrically, Donaldson embraces the seriousness of his heroes Paul Westerberg and Grant McLennan. Sonically, late-80s college rock is filtered through lo-fi bands like East River Pipe and the 'House of Tomorrow' era of Magnetic Fields. Like the images that accompany his albums – where flowers and residential street scenes are pushed to the extreme by color – Donaldson's songs are both dazzling and garish, beautiful and heavy, much like a musician's life in San Francisco. In the liner notes, Donaldson dedicates this record "to everyone who tried to start a band in the Bay Area." Many people will smile when they hear its title, "It's Too Late For An Early Grave."