THE BIG PINK’S NEW ALBUM IS EAR CANDY POP FOR GROWN UPS

Some bands seem to be forever cast in the shadow of their early records, especially if they had hits. On The Art of Longevity I often ask guests how they feel now about being in that place - permanently measured against their 15 minutes of fame. Most are, graciously, grateful. Or at least philosophical, if a little jaded. I can imagine that Robbie Furze of The Big Pink is on the philosophical-jaded end of the spectrum. The Big Pink’s early ‘hit’ was Dominos (11m streams), probably a song Robbie would be happy to forget. But the song continues to be an anchor reference for anything the band has done since. 

And whoops, I did it again! I do have a point to make though and it’s this - why does radio not stick with such bands over time - even if and when, as in Big Pink’s case - they’ve been gone for a decade? If radio programmers kept abreast of things they would realise that most bands do get better, so why not play their later, superior work?

Well bless Steve Lamacq for spinning The Big Pink’s single Rage, sometime before the band released the new album. Rage is a cracking tune, like everything else on The Big Pink’s ‘homecoming record’. The Love That’s Ours is indeed a cracking pop album. I’m guessing that you may have overlooked it but may I humbly suggest you give it a spin (preferably applying my usual 3-plays rule). From start to finish the album is quality - great songs done with a poppy, ‘ear-candy’ style production that works especially well when crackling through your headphones. 

Opener How Far We’ve Come sets the tone perfectly, with its swooning chorus beginning, enough to burn your ears from the get go. It’s four minutes of pop perfection. In the outro vocal I recognise a hint of Duran Duran’s 90s comeback hit ‘Ordinary World’ - no bad thing and indeed, I feel like those elder statesmen of British pop would be more than happy to have cooked-up many of the tunes on this record. 

A comeback hit for The Big Pink would be nice - there is no lack of candidates on that score - try Rage, or Love Spins On Its Axis (both released as ‘singles’ as it happens). Indeed, the album has the feel of a throwback to those classic pop albums of the 80s that contained half a dozen chart singles. How times have changed. Taylor Swift occupying all 10 of the Billboard top 10 isn’t quite what I’m talking about here!

As you listen through The Love That’s Ours, it’s tempting to play ‘spot the references’, crammed such as the album is with little soundalikes. Big Pink are often compared with the shoegaze scene or the earlier 80s angsty pop of say, Psychedelic Furs, but both those are light touches here. Indeed, The Big Pink’s music time machine is programmed to travel back & forth way beyond those references. I’m Not Away To Stay Away borrows blue-eyed soul from Hall & Oates while Angels’ chorus owes something to Love Affair’s 1968 smash ‘Everlasting Love’. Rage meanwhile, sounds like the current repertoire of Coldplay, but better. Among the catchy pop, tracks such as Outside In and Murder break up proceedings with something more ‘alternative 80s’ - Thomson Twins or OMD you could say - again, compliments all round. For all the bands currently taking a leaf out of classic 80s pop, this is exemplary stuff. 

Brett Andersen of Suede recently told me about his ‘track number 7’ theory…that albums needed to slot in a big song just over the half-way mark, to keep the listener interested. And so it proves here with the album’s centrepiece (to my ears) Safe and Sound. A beautiful pop ballad, this song is among the year’s best for me, with a lovely affecting vocal by Robbie - it’s a modern classic of the sort we should expect to hear on drivetime radio (in a parallel universe in which radio actually does its job properly). Just in case you might be thinking that the Big Pink are in some way obscure or occupying a niche (which band isn’t these days), it’s worth noting that the band recently played the song on James Corden’s Late Late Show. A more mainstream media slot in pop you will not find. 

This album, in one way or another, is over a decade in the making. Sort of. After their initial successes, the original line-up of the Big Pink - Robbie and Milo Cordell - went their separate ways, with Furze relocating to LA:

“I fell into DJing in Los Angeles. London was on a bit of a downer at the time, especially if you were in a rock band, and there seemed to be a lot of English musicians moving to LA - it was the place to be. A friend of mine was opening a bar in Silverlake called Tenants of the Trees and it felt like the beginning of a movement. It had the beautiful models, the token celebs, the bands I love... There I was with Black Motorcycle Club and Queens of the Stone Age, and I was Robbie from the Big Pink, DJing on Tuesday nights. It was fun."

It certainly sounds like fun, and there is plenty of that experience collated into Robbie’s songwriting for this record. Another thing of note too, are the collaborations at work on The Love That’s Ours. Robbie is co-writing with some well-known songwriters here, including Jamie T (Love Spins), Raveonettes’ Ryn Weaver (Rage) and on the album’s wonderfully uplifting closer Lucky One, Ed Harcourt. 

Those collabs undoubtedly add depth to the quality of the individual songs here, but the production and sequencing help make the album a consistently entertaining end-to-end listen. Perhaps the best test of this record's metal is that it gets better with repeated listens - even addictive to some extent - that ear candy production will work its magic on you. But it's those life affirming songs that give the album a quiet magnificence. 

It’s encouraging to hear that Furze is now suitably motivated to make more music on the back of his experience on this record. While it would be true to say the world may not have been exactly desperate for new music from his band, the thought of waiting another dozen years to get your ears around pop music as good as this seems unnecessary.