You can’t talk about Glenn Donaldson without talking about San Francisco—or, rather, you can’t talk about San Francisco without talking about Glenn Donaldson. The man is a veritable legend of the city’s independent music scene, applying his despondent purrs and foggy Gretsch strums to countless under-the-radar projects, such as Skygreen Leopards, FWY!, and The Knit Separates—to name, like, 5% of them. Donaldson’s latest accomplishment is Unwishing Well, the seventh full-length album from his long-running project The Reds, Pinks and Purples, a band inspired by the flora and architecture of his Inner Richmond neighborhood as much as by its residents.
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD)
“The band happened by accident because the musicians I met literally lived two blocks away,” Donaldson recounts from his home studio. Even though he opts for a solitary writing and recording process, Donaldson has an entourage of “legitimately better musicians” who take his “rinky-dink songs and turn them into, like, stadium rock” for live shows. “We just started having a neighborhood band, which was really lovely,” he continues, “but I was like, what is this band about? It’s about the neighborhood. And once I had that totally dumb, obvious revelation, I started writing all the songs on a very micro level—things that I experienced in San Francisco, stories that I imagine people are going through in the neighborhood. It gave me some focus.”
Compulsion might be a more appropriate word, however, as Donaldson’s dreamy pop conveyor belt produces albums on top of EPs on top of B-sides with unceasing regularity. The Bandcamp release count currently stands at 21. “I had been compiling random songs I had posted on Bandcamp and forming them into albums,” he says of his typically sporadic, short-attention-span-friendly process. “But the record label in the UK, Tough Love, wanted to have an album that was totally new material, that no one had heard, so it kind of disrupted my normal process of continually making music. [Historically,] I didn’t think about it. I just put it up on Bandcamp and let it flow. But with [Unwishing Well], I probably spent too much time thinking about it. This is the first one I really considered and sat with for months.”
The result of this additional rumination is the most wide-ranging RPP album, one that deals with the death of Donaldson’s father but is simultaneously more outward-facing than his previous material. For instance, the opening track orbits the not-rhetorical question, “What’s Going on with Ordinary People?” It’s a song with which Donaldson wanted to “celebrate the quirks of humanity but also express some empathy with all the craziness and all the people acting out—in restaurants, on airplanes, over politics.”
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD)
Likewise swerving his usual introspection, lead single “Your Worst Song is Your Greatest Hit” satirizes a shallow, idiosyncratic music industry and allows Donaldson to work through his bemusement at “a person like me, making music in their bedroom, and not being particularly young or hip, and seeing how it can reach all these people.” However, at the same time, he clarifies, “I don’t really write songs with a specific agenda—I just kind of put myself in this feeling and then create a little story, and sometimes the story can take different perspectives, or sometimes it can be just poetry.” Accordingly, “Faith in Daydreaming Youth” is less a song than an impressionistic soundscape, with watery guitar loops and fragmented poetry. He suggests that the piece is the most abstract thing he’s ever released under the RPP umbrella.
When it comes to his Bandcamp picks, Donaldson consumes like he creates: he has one foot in far-flung exploration and one foot at home, Bay Area legends such as American Music Club alongside off-center psych sounds from Bristol band Quade, up-to-the-minute post-punk alongside Japanese musique concrète. It’s no surprise that Donaldson is a reliable tastemaker, and his picks elucidate Bandcamp’s cobwebbed corners as well as outlining The Reds, Pinks and Purples’ DNA.
Here’s what Glenn Donaldson is listening to on Bandcamp.
American Music Club
Engine
“I relate to the music of AMC more than any other classic San Francisco act. They helped invent ‘slowcore’ way back in 1985, though I prefer the term ‘sadcore,’ which is probably out of fashion. This is their second album, from 1987, and it has a strong torch-song element, which makes it different from, say, Codeine. At his best, main songwriter Mark Eitzel is the equal of anyone you can name.”
Vulture Feather
Liminal Fields
Vinyl LP
“This is an extremely focused post-something rock trio from the woods up north somewhere. I like them so much that I booked them a San Francisco show, so I could rock out to them IRL. Take the spartan repetition of Lungfish and the cryptic vocal acrobatics of early Shudder to Think, and add some sparkling ‘80s post-punk chime to it. I got the vinyl and played it too much.”
SUCKER
Seein’ God
7" Vinyl
“Here’s a new band I know nothing about, but they are from Oakland and have a fuzzy demo and a killer new single. They are referencing an alternate-history college radio sound, but they keep intact the essential cynicism and noise that seem to be missing from viral bubble grunge. I am looking forward to seeing them live.”
Quade
Nacre
Vinyl LP
“Quade is a current Bristol, England band. That city is best known (to me) for its legacy of post-rock/post-folk from the likes of Movietone and Flying Saucer Attack, and this connects with that, as well as referencing the greatest UK label of the ‘90s: Too Pure Records—home of Moonshake, Stereolab, Long Fin Killie, etc. This is flowing, eclectic, even psychedelic stuff.”
Love Chants
At Real Bad Music
“I have no idea if Australia’s Love Chants are still active, playing their meandering, minimal guitar jams with mumbling vocals. I hope they are still at it, in a sad basement somewhere, while shady people are indifferent upstairs, drinking out of a nearly empty keg. Perhaps there are, at this moment, two middle-aged record collectors watching them intently from the shadows, quietly freaking out about how they are the perfect blend of Chair Beside a Window-era Jandek and Flies Inside the Sun.”
DTR
Everything’s Gonna Be Alright
“Is this a Tori Kudo project? It could be something he would throw together in a matter of hours, or it sounds like early VU demos with Japanese-language broadcasts in place of Lou Reed. I admire the zero-effort cover art and low-budget smartphone-quality recording.”
