The Reds, Pinks & Purples

★★★★ Summer At Land’s End TOUGH LOVE. CD/DL/LP

San Franciscan’s latest “depresso-pop” epistle.

Having adopted at least 15 aliases (including collaborations), Glenn Donaldson appears to have settled: Summer At Land’s End is his fourth solo Reds, Pinks & Purples album in three years. Prolific, yes, but also obsessive, as like an indie-pop Mark Rothko, Donaldson keeps refining what is essentially one song: breezily mid-tempo, droning (occasionally jangling) guitars and vocals, melodies and lyrics that bear heavy traces of The Smiths, and, to a lesser extent, Felt. Ironically, Reds, Pinks & Purples records are a forever autumn of muted yellows and browns; even the optimistically-named Pour The Light In masks desperation (“Without love, the rest is sorrow… the grave’s a veil over paradise/I’ve laid too long in”). Fortunately, Donaldson’s undeniable homage is exquisitely on the nose, one comforting swoon after another. There are days, now and for ever, when only songs like Let’s Pretend We’re Not In Love will do.