The Proctors - Summer Lane CD
$5.00 - $12.00
The Proctors - Summer Lane CD
$5.00 - $12.00
*** Japanese Edition CD with OBI & Insert
1. These Ember Days
2. Distant Echoes
3. My Youth
4. Two Summers
5. Sunlight Satin
6. Moon Song
7. Baby Blue
8. Wish Your Days Away
9. Live Forever
10. Shooting Star
11. Underwater
12. Not So Far Away
13. A Part I Never Knew Existed
14. Be An Angel
15. hidden bonus track
16. hidden bonus track
The Great Lost Jangle-Pop Album
As summer begins to imperceptibly fade to Autumn, the ever reliable Sunday Records bring us the perfect soundtrack.
Summer Lane is jangle-pop buried treasure, mostly recorded between 1993 and 1997 for the never released Joy of Spring album, it includes songs sensitively produced by the great Pete Williams of Dexys and is titled in memory of the street in Birmingham where the band lived.
The warm melancholy of Sunlight Satin is the perfect illustration of what makes the Proctors so effective, male and female voices intertwine with bittersweet symmetry over a bed of gently roughed up fuzz guitar and leave us with three minutes eighteen seconds of pop perfection.
A Part I Never Knew Existed opens with a rush of guitar and stirring harmonica, recalling some lost nugget from one of the great Liverpool bands of the early 80s, it feels like the archetypal, should have been hit from an alternate reality.
The rocking Shooting Star brings racing guitars to the fore and is driven at speed by an early Mary Chain style backbeat, plangent harmonies drawing the song to a close.
Baby Blue is pure jangle heaven, while These Ember Days shimmies past on a syncopated rhythm that recalls early Brilliant Corners, before shifting gear and fading out via an elegiac trumpet part.
It's a consistently strong set of songs that effortlessly echo down the years, sounding as at home now as they would have done twenty-five years ago.
Once again Sunday Records are providing succour in troubled times, order without hesitation.
- by Simon Heavisides
