The Reds, Pinks & Purples

Track	Album
Last Summer In A Rented Room	You Might Be Happy Some Day
Slow Torture Of The Hourly Wage	Slow Torture Of The Hourly Wage EP
The Record Player And The Damage Done	Uncommon Weather
Break Up The Band	The Town That Cursed Your Name
Don’t Come Home Too Soon	Summer At Land’s End
Let’s Pretend We’re Not In Love	Everything Holy (BBC Radio Session)
Best Sides	Unloveable Losers EP
Marty As A Youth	Everything You Ever Loved EP
Holiday Cheer	Mountain Lake Park
Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel …	Ocean Blvd single

I came across The Reds, Pinks and Purples late in 2020. We were in the midst of the pandemic. Our world had become smaller, a year of cancelled plans and distant, faltering friendships. Last Summer In A Rented Room captured that mood perfectly. Lyrics about frustration that life may be passing you by, but unable do anything about it. In our locked down world, it struck a chord.

We had the bitter taste of a dream that ends too soon,
Still we endure the indignity of another summer in a rented room

This is a perfect example of a Reds, Pinks and Purples song – jangly indie pop melodies with wistful melancholic lyrics. Echoes of 80s indie, Sarah Records – and certainly the Smiths. It is a sound that was at once comfortingly familiar, but not stale pastiche, and very much its own thing. Through the album You Might Be Happy Some Day, the Reds, Pinks and Purples quickly become my favourite current act.

The Reds, Pinks and Purples is not really a group as such, but rather the alias for San Francisco-based songwriter and musician Glenn Donaldson with other musicians drafted in as needed on certain songs and on tour. Donaldson is a ridiculously prolific songwriter. Since creating the Reds, Pinks and Purples in 2018, he has released 11 albums, a compilation album, various digital EPs, a BBC live session. I was going to make a joke about needing to write this list quickly before he released any more records but, as it happens, I’ve delayed and dithered so much since I first suggested I’d write this piece that another three RPP albums have come along.

That is a huge output in a short space of time and it has made picking the next nine songs difficult. Rather than taking a chronological approach, instead I’ve picked some favourites that cover typical Reds, Pinks and Purples’ themes, along with a few interesting outliers.

DISILLUSIONMENT WITH THE MUSIC INDUSTRY

Set against a backdrop of San Francisco’s Inner Richmond suburb, unfulfilled ambitions and failed musical projects are topics that Donaldson returns to repeatedly. This is a far cry from the San Francsico of the Summer of Love. It is a city where the tech bros have moved in and musicians are being priced out, struggling to make ends meet. Nowhere is it more heart wrenching than on Slow Torture Of The Hourly Wage. What about those childhood dreams, crushed by indie label pyramid schemes, sings Donaldson.

There’s no shortage of other RPP songs that take a swipe at the music business and the undeserving success of other musicians – The Songs You Used To Write, The World Doesn’t Need Another Band, Your Worst Song Is Your Greatest Hit to name a just a few. The Record Player And The Damage Done is from the third album Uncommon Weather. It is more than just a catchy play on the famous Neil Young song, it is a harsh rebuke of insincere musicians masquerading as saviours:

I don’t want to join your revolution so leave me alone
No spiritual journeys for me, I’ll stay home
Use your breakthrough for something worthwhile for once
And save the human race? Haven’t we suffered enough?

There’s a melancholic sound, but there is also a humour here and I’m back to thinking about Morrissey at his best.

There is plenty of choice for songs on this theme, and I was close to including several others (The Town That Cursed Your Name and I Only Ever Wanted To See You Fail in particular), but in the end I’ve gone with Break Up The Band, the closing track from the 2023 album The Town That Cursed Your Name. Break Up The Band is a torch song – Donaldson’s voice over a simple piano accompaniment for most of the track, a sad repeated refrain of “you have to break up the band”. But still there is a note of humour amongst the heartache.

A soap opera is winding down, no new tapes were found
They’re not still working out the sound
They drove the van into the ground

LOVE SONGS … OF SORTS

“A cynic is just a disappointed romantic”. Glenn Donaldson is the perfect embodiment of this phrase my A Level English teacher used that has stuck with me. And there is definitely romance to be found in RPPs records, but it is never straightforward.

Beginning with gently sung “la, la, las” and the repeated lines, “Still I miss you more” and “I need you more”, it would be easy to be sucked into thinking Don’t Come Home Too Soon is a standard lovesick ode. But then you remember the title and the entreaty to “don’t come home too soon” and realise this is no ordinary love song, Things take a darker turn as the song progresses:

That time you put your fist through the door
And you fell through a hole in the floor
I should have had them throw you in jail for a year
Or maybe more

Despite the delicate beauty of the music, this is about being unable to fully let go of loving the wrong person.

Don’t Come Home Too Soon is the opening track of Summer At Land’s End and things continue in a similar vein of doomed love with the second track on that record. However, rather than the album version of Let’s Pretend We’re Not In Love, I’ve picked the BBC Live Session version, which has a bit more of jangly to it than the album version, but that doesn’t detract from the utterly heartbreaking lyrics of a relationship coming to an end.

The air got colder in the room when you let me go
If you’re lonely and the world is afraid and the day puts a cloud in your way
What can you say when you run away

Closing out the romance section of this list is Best Sides from the appropriately named Unloveable Losers EP. It is a song about liking someone from afar, and that perhaps being for the best.

I never got your name or anything more
I got your best sides

It is on the jauntier side of RPP’s songs, with an insistent drum beat and lovely backing vocals by Morgan Alice, which is a large part of why I selected it.

NOW FOR SOMETHING (SLIGHTLY) DIFFERENT

The majority of RPP songs are either first-person confessionals or aimed directly at a second person. Marty As A Youth breaks that trend with a rare third-person narrative. It was originally on the 2022 EP Everything You Ever Loved but is now included on The Past Is A Garden I Never Fed compilation album. There are obvious lyrical comparisons with the Kinks’ Dedicated Follower Of Fashion.

White laces in his boots,
He would die for fashion, for fame or political action

Like Best Sides and The Record Player And The Damage Done, Marty As A Youth is another RPP song with a fantastically catchy chorus, here just the word “Marty” repeated.

With lyrics being a huge part of the appeal of the Reds, Pinks and Purples, it may be surprising that there are two RPP albums consisting entirely of instrumentals; Mountain Lake Park and Inner Richmond, both named after and inspired by parts of Donaldson’s San Francisco neighbourhood. I’ve chosen Holiday Cheer from Mountain Lake Park which I picked while walking along the clifftops in my own hometown, which seemed apt. Despite the gripes about poor housing and the fickle music scene that run through RPP songs, there is a genuine affection for his part of the city. The artwork for all RPP’s albums are photos taken by Donaldson around his neighbourhood of pastel painted houses and saturated images of plants and flowers. Beyond the songs, my love for the Reds, Pinks and Purples was sealed with this aesthetic. Each album is also issued in a limited edition coloured vinyl, a phrase that always has me reaching for my credit card.

Given how prolific a songwriter Glenn Donaldson is, my final choice may seem a little strange, but after Last Summer In A Rented Room, his cover of Lana Del Rey’s Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd was the pick I was most certain of. The title track from Del Rey’s 2023 album, it had only been out a month before Donaldson declared it an instant classic and released his version along with a cover of Me & Magdelana by the Monkees. If for some reason the original had passed you by, you would easily think this was a Reds, Pinks and Purples original. With its musical references (Hotel California and Harry Nilsson) and the pleading chorus, “When’s it gonna be my turn?”, it fits right at home with the Reds, Pinks and Purples own songs.

Album cover images top of page l-r:
The Town That Cursed Your Name / Uncommon Weather

Album cover images foot of page l-r:
You Might Be Happy Some Day / Summer At Land’s End

The Reds, Pinks & Purples Bandcamp

The Reds, Pinks & Purples on Fire Records

Failure of All Pop – Glenn Donaldson reviews site

Having written about topics ranging from baby car seats to housing policy, Justine Harvey now mainly writes about theatre buildings for work or her passion for outdoor swimming. Writing about music has made a nice change. She is on Bluesky and Instagram.

Justine’s other posts on this site include Beth Orton, Chemical Brothers, Little Barrie, Maxïmo Park, Primal Scream, Richmond Fontaine, Senseless Things, Wonder Stuff

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