Posted on April 20, 2010 - by Mark Zonda

The Quite Life of Sad Lovers and Giants

“They seem tough / but it’s just a bluff” ~ from Cowboys

There’s something haunting in the music of Sad Lovers and Giants. There’s absolutely no groove on the perfect  metronomic 3/4 drumming of Nigel Pollard. On twelve albums Tony McGuinness never has a variation on his chours effected arpeggios, always perfectly balanced with Ian Gibson bass lines, spinning on perfect layers Grace is always so thifty to visit with his voice. Sad Lovers and Giant music, very resempling of The Cure and Cranes, never reaches the expressive impact of other contemporary and more famous bands, choosing a colder and distant new romantic aesthetic and rich and fantasy lyrics resembling Marillion and early Genesis.

Being lucky enough to be noticed and promoted by John Peel even before recording anything, the band has always been (mistaken in my opinion anot to be) compared to a sedated version of Pink Floyd. (I mean… no epic solos, no dumb lyrics, where’s the psycadelia?)

Their musical adventure begins with “Epic Garden Music” (Midnight Music, 1982) with Tristan Garel-Funk on guitar, Cliff Silver on second bass, David Wood, Juliet Sainsbury and Marco Müllner on keyboards besides nowadays members. This set of the band would have last two albums, with no relevant differences on their sound at all. “Epic Garden Music” is opened by the catchy “Immagination”, a great programmatic song being quite a manifesto of moods and sounds to come. The album is really long, expecially for those days stanards. Everybody at their first songwriginexperience would have been able to write and come up with a song like “When I See You”, and keyboard is quite something to be ashamed of. Stil we’ve got a song, and other songs like “Lope” can surely hook you to the darkest side of pop, not being so fare on what Duran Duran was about to attempt not so later in time. Being “Clint” 100% cure if not for that cheap keyboard, “Cloud 9″ finally show us something The Durutti Column would have listened without Giants losing their pride. The album closes with the unfailing sound of “Far from the Sea”, possibly the most important song of the album, with it’s bamboozling waltz tempo right where everybody would have expected a chour.

After the departure of some original members and a couple of albums, the band releases “The Mirror Test” on 1987 (Midnight Music), maybe their most brilliant album. The opening of “Ours To Kill” sees (and maybe too late) influences from Alan Parson Projects and New Order, adding dynamics and new sounds to SLAG cilque. “The Outsider” guitar arpeggio on Nigle 1/4 sticks are quite hypnotic, and the metamorphosis on Peter Gabriel’s Genesis is quite complete, being once again able to surprise with a clever arrangement, never letting down with the exception of the same dull keyboards. “Summer And Smoke” carries on in the same direction, being clever enough to substitute a decent piano to the synth. “Return To Clocktower Lodge” is just my favorite Sad Lovers and Giants song, blaming it all to their pre-emo lyrics on fantasy psyche-scenario. It’s the return to the emtiness of our small ordinary lives after having running around the last dream with no success at all.

Pros and cons of the band are finally captured by the live “La Dolce Vita”, showing the band for what it was and what’s still portraying: an honest team of musicians true to their vision of music offering a clear plastic sounds that’s unesplicably still loved in Italy, France and Greece. The band keeps on a long and quiet way unwilling or unable to raise any buzz at all. Mark Burgess and Robin Guthrie can keep on sneezing their dream undisturbed.

Sad Lovers And Giants – “Alice (Isn’t Playing)”

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