The Living Rainbow - A Winter Tale

Ah, A Winter Tale, just as the weather once again ruthlessly threatens to melt the plastic discs in our front window... The timing might be a little misaligned, but most all of everything else The Living Rainbow does feels astutely realised. INFOrmatiON!, the immaculately presented label The Living Rainbow's Tom Bryant has been operating as an outlet for a cluster of related acts since late 2020, appears to be conceived in the cross-pollinated image of both early Creation and Dan Treacy's Whaam! label. If the label's other flagship outfit Sanctuary of Praise are kinda like Mary Chain meets the Marble Staircase, then it's the otherside of the coin from which the Living Rainbow take most influence, namely the eternal fey majesty of TVP. Like with, say, Children Maybe Later, it's no simple genre exercise (and really, how many people have tried to do this kind of thing and got it horribly wrong? Most), these seven modestly recorded, mostly short songs are blushed with such a convincingly glum fog they might as well be kicking their heels traipsing around Oxford St in the rain in 1984. Monotone vocals, introverted lyricism, gloomily hopeful jangle combined like an inverted indiepop Goodnight Sweetheart: back then, but here and now. And so A Winter Tale in the burgeoning early summer is actually rather fitting, a beautifully charming reminder of the self-determining dream at the centre of DIY activity - reality can be your own invention.