Though the sound evolved, Bay Area musician
Glenn Donaldson's earliest work under the name
the Reds, Pinks & Purples was heavily informed by the depressive jangle and offhand aesthetic of early independent labels like Sarah Records or the artier releases from K. Though
Donaldson updated the format a bit by delivering his frequently released early songs, demos, and EPs digitally for the most part, a 2020 single entitled I Should Have Helped You did stay true to the time-honored indie pop tradition of being released as a super-limited 7" on an obscure label and falling out of print almost immediately. As the project's audience grew over the next few years, this hard-to-find artifact became a sought-after collector's item, and yet another example of
Donaldson's seemingly bottomless supply of sadly catchy songwriting perfection that was essential enough to merit re-release.
They Only Wanted Your Soul collects the four songs that originally appeared on the I Should Have Helped You 7", and adds and additional six tunes written and recorded around the same 2019-2020 window, some of which appeared online briefly but hadn't seen proper release before now.
Donaldson's gift for melancholic hooks is strong as always on the original four songs, with more hints of
Magnetic Fields-esque sardonicism than usual on "I Should Have Helped You" and a blur of acoustic 12-string jangle, background fuzz, and
Go-Betweens-indebted hooks on "Keep Your Secrets Close." The newly unearthed songs are cut from a similar cloth, with "Saw You at the Record Shop Today" leaning ever so slightly towards the psychedelic with reverb-heavy bongos and wandering guitar leads and the tight drum-machine rhythms and lonesome melody of "Workers of the World" combining for a
Psychedelic Furs level of dour yet danceable pop. Over the years,
Donaldson's widely varied musical has achieved the rare quality of being consistently prolific and high quality, and this early phase of
the Reds, Pinks & Purples is perhaps the strongest testament to that.
They Only Wanted Your Soul stretches a single into a full album experience that's free of filler and heavy on the specific atmosphere of romance, nostalgia, and unsettled dreams that
Donaldson has perfected. ~ Fred Thomas