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The Loves

Technicolour

(Fortuna Pop; US: 21 Aug 2007; UK: 5 Feb 2007)

This new pop collective from Cardiff, Wales has a deep, abiding love for the most sugary, candy-coated concoctions from the ‘60s. Tipping their hats to the Monkees, the Archies, Nuggets-era garage rock, and even retro TV theme songs, the Loves just want to have fun and bring back a bit silliness and innocence to pop music. Covering the Muppets classic, “The Rainbow Connection”, without a trace of irony is perhaps surprising in these hipster times where pop’s past can often only be enjoyed ironically. That’s a shame, because the Loves remind us that the three-minute pop song can be a very simple, uncomplicated joy and it need mean nothing more than a little moment of pleasure.  There are a lot of catchy tunes here, but “Xs and Os” and “(Gimme Gimme) The Good Times” are the ones that lodge in the brain on repeat.

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Sarah Zupko is a former Executive Producer at Tribune Media Services, the media syndication arm of the Tribune Company, and a 10-year veteran of Tribune Company. Aside from writing novels and plays, she devotes most of her time and energy to running PopMatters.com and formerly PopCultures.com, as well as research in the fields of Slavic and German history, and general European cultural and intellectual history. Zupko studied musicology, film, and drama at the University of Chicago and media theory at the University of Texas, where she received her M.A. in 1995.


Tagged as: '60s pop | britpop | the loves
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The Loves - Xs And Os
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