About Sad Lovers and Giants
Sad Lovers & Giants are an English rock band from Watford, Hertfordshire, England, which formed in 1980. Their sound blends post-punk, atmospheric keyboards and psychedelia. A lot of care is taken in the making of their first album, “Epic Garden Music”, we hear it in a polished production and a balanced use of instruments, crystalline guitar, keyboard or bass forward.The band proves that you can be dark without necessarily neglecting the melody, the atmosphere or the slightest pleasure (“Clocktower Lodge” or “Alice (Isn't Playing)”). By overdoing it, you can appear fake, while by being refined like the cover, it gives even more weight to the words. Their appetite for pungent and dry spleen thus appears quite credible.
A certain pop spontaneity emerges from the tracks (“Echoplay”, “Cloud 9”). The album is not the translation of an existential malaise but simply of what drives Simon “Garce” Allard and his family on a daily basis. The tone chosen, the way to apply the drums or to use the guitars as drops of water or waves, the bass providing melodies, the ambient keyboard, all this reflects a permanent attachment to melancholy. Sometimes it's a saxophone that rounds off the corners (“Lope”), at other times it's a dry guitar (“Clint”). Moreover, the musical parts were recorded in live conditions. The song came later, giving the aspect of mysterious echoes. This style, which at first glance seems cold, and which is reminiscent of The Cure or The Chameleons, is the manifestation of the musicians in their entirety and their permanence.
The atmosphere is calm, level-headed, the bass is deep but the guitars are clear, Simon Allard's voice is neither dramatic nor altered, it is on the contrary muffled and enigmatic, and the omnipresent keyboard casts a shadow on all the tracks. There is no indication of the tensions that can reign within the group. At the end of the following year, they disbanded, with Tristan Garel-Funk (guitar) and Nigel Pollard (drums) going on to form The Snake Corps. The band reunited in 1987 with more or less the same team, and adopted an even more prepared style, reminiscent of The Durutti Column, Smiths or Felt.
The Midnight Music label took the opportunity to reissue the album by adding the first singles, “Imagination” (reminiscent of Police from afar) or the tense "Colorless Dream”, as well as the B-sides that went with it.
Browse all Songs and Lyrics published on Sad Lovers and Giants