ARTiST: Forever Like Red
TiTLE: Distance
LABEL: Echo
GENRE: Indie
TiME: 45:43 min
SiZE: 62,5 MB
BiTRATE: VBRkbps
RiP DATE: Aug-17-2007
RELEASE DATE: Sep-03-2007
WEBSiTE: n/a
Track List:
01. What Will You Pay 04:15
02. Inhibitions 03:24
03. Dream On 03:49
04. Father 05:33
05. Exit Signs 04:44
06. Runaway Story 05:52
07. Forever Like Red 05:06
08. Breakdown 04:04
09. Off You Go 03:59
10. Distance 04:57
Release Notes:
Just when you start thinking that Forever Like Red,
a four-piece from London comprising an American, two
Danes and a Swede, two of whom were in an LA band
called Citrus while a third was in electropoppers
Modwheelmood, tout generic post-Bends Keanefodder,
you hear their astonishing backstory and you're
forced to reconsider. Seriously reconsider.
According to the press release, Father and Forever
Like Red, tracks from their forthcoming debut album,
Distance, are meant to be excoriating exercises in
heavy-duty autobiography, written by the band's
singer, pianist/guitarist and main writer Cameron
Meshell in August 2000 in the aftermath of "a
catastrophic event in his life". And you think,
"Yeah, sure, don't tell us. His hamster got eczema,
right?" Wrong: his dad got shot and killed by the
police in a domestic dispute in his hometown of
Shreveport, Louisiana. Suddenly, the blood-curdling
screeches and gut-wrenching roars throughout Father
sound less like emotional posturing and more like
authentic cris de coeur. Well, they would do,
wouldn't they?
Blimey, last week we brought you an act called Green
Pitch fronted by a woman who's lost the use of both
legs after a fall from a ladder in Amsterdam, and
now this. What next? A 100-piece band, all victims
of a Jonestown-style mass suicide? Still, when this
little lot gets out, Forever Like Red are going to
be all over the media, satisfying our voyeuristic
bloodlust (or is that just us up here at GUM?), and
Cameron Meshell is going to be recounting endlessly
what amounts to possibly the most shocking pop-star
tragedy of recent times. The tough question is: do
the ghastly events of August 2000 help elevate
Forever Like Red's mundane ballad-rock towards the
realms of the grimly compelling? Honestly? Well,
yes, they do. Until we heard the cop-killing saga,
we were feeling ever-so-slightly comatose. But when
we found out the above, it was as though someone had
rammed a cattle-prod under our collective jacksie.
Now Cameron Meshell, the product of a traditional
Deep South, God-fearing upbringing - as detailed on
the single What Will You Pay, an agnostic look at
the inherent contradictions of a belief in the
after-life - seems like the most fascinating man on
the planet, although frankly we were disappointed
when we discovered that his song Inhibitions, about
doing what you want because you want to, sounds
nothing like the similarly-themed Because We Want To
by 90s teenpop terrors Daphne & Celeste.