When people talk about Saint Etienne's love of pop music, their easy matching of dance music's buzz with the aesthetics of indie introspection, I think surely they must sound like Dr Honda. They don't, of course. Only Dr Honda sound that good.
I didn't know anyone who bought - fuck it, who knew - Don't Sleep Much in 2001. Maybe I didn't read the right magazines, listen to the right radio shows; maybe I didn't have the right friends. Same story in 2003 with the peerless California ep, from which Silver Star Lovers is taken.
But, come on, this is great. They number One Dove's (and Altered Image's) Jim McKinven. I don't know much else. I'd like to know that outside of the 5 songs they released over 2 10" singles there's an album in the vaults. But this is the beauty of pop music - it comes from nowhere, it raises expectations, it quickens the pulse and then it vanishes as mysteriously as it arrived.
Wow...I searched so hard for those Dr Honda but they just seemed to vanish. Honestly, I've often wondered if I'd just heard rumours in a dream! I've been thinking about them again of late because Jim McKinven has a new, much less pop group with Claudia Nova from Aggi Doom:
ReplyDeletehttps://soundcloud.com/hausfraumusik
They played recently and were immense. Jim is(was?) also in the similarly dark Organs of Love:
http://boomkat.com/vinyl/485421-organs-of-love-bone
Anyways, good work on actually finding those 10"!
cheers, brogues
I didn't realise they were hard to find! I discovered Dr Honda because the record piqued my interest in Rough Trade, I played it and immediately bought it. I'll add "being really hard to find" as a reason why no one seemed to know them at the time. Thanks for the related tips. Organs Of Love strikes me as the better option, but I'll keep listening.
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