John Gold Album Recommendations: "these are color days"

Album Recommendations: these are color days

The old five-point scale has been retired in favor of just rating stuff 1-10, which allows me a much more nuanced final rating. Still don't take it that seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review.

Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable.

John Gold

[#] these are color days (2002)

An easy blend of strong emotions.

Reviewed March 18, 2024

"Might you just think that you've gone too far?/You don't even know who the fuck you are," John Gold sighs on the penultimate track "Heroine", but it's clear here he very much knows who he is. I've never heard much like this, this wordy, soulful flavor of indie rock, but he sounds totally confident and assured delivering it, doubly impressive given that the 29-minute these are color days was his self-released debut. John sings and plays his very melodic basslines across the whole thing, relying on session musicians to color in his lines, but they help to deliver a really satisfying, sadly long-forgotten brew of groovy drums, bubbling synths, and sad pianos, trumpets, and violins.

Past the intro cut, where John at least admits his disease sure does sound pretty, songs like "Fade to Blue", "Frayed", and "Gotta Get Down" (audio nerd note: listen for the phantom drums in his headphones on "Down"'s intro) build this somber mood for John to tell his stories about lost love, fucking around, and finding out, for me climaxing in the deeply achy and downright excellent "Anytwo". The bit of thundery, fuzzy guitar introduced on that one's solo comes to a nasty head on "Heroine", and it's over as quickly as it started. Some might ding these are color days for being so short, but you don't achieve perfection by adding more on, you achieve it by subtracting until you can't anymore—and I think John Gold has proven, certainly as a lover, he has little else to give away.