Let's Talk About Love

Tough Love is an appropriate name for this pirate endeavour we have here. When I think of love - and I mean love in its nascent stages - it's not the swinging round the lamp post exhaulted joyful type, or a cartoon like quivering of the legs swooning just the other side of lust. It's something that little darker. It's a slight sickness. That's a well known characteristic and let's not trot out those 'love sick' cliches. But it's also anxiety and possibility as one: exciting of course, but charged with fear, doubt and that crushing feeling that at some point soon you're going to fuck it all right up hard, fast and embarrassingly forever. Love is hard.

And so that's how i feel about this here record label. It's inconsistent short bursts of elation, constantly punctuated by a subtle frustration and worry. But it's worth it. Last Sunday night showed that, as we held the London launch for Situationists new EP at the Old Blue Last. It was an epically dismal Sunday. Rain lashed at an expectant but hungover body and I don't think i was the only one feeling that way. But despite the nightmare billing of Sunday evening malaise, post-alcohol come-down blues and the bleak insistent force of nature, people came. Quite a lot of them. And they cheered and smiled and generally weren't awful. It was a bloody revelation. Situationists were supremely confident, buoyened no doubt by the reception the new EP has received (and is still receiving). They even played a new song; all elegiac guitar lines intersecting like the cartographic wonderlands they've often romanticised about, alongside some fine American Football-esque melancholy. It's a perfect counterpoint to the indiepop precision of their more well-known songs. Exciting and excited in equal measure, i was spilling over.

Unfortunately, the EPs hadn't arrived in time from the Czech Republic, which was potentially embarrassing. However, Ralph's (Situationists drummer) spark of ingenuity and creative abilities saved face admirably and it was beautiful to see people still paying for music despite all that media scare mongering that seems to find residence in the less considered press on a weekly basis. And very good music, of course. There's a lot to be said for good taste and then knowing what to do with it.

And of course the night wouldn't have been what it was if not for the might and drive of Calories and the ramshackle powerpop charm of Favours For Sailors. And they're all, in one form or another, Tough Love bands. It's an exciting time, but one I'm fully prepared to see collapse into a mess of my own making. But that's the nature of this particular beast.

So, you can also purchase the new EP from our site here: www.toughloverecords.com/product.htm. We'll even send you free MP3s of the songs while you wait for the record to be delivered.

On a related note, Puregroove Records - that exceptional independent London record store (amongst many other things) - have included a free Situationists song as a free download on their site. Go to this link and download it now: http://www.puregroove.co.uk/itemview.aspx?item=674

So much more news to come in the next few weeks and i'll endeavour to document it here properly. Promise.