The Courettes "Want You! Like A Cigarette" (Damaged Goods)

Like everyone else who has spent much of their allotted span in one gig venue or another having their ears whacked repeatedly with mallets of pure sound, Not Unloved is missing the thrill of live music. In recent years very few groups have made more of an impression based solely on seeing them live than the Brazilian/Danish duo The Courettes. Their August, 2018 show in a tiny upstairs room in Leith (Edinburgh, Scotland) was a riot of pure charisma, actual POP hooks and the kind of noise that shakes you by your lapels and tells you that life's gonna be alright. Flipping through the stack of 45s that Not Unloved has purchased this year (yeah...it's list-making time again!), few have been more enjoyably moreish than last summer's "Want You! Like A Cigarette" . For a fair chunk of 2020 brief, uncomplicated pop songs were all that made sense and provided some kinda continuity with what's gone before.

The Delmonas

2014's tsunami of much-needed reissues shows no signs of abating.  My heart flipped (and my bank manager fainted) recently when Damaged Goods announced their plan to reissue Billy Childish affiliated girl-group The Delmonas' first 2 lps.  What great news!  They covered a lot of '60s material in their time but their choices were invariably smart ones as exemplified by this:

The Delmonas also appear on the latest volume of Ace Records' indispensable Girls With Guitars cd series with this:

Hopefully by June, when the aforementioned lps are reissued, my bank balance will have recovered from recent excesses.