The Reds, Pinks & Purples :: The Past Is A Garden I Never Fed
From the spontaneous mind of San Francisco, California-based multi-instrumentalist, photographer, and collage artist Glenn Donaldson, who brought you countless connections into the vibrant void of pure existential expression with such acts as the highly influential Skygreen Leopards, Giant Skyflower Band, Flying Canyon, and Jewelled Antler, to name a few, comes one of his most recent projects of poetic prolificacy, The Reds, Pinks And Purples. A multi-dimensional project that has released over 200 songs since its inception in 2019 with the feverish debut album “Anxiety Art,” Donaldson has kept his foot on the pedal of productivity and has gone as far as pushing through the floorboards and out the other side with Bedrock athleticism to establish himself as this vibrant vessel of songwriting sophistication. The project’s origins grew from an incredibly intimate ideology, as Donaldson released songs as monthly postcards to a small community of local and loyal folks who picked up what the songwriter was putting down. “I looked around at the indie landscape and I felt that there weren’t enough people putting themselves out there as the awkward, emotionally exposed main character in the songs,” says Donaldson about the intentional interior of what The Reds, Pinks And Purples is all about. As someone who possesses one of those cultural careers that, if you roll the casino’s dingy dice across the fake felt table, you instantly win something of incredible value. It’s never a bad bet to take a chance with anything Donaldson is working on. In an imperfect world, to say the least, we have music, and for that we’re far richer than we’ll ever understand.
“I looked around at the indie landscape and I felt that there weren’t enough people putting themselves out there as the awkward, emotionally exposed main character in the songs.”
Quickly following up to last year’s “Unwishing Well", with his debut on the acclaimed London-based label Fire Records, “The Past Is A Garden I Never Fed,” Donaldson patiently peers into the sonic shadows with a private gaze, looking for any details that could breathe life into the lungs of a song. Like a detective with a melodic mission, the veteran musician harvests any harmonies, tonal textures, and victorious vibrations to take back to the lyrical lab for further investigation. From its humble beginnings in the spiritual settings of home recording, The Reds, Pinks And Purples has bravely blossomed into this brilliant bouquet of numbing colors and powerful petals, whose textured tips stick out like a hitchhiking vagabond. Pulling inspiration from several corners of the world, and beyond, “The Past Is A Garden I Never Fed” steps into this haunted house that is beyond repair, and begins to conjure the sleeping spirits for an intimate invitation carefully curated by Donaldson’s academic attention to detail. With such tracks serving as a sonic sanctuary for the likes of TVP’s Daniel Treacey, and his book, which can be found on the track “Toxic Friend,” to the poetic phenomenon of Hüsker Dü, The Beatles, and the more existential edge found within the foundation of the highly influential New Wave movement, Donaldson carefully crafts some of his finest work under The Reds, Pinks And Purples as the world continues to fall into the pits of the salty sea.
