Saloon – Peel Sessions 21​.​08​.​01 • 16​.​04​.​03

Precious

This Precious Recordings-curated collection from the long-gone Reading-birthed Saloon comes with some weight of expectations attached, being the first LP-sized vinyl product generated from the label’s rooting around the BBC session vaults, after a remarkably reliable run of EP releases. However, such weight is quickly lifted from the first airings of these side-apiece audio chronicles of two visits to Maida Vale.

With a line-up featuring members destined for subsequent and still active afterlives in The Leaf Library, The Eighteenth Day Of May, The Left Outsides and solo endeavours, it’s hard not look back on Saloon as a fledging nest enterprise. Yet the band collectively conceived a quietly pioneering and substantial — if short — standalone story. Simplistically misfiled in amongst a small wave of groups who emerged in the slipstream of Stereolab and Broadcast, there was a lot more going on with Saloon than some of us realised from hearing the odd 7” single back in the day. Happily, these two seamlessly flowing studio gatherings provide some historical correctives.

Augmenting guitars, bass and drums with synths, viola, theremin, melodica and piano, over which Amanda Gomez’s delicate but dexterous tones appear to float effortlessly, there are soaring and soothing high-craft combinations to be heard throughout.

For the slightly more textured 2001 selection, this means gliding through Belle & Sebastian-meets-American Analog Set art-pastoral dreaminess (“Bicycle Thieves”); yearning Georgia Hubley-led Yo La Tengo-like pulsing (“Girls Are The New Boys”); airy space-pop chanson elegance (“Make It Soft”); and a rustically-slanted salute to Madder Rose (“Spacer”).

Over on the flipside, the somewhat more sparsely arranged 2003 suite incorporates Young Marble Giants-do-Velvet Underground-chugging (“Happy Robots”); meandering percussively-framed wistfulness (“I Could Have A Loved Tyrant”); gently shimmering and synth-skewed Pentanglisms (“Kaspian”); and heartaching motorik-folk-pop (“Vesuvius”).

The overarching realisation from this Peel Session round-up is that there was a lot of affecting songwriting heft subtly embedded into Saloon’s imaginative sonic settings that many will have missed first time around. Through this lovingly presented time capsule excavation exercise, we have the privilege of learning this with refreshing hindsight.

-Adrian-