e-mail from eternity
the best of sad lovers & giants
released april 1996

This month Sad Lovers and Giants release a Best Of through Anagram records. It contains tracks from their five studio albums together with singles (and a bonus live recording) covering their entire career.

Formed in Rickmansworth in 1981 around front man and lyricist Garce, Sad Lovers and Giants quickly became a local cult band, prompting the birth of Independent label “Midnight Music” with the release of their debut album “Epic Garden Music” in 1983. The album, with its characteristic ethereal, pastoral soundscapes, entered the Independent Chart and gained the band a John Peel session for Radio 1. They gigged in support of the album in the UK and abroad. On the brink of the release of their second album “Feeding The Flame” in 1984 the band were booked for the BBC TV series “Rock Goes To College”. Unfortunately, the night before their debut UK TV appearance, Sad Lovers and Giants broke up. As with many bands, internal musical differences got in the way of external musical production and, almost as soon as they had arrived, they’d gone. The amnesia infected UK scene mourned for all of five minutes, New Romanticism arrived and that, it seemed, was that.

Abroad, though, it was a different story. Unaware of the band’s demise, and prompted by the posthumous release of two compilation albums (featuring live material and radio sessions) their fan-base grew, particularly in the States (where they became a fixture on College Radio), and in Europe. At home, able to lick his wounds and re-think, Garce decided to start again. With elements of the old line up and new blood, Sad Lovers and Giants was re-born in 1986. Midnight Music released a brand new album (“The Mirror Test”) in 1987. By this time, interest in the band in Europe and America was at a level the band had never enjoyed in their earlier life. “The Mirror Test” went straight into the Rockpool (US College Radio) Top 20 and radio stations in France, Holland and, particularly Spain celebrated the new product. Midnight Music opened an office in France, where the band were habitually playlisted by Oui FM, the leading Parisian alternative station, and appeared on several French TV music shows. The album was licensed by Polygram in Greece, and fan mail arrived weekly from as far away as Japan. They played their biggest gigs in Spain, who really took the band to their hearts. “Things We Never Did” was a pop hit in Spain; in support of it they appeared at Valencia Bullring in front of 15,000 people. But, apart from the occasional, well attended Marquee gig (the SLAGs headlined no less than six times) the UK seemed to be largely ignoring them. Following a “Where Are They Now?” feature in the NME, one UK paper did glimpse the European SLAG phenomenon - the Melody Maker, who accompanied the band on one of their forays to Spain and printed a glowing live review and a half page feature in 1987.

Buoyed up by the International success, and encouraged by the signs of a UK resurgence, the band went into the studio to record again. The release of “Headland” in 1989 coincided with their most ambitious tour of France, their live debuts in Belgium and Switzerland, a live radio broadcast to France, Switzerland and Italy and the launch of a SLAG fanzine in France. They were visited in the studio by Japanese journalists and, at last, were offered a tour of the US. Unfortunately, all this potential was never to be realised. The label they had sparked into life, Midnight Music, with a rapidly growing roster of expensive baby bands, was becoming a financial disaster. Royalties were never paid, the Paris office of Midnight Music was closed and the licensee in Spain severed his deal. Finally, in 1991, the label itself went under, owing the SLAGs thousands and with their last album “Treehouse Poetry” recorded, pressed but unreleased. With no record company in the UK, and considerable debts, the band split for the second time.

In typical Sad Lovers & Giants style, breaking up has not dampened the enthusiasm of their fans. The title for the album was inspired by the appearance, two years ago, of an unofficial but elaborate Internet Website, set up by a fan in Texas. Having bought the rights to the band’s catalogue, Anagram were prompted into releasing a Best Of by demand from Europe and the USA. The Web site became the base of operations to compile the ideal tracklisting for the album - fans from all over the world sent in their suggestions and, from the final league table, the songs were selected.

Says Garce, “The essence of Sad Lovers and Giants seems to be very durable, although at the time it always seemed to be of a more fragile nature. This was true for the music we made as much as it is for the life of the band itself. It surprises me how it keeps on bouncing back; you shut the thing in the toybox and it still wriggles out. The new demand for this album is another example of this phenomenon and that’s what I tried to capture in the title.”

March 1996