Coloured Vinyl's debut CD arrived in the mail a few days ago. The cover caught my attention,  an old Victrola  and multi coloured records.  I was expecting some retro, melodic songs from the '70/80s so I popped it in to my system with that paradigm.  What followed next was a revelation, a gradual realization that this band meant business with moment after moment of melodic rapture the likes of which I hadn't found in my 'in tray' for 30 years or so.

How to describe Coloured Vinyl.  First off the male and female singers (Scott and Jilly) seem to take turns.  There are rock songs, there are pop songs, there are songs that sound like they were written in the Brill Building in the heyday of Top 40 radio.  The record starts with Waiting for the Coronation, an amazingly catchy song that seems to project that the band are music's new royalty.  Before that song can even settle in your head, Jilly sings Insatiable, a tune that is such utter pop genius that you can imagine it blaring from beatboxes on the street and when you hear the voices together it's clear that these 2 possess remarkable pop chemistry.
 
Coloured Vinyl master various styles in a way that often surprises.  They lay down a sparkling Motown groove in Dancing into the Truth.  There's even a tender boy band ballad called No Way To Say Goodbye which stands out for it's simplicity in a sea of adventurous and intricate compositions.  The piece de resistance of this record is the bookend versions of The Balcony Scene - one being utterly original in its electronic mise en scene the counterpart daring and with an ending designed to shock.
 
Rarely will hear a record which alternately contains rocking guitar solos, and then turns to latin lyric driven songs like On and On, which features a love tryst set at an end-of-the-world apocalypse.  That song is simply one of a kind.  Fat musical hooks are around ever corner like the song You've Got the Magnet which has overtones of the R&B songs of the 60s. One understands the connection with coloured vinyl records when Jilly sings Sweet Baby Angel which sounds like a jukebox song that you danced to at a record hop, and Whatever I want I get which is sultry jazzy, reminiscent of the lounge era of the 40s. 
 
If this sounds like a pop melange, it changes from introspective ballads to rock raveups but the flow remains.  Never Had a Rocker has both element of punk rock and Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Car Song is worthy of it's place and adds yet another hot ingredient to the Coloured Vinyl music pot.
 
Black is the Sun is mysterious and foreboding and all the songs on the Coloured Vinyl debut CD seem to come from different places. Moodswing Baby is a charming tune about the moods of a woman.  It Comes When It Comes explores the arrival of elusive moments.  Perhaps the most beautiful piece is an exquisite song called Italy which takes the listener to the green hills of Tuscany.  This kind of deliverance is what the record is about.  In its entirety, Coloured Vinyl is a captivating trip through 21 unique songs, none of which are filler.  There's a bonus track on the end that sums it all up and is perhaps the most ebullient song out of the bunch.  Coloured Vinyl obviously put a lot of life and joy into this work and when you wander into their world you will want to stay there and see the sights, then revisit whenever you want to escape into such rare melodic bliss.  I almost enjoyed writing about as much as listening to this collection.  Sometimes this part of the job is a chore, with this band it was a rare pleasure.
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