Single Of The Week: Blue Roses – Does Anyone Love Me Now EP

Maybe out of a sense of blessed release after this week’s Album Of The Week, but I’ve found myself loving this. Not sure if that’s a sensible thing listening to Comanechi followed by Blue Roses repeatedly, though. It’s like sitting in a room and turning the lights on and off and on and off and on and off. Can’t be good for you, right? This is though, it’ll make you all warm and nostalgic and pleased with yourself.

Yorkshire’s Blue Roses – with Laura Grove as the driving force – always makes me think that real, genuine care has gone into the music, not in a calculated way, just a genuine, almost wide-eyed love of music.

The four tracks here are just as sumptuous as the album, managing to be quiet and understated but solid and three-dimensional all at the same time. The opening title track starts off with some charming but probably quite difficult folky guitars, and Laura’s quietly acrobatic vocal and, without harping on about it, is just a delight. If you’ve missed The Sundays, you’ll be bleeding from the ears with joy about now. There’s also a version of ‘Doubtful Comforts’ with The Grammatics, but we also get two songs not on the debut album, with ‘Anyone Who Knows What Love Is (Will Understand)’ seeing Laura covering New Orleans cult soul legend Irma Thomas and going  enjoyably Dusty Springfield in the process, and ‘First Frost Night’ which is way more staccato and offbeat and somehow Scandinavian than the silky smoothness of the rest of the EP but manages not to sound out of place.

Despite the presence of two already-released album tracks on here, this is a real pleasure for the cold nights ahead.