RA! - Oh Unhappy Bella - Tape (2015)

Labels: self released
Review by: Oli Saunders

Oh Unhappy Bella is an album telling the story of a boy’s journey through love with a girl who never existed. The first main track has a Duster vibe in the guitar (Gold Dust) which gets my attention. I really like the instrumentation throughout the record. The vocals are half sung-half spoken and they grow on me after a while – they’re certainly not immediately connecting, in the same way that neither are Xiu Xiu’s. The cover to ‘Be My Baby’ is a fascinating and devastating take – when the girl chimes in in the chorus it pulls at my heart strings. This is a must listen. I lose interest as the album progresses – there’s only so many times I can take listening to lyrics about killing yourself. I don’t mean to be flippant about the topic by the way. But I need to go watch Crocodile Dundee to recover from this.

27th August 2016