Ultra Vivid Scene feat Kim Deal – Special One

Select Magazine used to come with cover-mounted cassettes entitled Red Tape. These compilation gems pretty much moulded my taste in music, introducing young teenaged me to everyone from Silverfish to Megadeth.

One of the tapes included this song that can still send shivers up my spine. It’s a deceptively simple hook and melody that’s just exquisitely crafted and has stayed with me for fully 20 years. It’s sweet in the way the Carpenters were sweet and breezy the way the Mamas and Papas were breezy. Delicious and light, not saccharine.

Everything I’ve heard featuring Kim Deal, whether Pixies or Breeders, I’ve enjoyed. I’ve never taken the time or energy to really hunt down the things she’s been involved in, but she was yet another model of ideal womanhood for me growing up: you don’t have to be slutty to be sexy, serious to be taken seriously, or cloying to be sweet. She always seemed to be quintessentially herself, without trying to be anything else, and that was just the way we liked her.

As for Kurt Ralske, I didn’t know anything about him. He was another 4AD act when that label was a genre in itself, and cited his influences as Velvet Underground and Jesus and Mary Chain. He’s done a little solo work since, and produced albums for the likes of Rasputina, but has mostly found his niche in the world of visual art.