Song of the Day: “Without You” by Rachel Love

When it comes to lo-fi, harmony-filled rock ‘n’ roll, few bands from any time frame compare to Dolly Mixture. More and more have learned that in recent years as vinyl reissues and streaming have made the hidden treasures on Demonstration Tapes readily accessible. It’s a near perfect album– though as the title suggests, it’s a collection of demos. Don’t stop there because the various singles, B-sides and Peel sessions from the group’s 1978-1984 run got reissued in recent years via compilations.

The music of Rachel Bor, Hester Smith and Debsey Wykes goes beyond the Dolly Mixture catalog and, more famously, their work as Captain Sensible’s backup singers. They teamed with Adrian Wykes, Debsey’s brother and a professional cricket player, on his Percy Pavilion project and (sans Smith) in the band Do It Now! Digging deeper, there’s Dolly Mixture involvement on at least one 7-inch by a bonkers (in the best way) new wave band called Fish Turned Human.

Since then, Smith joined Debsey in the short-lived and similar-sounding late ’80s act Coming Up Roses. Debsey worked with The Pogues in the ’90s (as a backup singer on a few songs and as a member of the Darryl Hunt side project Bish) and kept busy well into the 21st century with Birdie– a dreamy, St. Etienne-adjacent indie-pop act.

Bor has gifted us with her most compelling post-Dolly Mixture output –with all due respect to the obscure lo-fi ’90s band Sexlovebusterbaby— in the last 10 years. Aside from her collaboration with the late producer (and Julian Cope band leader) Steve Lovell as Spelt and her more recent partnership with Cleaners From Venus’ Martin Newell as The Light Music Company, she’s rode solo since at least 2021 under the name Rachel Love.

Which finally brings us to our Song of the Day. Love’s got a new solo album, Lyra, that’s slated for an April 26 release. There’s two songs currently streaming: the alluring and atmospheric “Without You” and the equally dreamy “Why.” Listen to both, please, but for the sake of our format, let’s throw in a YouTube link to “Without You.”

The temptation to toss around “lo-fi” some more persists, but really, the ace production work by Lovell and Love modernizes the timeless British indie-pop formula without stripping it of its punk-rooted, no-frills charm.

READ MORE: Song of the Day: “Splash the Fash” by Cootie Cuties