Event

Solid Gold

The background: Solid Gold are as good as anything youÂÂll hear in a while. They make downbeat dance music, sad synth-pop, melancholy club tracks, which might sound like a contradiction in terms but not to those of you who have, over the past 25 years, appreciated artists from Pet Shop Boys to Junior Boys. They come from Minneapolis, the home of Prince, but you wonÂÂt get any upbeat freak-funk here. This is music for the mourning after the failed night out before. ItÂÂs pretty dour and dark for dance music. We namechecked the PSBs and the JBs just now, but thereÂÂs a vast difference, in terms of success, between one and the other. The former were global megastars, the latter ÂÂmereÂÂ criticsÂÂ darlings. WeÂÂre not sure what the market is these days for the sort of sorrowful techno that Solid Gold purvey, but it sure is a lovely sound.

TheyÂÂre almost destined to remain cult favourites with a name like that. Bands who invoke success in their name or the name of their records usually end up in the bargain bin, we have no idea why. Big Star were not big stars, they sold a couple of thousand albums at most, and that goes for their 1972 debut LP, titled rather optimistically #1 Record. The Pop Group were not a popular group (or, for that matter, a pop group), although in their case you could argue they were inviting us to think critically about what a pop group is or does. Come to think of it, Gang of FourÂÂs second album, Solid Gold, did not go gold, solid or otherwise.