Back to the Boutique

By this blog's standard, a very topical post: a plug for a record that has only just been released! Well... re-released.

As part of their early Creation singles reissue series, Love Resistance has just been released as a 3” mini CD by the Vollwert label (John Mulvey wrote about it in the Uncut blog). This one and only outing by Apple Boutique was originally published as a three track 12”, and it has remained unavailable in digital form until now. So those of you lucky enough to call a compact disc player your own finally get the chance to (re)visit this bona fide piece of sceptical pop in all its glory. As presumably most people who have got as far as reading this blog will know, Apple Boutique was comprised of latter-day Felt members John Mohan and Phil King (the band shares its name with a track on The Pictorial Jackson Review). The pair had already played together in The Servants, whose The Sun, A Small Star also finds Go-Betweens-member Amanda Brown playing the violin. Apple Boutique’s Ballad Of Jet Harris in particular fuses some Felty filigree asides into its own, more wistful trajectory, culminating in a none-more-minimal vocal: a series of sighed 'Oh...oh no...'s, groaned by Mr. King himself, which only materialise in its dying seconds.

Phil is not only contributing to the upcoming zine himself, but has also been instrumental in making it possible at all, having introduced us to lots of people and material we would never have uncovered ourselves, as well as being a font of some amazing anecdotes - our metaphorical glasses are raised to him!