The pretty name, of course, is just camouflage. For all the bright colours of their obvious Go-Betweens obsession, Connecticut’s [a]Butterflies Of Love[/a] – named after a soppy Bobby Goldsboro lyric – don’t actually feed off the nectar of emotional bliss.
‘Wild‘, their UK debut, might flit along on a budget of hormones and [I]”la, la, la”[/I]s but it’s very much a lone voice here. Even ‘Love May Be Possible‘, ‘How To…”s other apparent flutter of optimism, is about drinking and suicide. They’re less airborne flowers of romance, these Butterflies, than doomed, dust-winged moths headbanging a fading torchlight.
And with them come the pain birds. Regret, malice and indecision are just some of the emotions capably pinned and mounted by Daniel Greene and Jeffrey Greene‘s (no relation) subtle instruments. Their often ragged voices add untutored honesty to weird song-stories like ‘Assassins‘, while xylophones, organs and strings defy the lo-fi template and lift ‘Horrible‘ from Mazzy Star minimal to addled Sparklehorse. If all this weren’t reason enough to get acquainted, the Butterflies‘ most recent seven-inch, ‘Rob A Bank‘, conflates infatuation with the desire to blow up buildings. Quite simply, to know them is to love them.