When Donovan Quinn and Glenn Donaldson of the Skygreen Leopards sing about love, you don’t have to fear for your heart. The California psyche-pop duo’s latest album, Family Crimes, has a triptych of love songs that are gentle enough to only scratch the surface of melancholy.
“Love Is a Shadow” shuffles through piles of fallen leaves, with Quinn and Donaldson harmonizing like sun and honey. “Is It Love, Love Love” saunters along, a nugget of cosmic country with an aftertaste of Tang instead of blotter acid. And “It’s Not Love”, the darkest of the three, goes so far as to sketch an ever-so-slightly harrowing scenario on a sheet of squeaky-clean folk-pop: “Too much blood on the water/ Nothing left to say/ It’s not love/ It’s just blood.” It’s alright, ma; they may be only bleeding, but they have a box of Band-Aids handy.
