The Lovely Basement
Bristol Out Of My Window / We Love You
Precious Recordings of London
Limited Edition 7” vinyl / DL
Released 6 November 2026
★★★★★ 5/5
Following the success of their acclaimed album Lowlands, Bristol’s finest return with a double A-side. ‘Bristol Out Of My Window’ and ‘We Love You’ is a cracking Psychedelic Furs cover… says the label. Ged Babey has written about the band for Louder Than War for seven years now and seen them grow as artists yet remain true to their roots and their hometown.
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The first album, 2019’s Just Because You Can was great.
This is a fantastic, slow-burning, modestly brilliant album. Smart, unassuming and cool. I said, astutely.
So was the second. the sound of a small-town band making an album with universal appeal.
The third went up a gear. (Gus Ironside said:) Despite the myriad musical influences contributing to The Lonely Basement’s songwriting, the Bristol four-piece have succeeded in carving out their own distinctive, fully-developed sound, with sharp, purposeful lyrics that reward repeated listens. These allegedly lazy travellers have finally arrived.
And the fourth is not-even-arguably their best.
But somehow The Lovely Basement haven’t really changed at all, since Day One. They were always fabulous. They’ve just grown in confidence and stature
I thought this, and wrote it BEFORE I actually realised that the song on the A-side of this truly Precious single, was a song they wrote and released back in 2018 on their friend Tim Rippingtons Breaking Down label. It’s no longer online, deleted, a rarity, so precious that not even Discogs can put a value on it. It’s fkn priceless.
‘Bristol Out Of My Window’ is a lilting tribute to their hometown – adopted in some cases, as the lyrics make plain…
I asked the bands Canadian-born frontperson Katie about the song.
Unlike the songs from Davey Woodwards brilliant The Bristolian album, It’s not actually about Bristol at all is it?
No, not really. We (Kevin and I) have often remarked that there seems to be two trends in human nature, people who are happy stay where they are born, and people who want to see what’s over the next hill and beyond. And the latter are the people maybe who have caused our species to get all over the world, exploring and discovering and sharing new things, while the former are experimenters who discover the things you have to stay in one place to learn, like figuring out agriculture and how to turn sheep hair into a jumper. But we seem to have the travelling gene. So it’s about that innate urge. Which in our case had led us to Bristol so far. Humber is a river in Toronto when I grew up, Simcoe a lake just north of the city. Given our ancestors travelled by water, they and the Avon made their way into the song.
It was also your very first release in 2018 I see – so one of the very first Lovely Basement songs presumably… Re-recording it for ‘Precious’ vinyl I guess is because it means a lot to you?
You know us too well! Yes, we’ve always felt we could do a better version, and the song has evolved a bit as we’ve played it over the years. So when Nick Precious mooted another single, we knew it was time.
And the b-side is a fantastic cover version – of the debut single by one of my all-time favourite bands. The Psychedelic Furs We Love You… which was a kind-of irony-laced ‘These Are A Few Of My Favourite Things’ for the post-punk generation – which shared a title with a Stones song. Very few bands could do a convincing cover of such a great song.
But The Lovely Basement can, and do.
There’s one key lyrical change I noticed straight away – instead of Bridgett Bardot, Katie sings “I’m in love with Richard Butler”. BB did turn out to be a bit dodgy, so understandable.
But there is also the opening line… which I always swore was: “I’m in love with Catholics” but the Lovely Basement version has “Capitalists” as the object of affection.
Because I’d reviewed the Furs last album, Made of Rain, six years back I had their UK agent Tim in my contacts. I sent him the track to send on to the bands management, and on to the Butlers butler.
It sounds great. Really does bring out the Waiting For my Man riff. I’ll send it over to the States. Have you ever heard the John Peel session version of We Love You? It includes the immortal line “I’m in love with Elton’s wig” which isn’t on the studio version.
But he didn’t mention the Catholics/Capitalists issue. Still no reply from the Furs, but they are notoriously slow at email responses I’m told.
The Lovely Basement version of We Love You is sublime. The drumming sounds pure Mo Tucker and the guitars echo both the Velvets and Stones somehow. Katie’s vocal gorgeously deadpans Butlers blank verse as she seems to role-play an imagined louche Factory Superstar. The tambourine is mixed in to perfection and the (male) backing vocal sounds so much like Richard Butler I asked the band if it was ‘a sample’ of his voice.
“No! It’s Kevin and Steve! They do a great impression.”
It really is a fabulous cover version. Up there with Heavenly’s ‘Someone Who Cares’.
If you want the limited edition vinyl, you are gonna have to be quick.
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All words by Ged Babey with quotes and PR in italics.
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