Alec Bathgate (The Enemy, Toy Love, Tall Dwarfs) has quietly deposited a treasure-trove of music on Bandcamp this year. “Jane & John” is a small but perfectly formed collection of two brief songs that fit together. Here’s “Jane”, written for his former Toy Love band member Jane Walker who died in 2018.

“Jane” and “John” were originally intended as demos, recorded by Bathgate in NZ, but then added some Nashville relish by NZ music fans Matt Swanson and Tony Crow of Lambchop. The resulting songs are beautiful miniature pop gems.

Also worth acquainting yourself with here is Bathgate’s excellent 1996 DIY-psychedelic pop masterpiece “Gold Lamé” (originally a Flying Nun Records CD release) which has had new hi-res transfers from the original master tapes and been newly mastered by the ubiquitous Mikey Young for future (2021) vinyl release and sounds glorious.