Kitchens of Distinction
Quick as Rainbows

Due to a bad cavity, this morning I visited a dentist at a famous dental office in Bologna. Those with firsthand experience know well that this is one of those experiences you'd like to forget and, at the same time, can't forget. And I'm not just referring to the fees and the rates applied by our dentist friends. Not only.

This big and burly luminary of international dental science, with a beard and goatee, somewhat reminded me of the guitarist from Slayer, but chubbier, concluded, after a short analysis of my teeth and particularly my second upper premolar, the “sick” one, that there was no alternative but to proceed with what is clinically referred to as a “composite filling”.

I'd love to explain to you in detail what this procedure entails, but I lack the technical knowledge, and in any case, due to fear and anesthesia, I didn't understand much (anyway, Dr. Manuele Chiese explains it here). The fact remains that afterward, upon leaving the dental office and hearing the usual advice like “use fluoride toothpaste, remember” (as if I used reinforced concrete before…), my tooth was in excruciating pain, my head was spinning, and I couldn't even drive my car.

So, after going a few blocks, I thought of stopping at a bar to drink something strong to numb the pain. I entered the bar, greeted the bartender, winked at the cashier, drank two coffees, a digestive (in other words, a Sambuca Molinari with 42% alcohol content), and washed it all down with two whiskies gulped in one go and a tonic water. When I left the bar, I vomited on the new boots of a Hungarian transvestite who proposed half an hour of wild sex for the modest sum of eighty euros, but since I also had to pay for the boots, I was pissed off and politely declined.

Anyway, vomiting was a bit like being reborn, so even though my tooth still ached, before heading home, I thought of stopping by the record store on the corner. The guy running it said to me, “Hi friend, you look pale.” I replied, “Don't ask Bob, I've had a rough day. Mind if I browse around?” “Do whatever you want, who cares. I'm having – it was lunchtime by then - a big sausage sandwich.”

As always, I had no clear idea of what to buy, and, humming “sleeping buried in a record shop, it's not the case, it's not the turntable…”, I started digging through a box labeled generically as “New Wave”.

In the middle of my search, I found myself holding this disc by Kitchens of Distinction with its kaleidoscopic and hallucinatory cover featuring a black and white bust of a guy who looks like Sean Connery in “Agent 007 – License to Kill”. It seemed quite like a ridiculous cover, so I turned to Bob and said, “Listen, who is this face of crap?”

But evidently, due to the toothache, I must have expressed myself poorly. Bob replied absentmindedly, “Excellent choice. Quick as Rainbows by Kitchens of Distinction. It's a single from 1990. It's been four and a half years since it arrived, and I can't sell it. It seems you are a connoisseur: I'll give it to you for forty-five euros.”

Naturally, I tried to explain to him that I had no intention of buying that record, “No, I just wanted to ask who is this…”, but he snatched it from my hand and bagged it, rang up the receipt on the cash register and said: “Alright: forty-two euros. Only because it's you. Now don't bother me and let me finish my sandwich.”

Protesting seemed pointless. So I paid the forty-two euros and returned to the car. But I had only a few coins left in my pocket, and even less fuel in the tank. I called my sister pleading with her to come pick me up because, damn it!, I ran out of gas, but she was at a reggae music festival and wouldn't be back for another four days. I started walking home on foot and only returned home in the evening. There was a cigarette vending machine under the house, I bought a pack of yellow Merits, and ran up the steps.

Once home I ligh… Alright, initially I thought about jerking off. Then I changed my mind: I felt too tired, that damn premolar kept making my head spin; above all, I still had to figure out who the hell was that guy on the Quick as Rainbows cover. So, as I was saying, I lit a cigarette, put the EP on my turntable, and sat at the computer to search the web for information here and there about who this guy was.

It ended up that I solved nothing, but read a lot of nonsense about Kitchens of Distinction. Those halfasses at Onda Rock spew the same old tired stories: “dream-pop, almost danceable rhythms and an infusion – what the hell is an infusion? – existential post-Smiths”, in practice default definitions already heard for another two hundred thousand bands; that bastard Scaruffi, on the contrary and as usual, calls them dreamy and yet mostly forgettable.

On one thing I agree with both: the melodies and lyrics of Kitchens of Distinction are dreamy – so much so that shortly after, I closed my eyes and indulged in that wank I mentioned. But I don't see any common traits with the Smiths' sound, nor does it appear to me danceable, banal or forgettable. Above all, I didn't feel any infusion, whatever that might be.

I'd rather say that this EP, like all the production of Kitchens of Distinction starting from the excellent Love Is Hell, an LP from 1989 released by the legendary label One Little Indian and one of the crucial records in the history of music for who is writing, is nothing but the confirmation of the great qualities and uniqueness of this band's sound that, rather than recalling the Smiths, reminds one of Echo & the Bunnymen, The Chameleons, Adrian Borland's The Sound, and, believe it or not, Joy Division. Not forgetting that some guitar riffs look more in the direction of the “sonic youth” overseas and anticipates what would soon follow in the UK.

There are only four tracks, notably the hypnotic “Quick as Rainbows” the centerpiece of the long play "Strange Free World", along with three other tracks performed live: “Mainly Mornings” and “Shiver” (from Love Is Hell) and “In a Cave”. Only four tracks but I can't stop it from playing on my turntable.

My tooth still hurts, I've had a shitty day, and I haven't figured out who the dandy on the Quick as Rainbows cover is, but all in all, I consider myself lucky to have rediscovered this British band that, besides their beautiful melodies, loved to stand out in the kitchen as on stage. Fuck it. Maybe next week I'll return to the dentist: prevention is better than cure.