Hangmans Beautiful Daughters

  • Hangmans Beautiful Daughters
  • Trash Mantra EP (Dreamworld) 1987 
  • The Hangmans Beautiful Daughters (Voxx) 1989 

Daniel Treacy of the TV Personalities co-produced, played keyboards and wrote a few songs for this trippy London quartet (named for a 1968 Incredible String Band album), whose sound isn’t as kooky or stylized as his. On the 12-inch EP and the overlapping (all six tracks) album, Emily Brown sings mildly psychedelic ’60s pop in a wispy, imperfect-pitch voice as her three bandmates play droney (but brisk) 12-string folk-rock with cute accents like finger cymbals and harpsichord. Things improve a bit when guitarist Gordeen Dawson sings lead on the modish “Something About Today,” but the disappointing fact is that the group’s image is more colorful than its music.

[Ira Robbins]

See also: Television Personalities