Our new Record of the Week is going to be ‘Laughter in Summer’ by Beverly Glenn-Copeland. Diagnosed with dementia in 2024, Beverly has been able to make the album with his partner for decades, Elizabeth, and together they will present it at Primavera Sound. It’s Saturday June 6th.
‘Laughter in Summer’ is a celebration of the love of a couple, the love of their audience, and also of the own repertoire of Beverly Glenn-Copeland, who is 82 years old and has published albums since 1970. Artists such as Romy and Sam Smith have recognized Beverly as a fundamental musical influence, as well as an activist for LGTBIQ+ rights. In 2002 he recognized himself as a trans man.
The great jewel of his repertoire is ‘Keyboard Fantasies’ (1986), and it truly lives up to its name, as is visible in the splendid ‘Let Us Dance’, one of the most pop pieces of that work.
In this new album he revisits that lost classic (like Arca did a few years ago), but stripping it of its synthesizers and its exotic character. Opening and closing ‘Laughter in Summer’ in what he has called “movement 1” and “movement 2”, ‘Let Us Dance’ is now a delicate, orchestrated chamber pop song that would do wonders as the soundtrack to a beautiful movie about the passage of time. The album has, in general, been recorded in single takes.
The request “let us dance” becomes a celebration of freedom and a musical demand. The PIAS press release talks very little about music: it is a review of the love story between Elizabeth and Beverly, from the day she saw him perform in a bar in Toronto, at the age of 19, without knowing who he was, leaving her amazed.
10 years later, they asked her if she knew Beverly Glenn-Copeland and she answered no, but they played her 2 songs, which she listened to compulsively while she was pregnant, of which she decided to cover ‘Hold On’. They began collaborating live and have not separated since.
Elizabeth “openly wants the world to show love to Glenn, to show him how they see him, how much they need him.” We also leave you with a recent live performance of ‘Laughter in Summer’, another of the songs on this album.
