A-Side: Just Like Gold
B-Side: We Could Send Letters
Record label: Postcard 81-3
Producer: unknown
Released: 17/03/81
Purchased: 1983
Aztec Camera ‘Just Like Gold’ – The second Postcard release during March 1981 is “Just Like Gold” from East Kilbride’s Aztec Camera. An amazingly mature debut from a sixteen year old writer, this urgent, personal message has an attractive folksy, almost American feel to it thanks to the addition of shimmering acoustic guitars.
Only a rather untogether arrangement stands between this strong song and sheer excellence, and the same fault reduces “B” side “We Could Send Letters” to a one dimensional canter. A worthy purchase, however. (Smash Hits, 02/04/81)
The young teen Roddy is back with a pairing of love-lorn ballads, earlier versions too, with the original line-up of Aztec Camera. I prefer these recordings on Postcard rather than the embellished and cleaner numbers on the album “High Land, Hard Rain”
The acoustically charged and the almost shouted vocals of “Just Like Gold” was a strange choice for an ‘A’ side and has never been re-issued in any format, nor too the 45 version of“We Can Send Letters” – Roddy Frame has refused in the past.
So, get out in the wild and find an original copy, it’s probably the best thing you could ever do, your record box deserves it.
Both sides recorded at Castle Sound Studio, Edinburgh, during January 1981.
Speaking in NME, Roddy expressed great pride in his choice of debut single. “I don’t think I could improve “Just Like Gold” in any way. I spent a long time trying to sound un-clichéd. There’s no chorus in it, nothing’s repeated.”
I’m not really sorry for laughing: there’s so much happening. Aztec Camera, so slight, write ballads that are listlessly lovely, that have a strange incomplete strength.
Cymbals splash, acoustic guitars softly snag and quietly quarrel, bitter-sweet 16 Roddy Frame sings with virginal immaculacy. Their sound is lush, stainless modernist MOR.
These love songs, that speak of sadness with undefiled integrity, seem closer to the white music of Nick Drake and some John Martyn than the lament dance music of Josef K or the irony-pop of Postcard: The sound of young Scotland. Private themes and fairy tales, new romance and chilled distance. Aztec Camera are a smooth and special taste: a smile on their face, a tear in their eye. (NME, 21/03/81)
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