Sad Lovers & Giants are a post-punk band from Watford, England who formed in 1980. The original lineup included vocalist Garçe (Simon) Allard, guitarist Tristan Garel-Funk, bassist Cliff Silver, drummer Nigel Pollard and keyboardist/saxophonist David Wood. They released their first 3-song 7” EP “Clé” followed by the "Colourless Dream” single both in 1981 and “Lost In A Moment” 7” single in 1982. They released two studio albums, Epic Garden Music (1982) and Feeding the Flame (1983), before temporarily disbanding. In 2016, Dark Entries released Lost In A Sea Full of Sighs, a collection of the band’s early work, but the record incorrectly included 1988 versions of the two songs from the “Lost In A Moment”. For this repress, the tracklist has been corrected to include the original 1982 recordings of “Lost In A Moment” and “The Tightrope Touch”.
The 9 tracks of Lost In A Sea Full of Sighs include all seven songs from their first three 7” singles plus one demo and one song recorded for a John Peel Session in 1981. Lead singer and songwriter Garce Allard was influenced by the works of Sartre, Orwell, Huxley, Dali and Kafka and especially T.S. Elliot’s ‘The Wasteland’. The sense of alienation that Elliot conveys in his stream of conscious-like poem perfectly echoed Allard’s own experience. Many of the lyrics on this collection are vaguely autobiographical, melodramatically exploring personal relationships. The music is moody, dense, and cerebral, awash with synthesizer swirls and sax interjections that evoke the band’s peers such as The Chameleons, Modern English and The Cure.
All songs have been remastered by George Horn at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. The jacket, designed by Eloise Leigh, features a drawing of an espalier used
for "horizontal training”, a technique to control the directional growth of plants. Each copy includes an 8 page black and white zine booklet with lyrics, liner notes, and drawings, plus an 8.5x11” gig poster from the band’s archives.
