MIKE DAVIES COLUMN JULY 2026

 

Over the past 20 years, singer, songwriter, music teacher and, briefly, my landlord, JOHN NAPIER has released, physically and digitally, a vast number of singles, EPs and albums, variously under his own name or as part of an array of stylistically diverse collaborations such as Waler, The Line Managers, The Snowflakes, The Midworth Ramblers, Jeremiah Weeps and Italo Disco outfit Real Velour.  To mark the anniversary, he’s now released ‘White Elephants – A Compilation MMIII – MMXXIII’ featuring ten of the one and ten of the other.

In solo terms, featuring Becky Pickin’s electric piano and Andy Miles’s guitar, it opens with   slow walking ‘White Elephants’, an ineffably sad  number about a father’s sadness that his children, his white elephants,  are unwilling or unable to leave the nest  and have lives of their own, achingly captured in the lines “Well I'm proud of my sons/But it hurts to have lived with them alone for so long/I wish they'd move on… I'm out of ideas/And I've tried to look out for them for so many years/As time lingers on/Despite my best efforts, they're no further on… They're bold and devoted, gentle and kind/Made of only the best parts of me/But each day they're wasting away on the vine”.

Rather more upbeat is the optimistic note of the folksy picked flickering campfire singalong ‘I Don't Know How I Know This’ (“Things may get much worse but someday I can tell/The world is going to wake up to itself/And be at last in perfect health… When all of those who've tried to drive us back/Will suddenly run out of track”) as he sings “I believe in paradise, here on earth not after life/And isn't that worth sacrifice/To see the best of us revived?”

With a guitar line that evokes ‘I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight’, the title track is about falling short of  your expectations (“Faith tells me there is something more to me/But fate has not dealt me the hand I thought I'd see”, but still holding fast to a determination make it so (“Well I may not be the man I thought that I was s’posed to be/But I still believe the answer lies in me/Cause I made a vow so long ago that I intend to keep/And I won't give up until the world has seen/Oh, the man in me”).   He sings “What makes you think that you are special?/What makes you think you are the one?/When there are millions more just like you/Who think the world has got it wrong”, with the observation that “You don't deserve it and you sure as hell ain't earned it/Perhaps it's time you moved along”, but it comes with an implicit faith in the capability of the individual to do something bring about some kind of revolution because “change/Is never gonna happen without me”, even if you don’t yet know how. 

That’s followed by the fingerpicked and harmonica colours of the gentle McCartney-bruised title track of ‘Human After All’ while, from ‘Things Are Much Worse Than We Had Thought’,  the whistling ‘Heard It On The Radio’ is another cheery little number about infringement of liberties as he sings “we are not blind, were just not tough enough this time”, of replenishing empathy with apathy because “our hearts’ not big enough this time”.

Of a rockier persuasion with chiming guitars, the patriotic (in a good sense) ‘The Beauty Of England’ was the B side to ‘Over The Hills And Far Away’ (and also on the Waler EP ‘England Now!’),  the strummed, brass tinged ‘False Economy’ was a 2020 single, the same year producing ‘I Don’t Mean To Sound Cynical’ with Selina Blakeney on backing vocals  from ‘Tombstones’, the Laurel Canyon-flavoured ‘Here I Am’ dates from 2022, with a Streets-styled spoken verses and a country romping chorus ‘Living On The Cutting Edge Of Retro’ was a 2021 single with The Humdrum Express, though I can’t find the source of  the chugging country swaying ‘Annie’  but it’s 2006 or earlier. I’m surprised though that he didn’t include either ‘Not Your Enemy’ or, to my mind one of his best, ‘I’m Going Out For A While’.

The collaborations kick off with The Snowflakes’ moodier 70s Beatles rock feeling ‘Regrets’, followed by Waler, his electronic alt-folk duo with Vincent Gould, and the Spaghetti-Western flavoured ‘One Horse Town’, and then  punk-rap outfit The Line Managers  alongside bassist Andy Kearney and drummer Olly Forrester  with  The Black Post  a rant against the stagnation of post-millennial culture set to a relentless punk, garage rock groove. The Midworth Ramblers are a duo with  Mike Nicholson and ‘Apple Trees In Bloom’ is a hypnotic funky folk steady rhythm groove from 2023. Real Velour contribute the bubbling electro ‘Let Me Know Tonight’ and the disc’s rounded off with the doomy strummed, droning ‘”The Death Of The West’ by Jeremiah Weeps, of which I have no background info, and John on vocals for The Dissenters’ slow 70s cosmic psychedelic ode to ‘Mushy Peas’. (www.johnnapierbandcamp.com)

An early taster for October’s ‘Surface, Echo & Sound’,  EDITORS release ‘Rush’, a surging number which frontman Tom Smith, who plays mandolin on the single, says has two people in a bar talking about life, drinking and reflecting on its highs and lows (“we talk about religion, swallowed up by a bar scene/I'm not walking on the water, illusion of the light/When you learnt to meet my gaze, there were halos in your eyes”) and explores the "idea of finding comfort in people close to me".

MIKE DAVIES COLUMN JUNE 2026

 

 

It’s 40 years since THE MIGHTY LEMON DROPS released their  Stephen Street produced debut album, Happy Head, and became one of the C86 darlings. Hailing from Wolverhampton and formed from the ashes of Active Restraint in 1985, initially called the Sherbert Monsters,  they lined up as  AR former members Paul Marsh on vocals, bassist Tony Linehan and guitarist David Newton (who had played  alongside Neil Cook in The Wild Flowers) with Keith Rowley (who replaced Martin Wilks) on drums.   Although it peaked at 58, charting for two weeks. and neither of its singles, made the top 60 (their sophomore album World Without End reached 34), their punky psychedelia ringing Rickenbacker sound and  Echo and the Bunnymen/Teardrop Explodes comparisons  saw them achieve greater success in America where it  was named one of the 50 best albums of the year.

Opening in driving  style with The Other Side Of You and featuring such similarly powered gems as My Biggest Thrill, Take Me Up, the bass dominant All The Way and a rerecording of their signature initial indie hit Like An Angel alongside slower tracks Hypnotised. Pass You By and the Byrdsian  On My Mind, it’s an enduring classic of its time and remains fresh today. To mark the anniversary,  it’s being released as a remastered limited Dinked Archive edition vinyl in marbled red and black with two bonus tracks, Something Happens and Now She’s Gone, previously released, as was the original Like An Angel, on Dan Treacy’s Dreamworld Records label.

Linehan, Marsh and Rowley are still knocking around but, as far as I can tell, only Dave, now based in Burbank. has sustained a music industry career, both as a producer and recording as Thee Mighty Angels, whose Paint The Town EP and A Gateway to a Lifetime of Disappointment album are well worth discovering. For a detailed look at the Drops career check out https://writewyattuk.com/2022/11/18/moving-inside-out-with-the-mighty-lemon-drops-the-david-newton-interview

A multi-instrumentalist  sextet drawing comparison to – but less improvisational and with more vocals than fellow Brummies The Bonfire Radicals, JUNIPER line up as Dominic O’Sullivan on whistles, sax and woodwinds, flautist Emily Hicks, violinist Anna Vaughan, Rob Roberts on bass drummer Aidan Hammond, and Harry Thorpe from Thorpe & Morrison on baritone guitar and lead vocals. They’re joined on percussion, bodhran and programming by producer Cormac Byrne for self-released sophomore album  Halfway Home, a fusion of Celtic, americana, funk, rock and house inspired by reflections of time on the road and connections to the countryside and Birmingham’s industrial landscapes.

The tracks are a mix of self-penned, covers and the traditional, kicking off with a six-minute plus reading of Breton traditional The Wren, an an dro (a tune to accompany a traditional Breton circle dance) that opens like a cosmic dawn rising orchestral fanfare with woodwind and drums gathering the momentum.

Credited to Sean McCarthy who based it on a children’s skipping-song  from  Kanturk, driven by Vaughan’s fiddle and thumping drums and ending unaccompanied, Step It Out Mary is a propulsive traditional Irish ballad, its upbeat music al nature at odds with its telling of  how her father forces   Mary to wed a wealthy countryman despite being in love with a soldier, she later found    drowned alongside him on her wedding day.

The first original, from O’Sullivan and Thorpe, is the woodwind-led jittery pizzicato rhythm instrumental The Junction, another that, named for the infamous Spaghetti Junction (which features on the album cover)  builds in sound, funkiness and pace as it progresses, leading to a Celtic-shaded cover of John Hartford’s In Tall Buildings, a weary lament about being forced to leave the countryside to conform and work in the city.

The scurrying title track, a fusion of Niall Kenney’s Trip To Pakistan and O’Sullivan’s Joyreel, marks the mid-point with its bodhran percussion and woodwinds, the musical mood sifting with the repeating baritone guitar notes and flute of Thorpe’s  joyous Zimbabwean-tinted instrumental Trajectory.

The second traditional, initially sung a capella, Thorpe on lead and the others harmonising, before guitar and drums kick in, is, flute taking a solo,  Ulster’s  The Flower of  Magherally, the rest of the album all being instrumentals. First up is O’Sullivan’s choppy, whistles and guitar Hare & House, followed by Catharsis, a  traditional-styled Irish reel by Vermont fiddler Amy Cann  that, O’Sullivan on alto flute, again builds in tempo as it gathers to a climax, and finally, there’s Thorpe’s percussion-building, wonderfully chaotic Morris-like dance tune A Brace Of Yari inspired by Vaughan’s two Toyota Yaris cars. Rev it up.

Maintaining an impressive work rate, SOLAR EYES,  Glenn Smyth and Sebastian Maynard Francis, follow their 2024 and 2025 albums with a taster for their third,  Be Under No Illusion being a full‑throttle swaggering indie psych-rock  number that, with  vocal whoops by Nadine Batchelor

Hunt and an off-kilter 7/4 time signature, captures early Kasabian and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club through an Enio Morricone lens. It comes with two  contrasting B‑sides, the propulsive, echoing shoegaze of Sweet Angel and the guitars ringing All Because Of You with  its Velvet Underground  and The Stone Roses.

MIKE DAVIES COLUMN MAY 2026

DOMINIC CRANE has been playing gigs around the area forever, but he’s finally got round to recording some of his songs. First up is the rhythmically loping Beatlesque So Moseley with its circular guitar pattern which  tells the true story of meeting the woman who would later become his wife, when he ventured into  retro clothing shop called Houghtons looking for a pair of antique spectacles and she was working behind the counter.

DAVID BENJAMIN BLOWER   returns to his musical rather than essayist mode with the self-released We Are All Here, a suitably dark and enigmatic affair that variously conjures thoughts of Cave and Waits with its brooding musical textures and poetic lyricism. Given his writing as a theologian, religious imagery is never too far away, the album opener ‘We Are All Here Part 1 offering “God dwells in tents where the beasts sing…God dwells here with everything” and ending with the resonant lines “I wear the past like a tattered robe/Sing into my empty cup/And blow smoke into the firmament”.

Heavy drums wade through the sound effects of the growled Blessings with its raw social commentary on isolation and alienation (“I have no ground/To build my home/I live with outlaws/In HMOs/The streets are hollow/And the eyes are sallow/Mushroom clouds of mutually assured aloneness”), breathing political fumes with “I have no innocence/And neither you my friend/Sat there with your judges hammer/We’ll all be judged in the end/How long should I live/Around the quiet edges/Of your belligerent power/And your stolen scepter?”, the repeated quote  "Eulogete tous diokontas" being is a Koine Greek phrase from Romans 12:14 which translates as "Bless those who persecute you”, the line “I'm not a piece/In your culture war/And all your enemies/They’re not mine anymore” a riposte to those who would seek to use difference to divide.

 Expectations has a circling tribal chug and again lyrics that speak to a sense of nihilism (“I've gambled everything you gave to me/And if there were any left/I’d pay it back to you, I swear/But there ain’t”), again turning to Chrisian imagery with  “What else did I expect/From you yonder hung up bleeding/And where there’s suffering/I know there’s none that you’re not feeling”.

 A shuffling rhythm with a rap sensibility, the vitriolic A New Thing again talks of culture wars “gathering you up like bricks to build platforms/The sheep are shorn/Middle class indignation/Shopping for religion/When was progress not self-righteous?”, spitting out “fuck the demagogues” in a call for some kind of rebirth or reset, the mention of hyssop and  sage an oblique reference to the Crucifixion. That said, “the book of privileged suffering is writ with words all stole from those who have nothing/All the amenable gods are following their owners like dogs and sniffing their cushions/There is no god who defends your opinions…I saw God making merry with your enemies/Sitting outside your cities in squalor/Wherever you dump your shit/Wherever you deface your land and build a new margin” definitely has whim of fire and brimstone preaching to it.

The density of his words, the metaphors, allegories and imagery are challenging to decipher and interpret, but generally these are songs that might be reasonably described as taking an anti-authoritarian stance, calling out the corruption of those in power (“You can do what you want to who you/Like if you make the paperwork tally up right/The pen is the sword for they who outsource wars”), the  boot heel of the privileged on the necks of the weak and poor but woven with a reckoning (“The age to come is beneath your feet/Hidden in the soil where nobody planted it/Resting, buried like treasure under snow and rain./Underneath the rotten leaves/Underneath your dreams again/Breathes like a lake of time welling on the underside”), most notably finding expression in the eerie notes of the semi-spoken The Boot Is On The Other Foot Now, even if you might need a   guide to navigate ancient historical and Biblical references to Moloch, Aeola Capitalina and Rachel.

There’s time when  it plays like dark poetical sermons as with lines like “The world of men is violence/And violence calls for law/And in the law’s raised hand/All the violence it punishes is reborn/Lawyers are alchemists/The noble and small/And the small and wicked shall inscribe this/Violence upon the forehead of the unsanctioned poor”, while punctuating songs with Greek phrases such as  "Kai epi tes ges"  in Open Door translating as  " upon earth"  as in the Lord's Prayer.

The Money’s Gone is another that adopts  a rap style, albeit of  a more society apocalypse content (“Bank cut the rates like a melon/Damn those/Boats/Damn those wire-cutting mountain/Goats/Damn those Sapiens sowing their/Oats/Damn those bat-shit coders/Law is eating its own hind-quarters… Ay all the money’s gone/Hark, your dragon’s calling”).

Choral voices backing, it comes to a close with the marching rhythm  of  Come On Down and an intoned call for coming together  (“come on down/From yr lofty towers/From yr wearing grind/From yr wasted hours/Oh come on down/From yr endless grinding beef/From yr many wars/From yr castle keep/Oh come on down/It’s friendly soil…take a seat/Around the table/And let us reason/A costly fable…Here, sit ye down/Ye also are summoned/See, the horses roaming free/See the river running”).

It ends circling back with the drone of the murmured, choral swelling  We Are All Here Part II and its repeated solace  refrain “We are all here/It's alright/Don’t harm yourself/Reconcile” with its healing kiss and cool waters.

I don’t make any claims to have grasped more than the surface of what he’s singing about , but the cumulative effects of immersing yourself in his words and the miasma of his music is one of the year’s most distinctive experiences.

Written and recorded by David Benjamin Blower

Guitars, production magic and design by Chris Donald

Vocals and steel tonged drum by Rosa Blower

MIKE DAVIES COLUMN APRIL 2026

DAN WHITEHOUSE  strips things right back down to just piano accompaniment for  Only Love, the ballad title track of his forthcoming similarly styled album. Recorded live in one take with pianist David O'Brien   improvising the    cascades of notes over  Dan’s vocal, it’s rooted in how time with his son in Japan is  limited by 90 day tourist visas and is an unguarded confessional of the guilt, the necessity, the spiritual longing between a father and his child and the boomerang whiplash of moving back and forth.

So titled because it features songs he used to record for YouTube in the bay window of his flat, with music production by Avago,  ANDY LLOYD  releases  Bay Window  (DTI Records), the opening track being the somewhat warm samba sway of Soul For The Summer followed by the slow heat hazed soulful dreaminess of Into The Light that taps into his inner Bill Withers. Changing styles, Another Day Late For Love is a scampering folksy fingerpicked number about growing older but never moving forward where the words tumble over each other while Indian Summer tips into more of a bluesy rock groove with strong hooks and electric guitar. Taking the mood back down, For The Faith is a soft falsetto vocal fingerpicked shuffle with dampened drum shuffle  and harmonica, digging into more fiddle folksiness with the lazing, loping rhythm of One Man Band with McCartney undertones. Indeed, there’s also a tint of a Mull Of Kintyre strumming sway on the harmonica and piano-backed country balladeering Loneliness Will Never Let You Down, just one of the album’s many highlights.

Deep circling acoustic guitar notes, percussive clops and breathy vocals anchor Morning song, things moving to a close with the folksy shuffling vocally double-tracked (sounding like a duet) Count As One, strings-swathed piano 80s power ballad These Days Of Love, the melancholic slow walking Away From Me and, finally, fingerpicked and strings-soaked, the wistfully lovely Too Sad To Say Goodbye. This is a magnificent album and in any just universe, he’d be up there with the Ed Sheerans of the world. Available on multiple streaming platforms, do yourself a favour and track it down. It’s already one of my albums of the year, it should be one of yours too.

Headed up by Ash Hemming, JJ ASH are a reformed   incarnation of  a trio that first made waves in the 90s, announcing their return with Irish Lover, a terrific moody and menacing stomp and clap folk rock persuasion  single that moves from opening acoustic  strum to  the steady drum beat and electric guitars as the first person narrative tells how a young lad

unwisely hooked up with an older woman (“she was the age of my mother/16 when I met her/Oh, quite a man when I left her”) who happened to be married to someone away with the Irish army (the IRA, one assumes) who is now back and looking for payback. It’s a hypnotic listen, though perhaps a more emphatic ending might have been better than the gradual fade.

Though born in Liverpool and raised in Shropshire, Carol Decker has strong Birmingham associations going back to her time fronting The Lazers before hitting the big time with T’PAU. Still professionally partnered with guitarist Ronnie Rogers, the band have   maintained a high profile despite their chart star waning, with regular 80s package themed tours and the release of comeback album Red in 1998 and its 2015 follow-up Pleasure & Pain while Carol has been a  regular stage and screen presence, including taking part in The Masked Singer.

With a lineup of James Ashby  on lead guitar, bassist Luke Burnet-Smith, Pete Faint on keys, drummer Dan Western they return now with Be Wonderful, easily one of their strongest and most immediate albums, kicking off with the pounding, driving, guitars blazing Read My Lips and Carol in firecracker vocal form, taking the pave down slightly with the snakily pulsating Miles & Miles before hitting strings-washed piano stadium ballad territory on Showdown. The 90s groove kicks back in with Casual Remark with its mid-section acoustic solo before a standout Stupid Love Song provides the second big ballad with string section and a steady walking beat rhythm and bassline.

The lyrically positive and upbeat  (“Be good/Be happy/Be sad/Be sorry/Be brave/Be foolish/Be wonderful”) title track’s another punchy pop rocker with driving riffs and hooks anchored by a solid bassline, the synth, guitars and piano providing the flow for the midtempo soaring  Echo, the final stretch opening with  the funky groove of Run  and closing up with, first, the smouldering bass-led,  almost whisperingly sung World On Fire and, finally, opening with hesitant piano notes and coloured by strings, the soulful balladeering   end of a relationship (“never listen to your heart because it will always find the part of you that’s lying) Say Something  that, fading away on melancholic strings, has the same quality as China In Your Hand and could easily have been a Whitney Houston hit.  The front cover sports a photo of  a 10-year-old Carol, the music carries the heart and soul of the woman she is today.

 

Marc Lemon returns in his VILLAGE GREEN SOCIETY guise with a new vocal remix of the energetic and punchy White Plastic Moccasins, a song about “a company director who banishes his wife, who is also part of the company, to the kitchen to make coffee and fetch his fags” that  wears its Kinks (and Jam) influences on its sleeve  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvva3fs6mxo)

MIKE DAVIES COLUMN MARCH 2026

Fronted by Chris Corcoran, THE STRAWBERRY STATEMENT are a new band put together by Rob Peters who both produced and plays the drums alongside the late John McQueen on bass, John Dale on keyboards and Hannah Brown on backing vocals. Their name taken from the 1970 film set against the backdrop of 1960s counterculture, ‘The World’s Gone Mad’ (Wafer Thin) opens with ‘How High’ snarly punk flurry of fuzzed guitars  and shouty vocals that conjures thoughts of PiL as well as Peters’ own Dangerous Girls in its relentless drive and the staccato jabs.

It generally sets the musical tone for what ensues with driving drums and distorted guitars ploughing through numbers like ‘Looking Glass’, ‘Magic Box’ and ‘Open Our Minds’ while there’s an indie pop approach to ‘Our Lives’ and the catchy ‘Here She Comes’ with its vague 60s echoes, while opening with repeated bass notes,  ‘The Sound’ is almost a ballad. The title track’s a solid shouty Oi punk throwback that the Angelic Upstarts or Sham 69 might have made, ending with more distorted fuzz and bass on ‘What Difference Does It Make’. One designed to be played loud over scrappy speakers in rock dive cellars as heaving crowds elbow each other.

Their first album in ten years, following their reuniting in 2022, THE ENEMY deliver their most potently commercial yet, stuffed with strong poppy melodies, catchy hooks and riffs with frontman Tom Clarke on incendiary form. The drive and energy are laid down from the get-go with ‘The Boxer’ (not an S&G cover) which opens with a pulsing chug before the drums and keys kick in, leading to a  da da da refrain, followed by the galloping rhythm of ‘Not Going Your Way’ with its stabbing guitars and crowd friendly chorus. This initially seem to be slowing down with the intro to ‘The Last Time’ but it quickly emerges as another number designed to fill arenas and fields with bouncing bodies and waving arms.

Having lad down the album’s musical manifesto, things never let up as it propels through the likes of ‘Trouble’, ‘Controversial’ and the battering ram that is ‘Pretty Face’, only slightly slowing for the percussive hiccuppy rhythm  of ‘Social Disguises’ before the spitting sung welter that is ‘Serious’. Ending with the steady bass driving chug of  the aptly titled ‘Finish Line’ with another crowd singalong hook, the only weak spot is ‘Innocent’ where the inexplicably venture in Depeche Mode disco territory, only to find they have no map.  Variously conjuring at times The Pistols and the very best of The Wonder Stuff and Maximo Park, this should put them back at the pinnacle they’d ascended before breaking up.

In the space of just a few years, KATHERINE PRIDDY has gone from low key gigs around Birmingham,  headlining her own major venue tour. Now comes the third album, ‘These Frightening Machines’ (Cooking Vinyl)  that sees her further expanding her musical range taking in extensive use of synths and electronics alongside the organic instruments.

Fuelled by having suffered and unspecified medical condition that brought home the fragility of the female body, the songs span from  anger and despair to hope, longing and even lust,  they are expressions of solidarity and love, reclaiming the voices of women silenced by history,  as they confront illness, disconnection, the vulnerability and importance of relationships, and, as she transitioned into her 30s, the general ache of growing older and not always wiser. 

 With multi-instrumentalist Ben Christophers  featuring on most of the tracks., it strikes the first spark with ‘Matches’, a hollow repeated drum pattern underpinning the musical atmospherics. Priddy on glockenspiel and bouzouki and sung with a traditional styled intimate vocal, it’s a feminist anthem that takes its cue from the persecution of witches, often seeing them burned at the stake. But, as the sound and intensity build the thematic agenda becomes clearer (“They weren’t burning witches – it was women on those fires”), addressing the way women throughout the ages have been  both idolised and threatened by men “they kissed our mouths and bound our legs”), intimidated by their intelligence (“You never stopped to think we’d learn to fly”), as, sounding a call to empowerment, it warns “Don’t they know that we have matches, too”.

The slow walking title track with Soren Bryce on violin was written during a  prolonged period of ill health, one which affected her sense of self within her body as a whole and more specifically as a woman, the nightmare captured in the lines “A passenger at my own wheel/It’s hard to be tied to a body that tried/To erase what I needed to feel/Like a woman”. But it also speaks to anyone whatever gender who has  had similar experiences of illness or trauma and the  disassociation   between your mind and body when you’ve   lost control of your physical self, feeling trapped inside a malfunctioning, self-sabotaging machine (“All these levers and systems won’t do as they’re told anymore I’m having to learn/That these frightening machines aren’t as tough as they seem”).

Bearing shades of Joni Mitchell, with rockier drums   and 

Patrick Pearson’s electric piano,  ‘Sirius’,   named for the brightest star in the sky,  is a song of support for those who have been “drifting out much more than you’ve been tuning in” and have been having a run of romantic bad luck (“You say it’s looking up, that Lady Luck Is going to turn your world around/Then give yourself to guys who spend their lives with their eyes/Firmly on the ground”), encouraging that  “something out there’s calling you …you’ve no idea/Just how much you brighten someone’s sky”  and to “Just remember someone out there’s looking up to you”.

Warmed by Simon Dobson’s trumpet, ‘Hurricane’ finds her shifting into a sultry bossa nova, the title serving as a metaphor for a love that is both irresistible and destructive, leaving havoc in its wake (“You spilt the milk, I lapped it up I let the push become a shove/and told myself this must be love …Let me tell you … you’ll only know he’s hit you when the lights go down”), touching on how victims of abuse often find it hard to free themselves  (“you ground my heart into the floor (like you always do) Still I’m crawling back for more (like I’ve done before)”. 

American singer Torres on backing vocals and Maddie Cutter on cello, the whispery ‘Madeleine’ addresses  the often industry manufactured rivalry between female singers  (“by mistake or design/They’ve made you feel the limelight can’t be yours as well as mine/It’s an art how they keep our names apart”), leaving them “scared to lose the apples if we dare upset the cart”, as she pleads  “Don’t let them make us strangers/There’s room for two Madeleine”.  

 

The longest track at almost six minutes, the steadily pulsing, liltingly sung ‘Atlas’ with its brushed snares and yet more trumpet draws on the figure in Greek mythology literally carrying the world on his shoulders to serve as a metaphor for those weighed down by burdens and keeping weakness to yourself (“buckle, bend when no one’s watching”) but not being stoical (“don’t be afraid to say that your back is breaking/You don’t have to do this on your own… drop your ego/Say you’re tired and let me take you home”) because    you need to let your voice be heard (“you were not made to spend your days kneeling/It’s time to stand and say what I know you’re feeling”).

 With a tinkling backdrop that includes   saxophone, recorder and flute, the softly swelling  ‘A Matter Of Time’ is concerns with the passing of the years (“A decade swings by/Like the sand that keeps slipping through hands”), and the need to seize the day (“Drive off into your years/Hard on the gas…there’s no need to look in a mirror/Can’t dwell on what’s passed”) because, as she points out, “the thing is with life/It’s just a matter of time…and we’ll never be this young again”.

Anchored by fingerpicked guitar  with violinist Will Harvey and cellist Heather Truesdall adding their contributions, ‘Table Four’ is another that touches on growing older (“I’m proud to say I made it out alive I got away and clocked a fair few miles”), the pressures of her  career (“some days it feels like I’ve been/Living fast and chasing day dreams/Now they’re catching up with me/Late nights and new faces/Names attached to distance places”)  and the siren call of home (“everywhere I’ve gone I’ve had a small town on my mind/You can try to run from where you’ve come from/But you can’t leave it behind”). Here she confesses “I know I fall in love too easy/Spread myself a little thinly/Give too much and be left wanting more” and that while “now and then I’ve weighed up quitting” she “never could resist an open door”. It ends returning to the title with “save a seat at table four/ Cos I’m not running anymore/ I’ve closed the chapter, locked the door/I know you’ve heard this all before/Believe me/Leaving isn’t easy”.

Featuring co-writer George Boomsma on acoustic guitars and mandolin, Will Harvey on violin and viola, Truesdall’s cello, Richard Walters on harmonies and a  brief but soaring guitar solo by   Christophers,  the slow waltzing, strings-brushed sway of ‘I’m Always Willing’,   a thoughts of home road song   (“sleeping alone/Waking up aching/I work to the bone/Rinse and repeat again/Thinking of home/Where you’ll be waiting/Or maybe you won’t… I swear I’m coming home/You say the word/I would trade everything/ Diamonds for dirt/To be in your arms again”), is the sort of thing you want to hear as you drift off to sleep to the words “I’ll try to do love right/ I’m not always able I’m always willing”. 

Featuring bowed guitar by Christophers, it ends opening on distant piano notes and rising to an anthemic bells ringing finale with ‘Could This Be Enough?’, a reverie about making it through life’s seasons as “we make the best of what we’re given/Far from hell but not quite heaven”  and taking the time to look inward (“Think I’ve been adrift too long/To notice what I’m doing wrong/Close my eyes to steer my breathing”, the sensuality of “unmade sheets and salted skin” offset by a metaphor of “bedrooms where the damp’s set in”. Conjuring the rush and ebbing of the heart’s stirrings (“love can’t always last the Winter/If only we were evergreen/Instead of August’s fever dream”), she asks “when did we both stop believing?” but also  “could this be enough for love?”. The final line sums up both the song and the album’s  thematic self-reflections with the simple “I’ve come to accept that perhaps part of being human is being a perpetual work in progress”. Long may she continue to refine that process.

SCARLET FANTASTIC, essentially Maggie de Monde,  return with From Montreal To Rotherham (Last Night From Glasgow), a typically eclectic stylistic mix that opens with the throbbing bass and poppy dance floor energy of  ‘Make Way For Love’  with its Chorus Of Friends gospelly backing vocals.  A previous single, ‘Time’ is a percussive beat David Bowie cover  (you know the ‘he flexes like a whore/Falls wanking to the floor’ one), taken at a narcotic-paced rhythm with Rick Pentecost’s piano, Adam Phillips on violin and a cabaret-style spoken passage. Anchored by piano and double bass,  with its pulsing melody lines, nervy strings and sudden stop start stabs, again drawing on her European cabaret influences, ‘Better Day’ is a call to escape from depression (“Darkness don’t carry me away/Let me see the sun for another day/This pain deep in my soul/Don’t let me fall into that hole”) and the awareness that “lest I should forget/I know I can be free…In sweet music I will find/Some peace to soothe my anxious mind”.

There’s a pair of songs that are deeply informed by the death, a few years back, of her husband and musical partner of 27 years, Leif Kahal, the first being the orchestral upbeat 80s pop (and more double bass) of  ‘Without Summer’ (“You know life without your love is like a year without summer/How can I live my life without your love without summer/In the dawn’s early light, in the garlands of flowers/I feel your presence remain, the dream is lasting for hours”), followed by her desert-sun slow walking tribute to her ‘Cowboy Guardian Angel’ with its echoey drums intro, chiming guitar and soaring, emotion-laced vocals as she sings “I hear you in the wind sometimes, I hear your voice in song/I wrote this one for you, forever never gone…Oh how we danced/To the tune of the wind, our crazy romance”. Heartbreakingly beautiful

Co-written with and featuring Steel Pulse’s Basil Gabbidon, ‘Fill Me With Joy’(with a melody that initially part reminded me of ‘Summer Place’) is another dreamy sway that speaks to the album being suffused with hope rather than pulled down by loss and grief (“Hush the mind, see what we find, and leave the soul to speak/Unspoken words, feelings of knowing/Blessed moments forever growing/Seeds of love are what we sow, mystic dream is how we know”) where she sounds like a cocktail of Winehouse and Piaf. Likewise, the repeated nocturne  piano notes and strings of  ‘Blossom Alley’ that begins like   Nick Cave holding hands with Joan Baez but then unfolds into a carousel oompah lurchalong and what feels like children’s voices on backing as she sings “I dream I dance with blossoms on the breeze/That leave us too soon but now is our chance to reach for the moon/To live to laugh, to love to dance, a little romance”.

If Weimar cabaret is one of her touchstones, it seems apt that the next track, co-writer John Walters from Landscape on vocals and Phillips on violin, another song of love and desire has her in a ‘Berlin Room’ (“I’m coming alive again, I feel your fire …I will lie with you again/In the moonlight on our sacred bed/You tell me you ache for me, you call me Goddess/a cosmic awakening, nothing more nothing less”), even if it’s carried by  Spanish swaying beats  intercut with soaring swirls into tango territory.

Co-written with her late husband with son Sean on drums, brushed snares, trumpet and finger snaps carry the snake rhythm ‘Injecting Thunder’, a sultry sung  retro dance hall swayer that again speaks to their story of romance  (“I was sitting in a bar in heartbreak city/When I first saw that face of yours/Through thick smoke I introduced myself/So you would be mine forevermore…The way you move your hips to the rhythm of the beat/Makes me feel butterflies”).

Isobel Cooper on cello and more tinkling piano phases, it ends with the irresistibly catchy near six-minute tumbling Eurythmics gone hymnal pop of  ‘Jesus Green’, the title presumably a reference to the Cambridge park, closing the album on soaring notes of bright hope and acceptance (“I think I knew deep down inside I run on instinct, helps me survive/How do we know what the future will be?/Just let go and live the mystery”), a song that can proudly stand alongside ‘No Memory’.  Fabulous and indeed Fantastic.

For his third album, The Bracken And Tread,  GEORGE BOOMSMA has taken his travels in Nepal as inspiration, documenting the journey and experiences in song.   

It begins with ‘Make A Start’, a lurching bluesy keys-driven  slouch about his  demolition therapy redecorating his late brother’s room, basically telling himself to off his arse and, as a songwriter,  “shed off those shoddy rhymes on brotherly love”.

Again referencing his brother, ‘People Say’  is a chirpy number, with a whistling bridge, about performing his last album live (“I don't want to bring them down, the singing's already sour”) and moving forward, leading  to the scuffed shuffle of ‘You Said’ from whence the album title comes, an unspoken conversation with his sister after deciding to do a therapeutic trek together  to “dust off the dead”.

And so, Kieran Towers  on fiddle and Charlotte Carrivick on banjo, he follows her to ‘Kathmandu’ which, despite the location, plays as a bluegrassy number as he speaks of being awestruck by the scenery.

The falsetto sung, plucked strings, dreamily swaying ‘David And The Elephant’ tells of a man from the Orkneys, and presumably a pachyderm, he met in Nepal who was “partial to the folkie, as well as karaoke” who also seems to have been there to exorcise old ghosts.

The handclappy, staccato fingerpicked ‘Ghorepani-on-High’ with its steady hypnotic drum beat is set in Nepal village of the title and tells of his arduous and lengthy trek   to the peak of Poon Hill (“One at a time, stairway of stones/And my aching bones, dog tired/It is a climb after all, then with a tune that might have been penned by Chris Cleverley,  it’s ‘4am’ when the top’s reached, the view soaked in  and the effort rewarded.

Electric guitar making its first real impression and  the rhythm and arrangement conjuring thoughts of Stealers Wheel , ‘Pokhara Line’ has him apprehensively taking a mind-broadening solo bus journey after his sister’s returned home, thinking of those still there home (“I see my woman on a Saturday night as I daydream my way to her”).Musically, it’s back to Americana with the campfire waltzing ‘To Bandipur’, a hilltop Newari town in situated between Kathmandu and Pokhara, and an encounter with a hustler guide who takes him there  ending with the near six-minute slow dreamy, piano-tinkled trudge of ‘Black And Blue’, him  lost at midnight in the  middle of Bhaktapur,  the smallest and most densely populated city of Nepal, and having something of a mystical experience (“Embered eyes pass by lined with gold/Still I hope like the fallen fly/I'd turn to witness spinning round/The emerald of the square/As empty as stone”) .

The physical copies have the tracks blended into each other linked by with audio clips recorded on his phone  in Nepal and electroacoustic compositions, creating  an  immersive sound design best experienced as a continuous listening flow.  Strap on your metaphorical backpack and journey with him.