MIKE DAVIES COLUMN SEPTEMBER 2026

Currently based in  San Francisco,  MATTHEW EDWARDS  pays tribute to his roots with  The Small Heath Book Of The Dead (Too Good To Be True) charting   hardships, lost friends  and mythic landscape variously accompanied by Isaac Bonnell on keys and electric guitar, drummer Paul Comaskey, Daniel Fabricant on upright bass. Tom Heyman on pedal steel, percussionist Andres Reyes Gomes, Karina Denike  on  backing vocals and Charith Premawardhana  and Diane Grubbe on viola and woodwind, respectively.

The John Betjeman Blues  (“Disheveled, dyslexic, dirty and damned/We couldn’t get on so we started a band/I played the Heretic harmonium/And all of the cool kids thought we were dumb”) opens in a claustrophobic bluesy rock mood, again vocally sounding like a fusion of Bowie and Roy Harper, then, Angeline Morrison on backing vocals and pedal steel keening, Old Albion is a slow walking country-coloured number about antipathy (“There’s nazis in the shopping mall/So put the kettle on…we’ve hung up our principles on the washing line…all along I think we’ve known what’s wrong/But we’ll sit in our bedrooms and put some records on”).

A brief acoustic and pedal steel number, New English Library (publisher of such counter culture books as Chopper, Suedehead and Mama) marks a furtive budding sexual awakening through the pages of books and nudie  magazines , declaring “from Geoffrey Chaucer to these annuals of savagery/Each page is delightful, deliciously doomed/Look out world I’m arriving there soon”.

A woozy swayalong The Redgraves   presumably has nothing to do with the acting dynasty (unless a reference to Vannesa  and her brother’s anti-war political activism) but the line lifted from to the satirical military protest song Bless ‘Em All hints at it being about a veteran  with PTSD  (“He’s been drinking since Christmas 2004/As it helps with the tyrants, it helps with the bores”).

 Another bluesy Bowie-esque strummer,  Bad Timing is another about someone with a  fucked up life (“He married well but they had bad timing…and it followed them around…a slow divorce and his bad timing/And he knew it all along”).  Katie Chan on saxophone, the clipping percussion-driven title track nods to the punk era with lyrics that namecheck iconic venues (the Jester, The Jug of Ale, The Nightingale, The Viaduct) and “the sound of life underground” embodied in such clique local fashion legends as “Jane and Patty and Mike and Carol/All of them dressed in immoral apparel”.

Haunted by  the ghosts of Sgt Pepper, Experimental Theatre is wry lament about losing a girlfriend to an avant garde art troupe and the narrator developing an existential crisis as a consequence , so take a bow if you recognised Jarre, BS Johnson and Romain Gary as cult artist who came to tragic ends. 

Moving with a Latin sway and woodwind frills, Harriet High is basically a love song  (“I’m sick of them looking through you/So come to bohemia with me”)  thought how romantic running away to Dolgellau in Wales is open to debate.

 It ends with the barroom piano boogie and  boxing-themed metaphor of the lyrically tumbling  speak-sing Matthew Edwards vs Himself  (“A title fight for the middleweight belt…so, take a seat at ringside/Because the only one that’s losing is me/It’s Matthew Edwards Vs the past/A brighter lad of working class”). As musically accessible and engaging as it is often lyrically obscure, its been described as “diaristic glam-folk with a strong emotional core and compelling narrative bent”. Seems fair.

Titled for the iconic Birmingham landmark, BONFIRE RADICALS are in fine fettle for their third full-length self-released album Spaghetti Junction (with their trademark mix of mesmerisingly chaotic but highly discipled  instrumentals that see a wide spectrum of world music styles colliding. 

Sporting the Eastern European colours you’d expect from the title,  Pete Churchill and clarinetist  Katie  Stevens knocked out Balkan Replacement Service over a lunch hour between workshops, the track featuring Pete’s new acquisition of  a cherry-wood Italian accordion (apparently bought with money earned from his solar panels). The shortest track at just over three minutes,  it opens with a brief drone before rattling along like a bus driven by a dervish, taking bends on two wheels and, taking a break from Ilias Lintzos’s clattering drums,  briefly calling into the depot for a  woodwind whirlygig solo.

For Im Tocht Lang Tae See Dee, violinist Sarah Farmer (her last album with the band and now replaced by Emily Dawe|) gathers together three traditional tunes   from Shetland's fiddle tradition, Dus Bun Lang Awa Am Im Tocht Lang Tae See Dee., an untitled reel learned from Kevin Anderson of Fiddler’s Bid and  the traditional-styled Willie Be Wast Da Loch composed by  Gideon Stove.

After that little mouthful, the longest track  is the tempo and style swerving six-minute plus  Northern Lights which, to quote the notes is a Norwegian/Swedish sandwich with an  afrobeat, South African highlife and Ethiopian inspired 6/8 groove filling peppered by a Sub-Saharan clave.. 

World music buffs will of course know that Der Heyser Bulgar is a 19th-century dance tune made  famous by clarinetist Naftule Brandwein, here repped by Katie, though back then nobody ever thought to  flesh it out with a doom-rock middle section and a closing accordion-led wonky waltz. 

Michelle Holloway’s recorder dancing along and the bass pulsing, Green Fingered Hector has its origins in guitarist Emmar Reading’s first gig with the band were she realised to her horror that she had no idea how to play the next track on the set list  and comes with a virtually Wagnerian wordless vocal, the percussion freaking out on either side.

Originally commissioned by composer Sid Peacock for his Surge Orchestra, Krims Krams Rŭčenica lets Katie loose for her take on a traditional Bulgarian waltz, Krim Krams a colloquial German term meaning "knick-knacks" " and Rŭčenica that aforementioned waltz, this version opening on melancholic notes and climaxing with a drum n bass finale.

North East Brazil is the port of call for Mara anchored by Maracatu rhythms, Katie providing the drum clattering opening Jig For Mini  in response to some guitar loop pedal noodling by Emma and the second, Bog an Lochan, one of the earliest strathspeys  in the Highland manuscripts, giving percussion its head before closing with The Ivy League Set taken from the repertoire of 19^th century piper Phillip Goodman with Katie on whistle. 

Like the opener, the title track was the result of a Katie and Pete dare, resulting in  a lurching frolic lifted from an unperformed tune he’d written for a Sardinian band they’d once both been in and comes with a mock-opera choir singing the title before it seems to come to a wheezing halt only to burst back to life with a brief flurry of da da das

 It ends with another local nod with the bonus track, the only actual song,  the slow swaying, phone lights aloft, Birmingham Rain, an American folk-tinged hometown heartbreak anthem (“Driver stops by me, I get in by his side/What can I tell him don’t want to explain/Tell him my tears are  just Birmingham Rain”) written by local singer-songwriter Barbara Norden, wistfully sung by Michelle backed by the Choir with No Name  Birmingham, the city's choir for people affected by homelessness of which she’s a volunteer, Pete the musical director  and Katie playing in its band. Well worth navigating. 

One of John Napier’s many music projects, an angular punk-funk trio with Olly Forrester and Andy Kearney also behind the head sacs, THE LINE MANAGERS return with New Lines Of Enquiry via Adrian Goldberg’s label Jenny's Feather Factory (named for a great aunt who died in the Holocaust), kicking off with the abrasive chugging bass staccato but catchy False Starts, a surging Welcome To The Real World follows (Stranglers influences sparking away) with its slowed down mid-section and freak out ending. 

Opening with a pulsing electronic beat, the vocals initially back in the mix, Algorithms  is a slow-paced rap on similar lines to Big Special that heads to a clattering drums ending, giving way to the pop funky riffs and rhythm of Big Surprise. It ends with, first, the bass burping, drum thudding  guitar stabbing Dead Horse Theory with its catchy chorus hook and then, with a spoken chatter intro, the environmental-crisis themed Fundamental with its lengthy choppy, drum drone and prog-rock  guitar scraping instrumental build up to the vocals and hood refrain before it vanishes into the ether.  As a bonus, there’s a live version of The Black Post with its rant against the stagnation of post-millennial culture and which surely owes a debt to Blue Oyster Cult as much as The Fall. 

MIKE DAVIES COLUMN AUGUST 2026

Most recently seen playing with or supporting Rob Peters, HANNAH BROWN returns to  her own music with the self-released I Found Myself. A moody keys, guitars and drums arrangement with a dank forest folk feel she says it “speaks to my awakening beyond societal expectations and criticism, unleashing raw, unfiltered expression from the heart. Eyes wide open whilst venturing deeper into the depths of who I am.” Or to quote the lyric: “I found a path that looked so dark… it felt lonely at first/I found a path and it felt like heaven”.

Becoming increasingly ubiquitous, KATHERINE PRIDDY’s just released Secrets Still Remain via Bandcamp, her fingerpicked atmospheric and spookily sung theme tune to Radio 4’s podcast Uncanny Cold Cases,  her soaring ethereal and  ghostly vocals set against a   stormy soundscape that soars to a dramatic   climax before fading to a whispered ending. 

For her contribution to this year’s sports-themed 21st Century Folk for BBC Radio 2, she’s also just released  The Long Way Home a nimbly fingerpicked, featheringly sung folksy song with puttering drums  about Hannah Lancaster  who was an elite cyclist and her sister’s carer  before sustaining a brain injury in a crash. Now recovered, she’s  training to be a fire-fighter and Priddy says the song is her attempt to capture the young woman behind everything, discovering herself on her path to recovery.

And continuing the cycling theme, the lyrics capturing the rhythm and pressure of the race, Cyclone, is a standalone non-album single from DAN WHITEHOUSE with Dave O’Brien to commemorate   Marshall Walter "Major" Taylor. An American sprint champion, born in 1878, he set more than 20 world records despite enduring relentless racism and segregation both on and off the track making history as the second Black world champion in any sport and the first African-American to achieve a world championship in cycling. In his notes, Whitehouse wrote the song inspired by Taylor’s self-belief after learning that, at just 18, he was  only Black competitor among   28 riders who participated in the Six Day Race at Madison Square Garden, completing 1732 miles on the 0.1 mile track and sleeping only one hour for every seven, all while being pushed and pulled by the other riders and taunted and jeered by the crowd. (www.dan-whitehouse.com)

Dan’s also the driving force behind The Wall People,  a community songwriting and storytelling project based at The Priory Community Centre in Dudley. In similar fashion to his project about Stourbridge’s glassmaking heritage, this explores  the everyday culture of neighbours (especially  those of  the Priory and Wrens Nest housing estates) gathering informally on garden walls, front steps and local shops - where conversation, humour and mutual support continue to shape community life in the absence of the  pubs, venues and shops that have closed down. Featuring song and spoken word, it was  inspired by oral histories and memories of life in the Black Country from residents, among them local butcher Roger Beasley (Williams The Butchers) and  salon owner Sharon Haywood (Sharon’s Salon), the project also features new music created by students of St James’ Academy and young people working with hip hop artist Marik Erskine.  

 It opens with the project title, written by Dan who adds guitar and vocals with Gustaf Ljunggren  on piano, mandolin and bass and  community voices (Dan’s parents Pete and Brenda included), providing the backing.   He’s is also the vocalist  and lyrics writer for  the semi-spoken Any Old Iron, Williams The Butchers, Sharon’s Salon and Follow Your Star (co-written with  Adam Bradley) and co-wrote  the rather lovely Bromley Bridge, the vocals here by Jenny Sunter.  The strummed Corsican Pine is written and sung by Alex Jones while, feature rap from Erskine, Beautiful Town and Dudley Kingdom write written and inspired by students of St James’ Academy. Finally, with looped spoken word sample from Shane Stevens,  Dan’s son Taiga Mori-Whitehouse provides the strings for the spacey beats-led Split An Atom.

The past few years have seen THE LOST NOTES ride an ever-swelling wave from singing  at open mic sessions to selling out the 280 seater Jennifer Blackwell Performance Space at Symphony Hall. And it here that, on Feb 4, they recorded Live at Birmingham Symphony Hall, the album capturing the warmth, energy, musical diversity, wit and finesse of their celebrated live shows. The regular full band line-up of  Ben Mills (vocals, guitar, harmonica, trumpet,  piano), Oli Jobes (vocals, guitar), Lucy Mills (vocals, ukulele), Max Tomlinson (drums) and Pete Churchill (double bass, accordion) was augmented on some numbers by acclaimed jazz pianist Piera Onacko, Rebecca and Simon from opening act The Rosellys on banjo  and fiddle and the massed voices of The Choir With No Name.

Mixing material from their three albums alongside songs as yet to get a  studio treatment, it opens with familiar set favourite Holdin’On, starting with a slow strummed guitar before breaking out into an up-tempo flurry guaranteed to get the crowd roused. Whisky For Breakfast takes thing in a  slower, bluesier direction with Ben on harmonica before Don’t Try It On Me showcases their harmonies and Americana colours. Nudging seven minutes, Lucy on lead, Done With The Waiting with its Anadalcuian guitar intro and Latin jazzed urgency marks the first piano solo showcase appearance by Onacko before Oli takes over for the acoustic swayalong folksiness of  A Fool Once Told Me.

Oli again on vocals, the first of the ‘new’ songs comes with the fingerpicked Head Over Heels, another folksy track, followed by the second with Lucy on  the smokey jazz bar piano blues of  her self-penned Heartache.

Returning to familiar ground, the CWNN joins proceedings for  the sha la la la folk pop of Slow Down with its unaccompanied refrain before kicking the pace back up with the swaggering, trumped-coloured country romping Wildman showcasing Churchill’s double bass. .Audience whoops welcome another set favourite with Simon Rosselly joining on fiddle for  the bluegrassy galloping Run Like A River, an outlaw on the run after shooting his unfaithful wife and her lover number   before committing suicide.

Switching the mood comes the fingerpicked guitar and close harmonies of the glorious Pieces Of A Star, followed by another highlight staple with Ben on peak form for the building bluesy ballad God Loves A Sinner. It’s back to piano for another new number, Ben on lead for the slow and melancholic, gradually swelling We Don’t Need Another Love Song, Lucy showcasing on the addictive toxic relationship  number Mine Is The Heart with its   melodic and thematic echoes of Diamonds & Rust. 

Churchill’s bass get prominence for the jazzed boogie of  Hey Maloney with its  call and response vocals, another new number the lyrics of which feature the title of their last album, Good Luck Shoes. That album’s the source of the penultimate anthemic front porch country ballad No Place Like Home with its  resonant fingerpicked guitar, Onako, The Rossellys and the CWNN returning to the stage for the rousing audience handclapper, all join in seven-minute staple  closer Take My Hand.  Sadly missing from the night’s set are All At Sea,  I Got Time, actual closer Run Free Right Now and  the encore, Green Grass, but that’s a  bit like a glutton complaining the feast didn’t have enough cream cakes.  With a new studio album lined up before the year ends, it’s surely only a matter of time before they’re back to sell out signs on the main stage too.

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Based in Stourbridge, THE CLARKES & Co  are Stephen  and Sue Clarke, he on guitar, she  English concertina, their music acoustic and at times pastoral folk with  wry, sometimes witty lyrics about matters of the heart, passing time and, occasionally, politics

The ebb tide of the years is the theme for Save the Pangolin and Nine Other Love Stories’ opening musician-themed circular fingerpicked June Moon Spoon   with its talk of  youthful self-destructive tendencies (“Climbed the tree for fun/Then you sawed off the branch/The one you were standing on”) and .family fragmentations (“You married your sweetheart, raised a family/Your wife she flew left the nest but your kids are yet to leave”), although it ends though with the positive thought that while the “there’s still time to call the tune/To find the rhyme for June and Spoon”  rather than just “howling at the moon in a garden on the edge of town”.   

 Given a choppy rhythm,  Starlings sketches a long-lasting romantic bond though the image of a pair of perching birds “ while, opening with concertina, Coming Home To Me  is   about finding yourself in memories of the past  after losing direction.

The sort of title track, the close harmony fingerpicked ‘Pangolin’ (a scaly ant-eater if you didn’t know) opens with an image of a clay model made by a friend and moves to talk of conservation and potential extinction with it hunted for its meat and medicinal scales.

Another with a circling guitar pattern, the title of  the bluesy folk Car Park D (For Chemotherapy) tells its own story with its hospital visit observations while The Man It Happened To takes a similar look at potential mortality (“You won’t see it coming/You won’t hear those blaring horns./It’s too late to get the warning”) with a stiff upper lip response (“When the sky comes down on you/Put on your hat and walk on through…Though you know you’ve lost the game/You go and play it anyway”).

A troubadour Americana number, Rockabye Lullaby is an at least partial post-recovery celebration (“Now the meaning of good news/Has been redefined/Not what we would choose/But I’ll make them friends of mine”) just as Dancing Backwards is about being grateful for what you have and the time you’ve had it. It does though  carry hints of a break-up … (“you’re not coming my way/I’m headed for the street/Like that bird on the wire/I think that’s how I tend to feel/The only thing I know for sure/Is who got the better deal”), a  suggestion that carries over   into the nimbly picked and discordant concertina Between The  Thorn And The  Rose (“She packed a suitcase, all memories and tears/The worst and the best thing that she had done in years/That’s the way it goes”).

It ends with another realistic but optimistic note with On We Go as Stephen sings “what you get is what you see/It’s getting better for you and me/Books and covers are all on show/Turn the page and on we go…we can grow old now, down by the sea/Watching the boats come in/Watching them sail away - building our stone tower to the toppling sun”. 

Exclusively on Bandcamp, Maggie de Monde, aka SCARLET FANTASTIC, is releasing Without Summer Remixed, headed up by a stripped back voice and piano version alongside  a New Order-flavoured dancefloor remix by Cold War Cowboys capturing the Balearic club spirit from the late 1980s while Montjuic taps into summer sunsets for a spacey chilled out downtempo poolside mix.

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)