Formed at Bham Uni and fronted by Shannon, four piece dance pop outfit DAME release Cold Water, opening staccato before hitting its groove and conjuring thoughts of Lisa Stansfield. Fusing rock and folk influences and inspired by the likes of Damien Rice and , Daughter,
RYAN SPARROW delivers the six minute plus To Know, a slow, heady and soulful ballad that breaks into a lengthy chilled guitar solo in the final stretch, promising well for the eventual album.
Taken from upcoming EP Fracture, The Night And Its Charms finds THE TABOO CLUB in a kind of Editors-like dark and intense mood but also coloured with a dance sensibility, fractured rhythms, squally brass and snarly guitars. YIKES are a cool fuzzed guitar anti-pop four piece with shades of Stone Roses through a Nirvana grunge filter, deftly compressed into assuredly arrogant new single Iron Deficiency.
OFFAL CLUB is, according to the website, a self-proclaimed ‘singer/songwriter’ who serves up amusing, confusing, sometimes absurd punky indie-pop over home-cooked rhythm tracks, seasoned with a hint of melancholy. Roughly translated, that means he’s poppily playful with simple but catchy tunes, as to be found on new Unavailable EP featuring current BrumRadio playlisted single Ah Dear, Don’t Cry with its hints of 60s Spector over the intro ad he sings about getting angry after being hit in the face by a football. Elsewhere the swaggery stride along Less is More (“though the future's bright I stand in the shade/To avoid the limelight of my victory parade”) is equally catchy while the title track is a punkier pop drum pummelling bounce that manages to namecheck Ventnor and Blackgang Chine on the Isle of Wight and Festoon Lights with its loose limbed guitar line and scuffed snare is a brief little love song with a vaguely Latin sway.
Irish folk-pop siblings Us4 follow up last year’s Tears Of A Clown (no, not that one) with a lovely rendition of the traditional The Fields of Athenry, which, joined by Mike Egan from Liverpool alt-rock outfit Polybius, opens in sparse, restrained Irish balladry style before erupting in a flurry of drums and guitars to positively scamper along with a ringing zest and tin whistle (played by singer Áine) putting me in mind of Lick The Tins.
ROBERT LANE continues to get increasingly poppy, strings patterned, piano-led new single Pass The Day, about letting things happen and being open to the possibility that sometimes things go the way you want without being forced, conjuring myriad thoughts of Leo Sayer, Gilbert O’Sullivan, and McCartney.
Riding on the back of the recent upsurge of interest, THE NIGHTINGALES release I ❤ CCTV as a free download from Bandcamp (https://uknightingales.bandcamp.com/album/i-cctv-free-digital-single), a typically abrasive number that strides along sounds like a fractured, bass monster version of Iggy’s The Passenger and is twinned with a live recording from Scheer of the warped Beefheartian Simple Soul.
Following on from her voice only album Alone On A Hill, KATY ROSE BENNETT gets positively symphonic in comparison on new single ‘Hard To Be Human’ (Little House On The Hill Records) as she draws on organ, warped piano and, er, scissor samples to augment her vocals on a dreamily drifting number about recognising how it can sometimes be a struggle to deal with the demands of life, those days when you can’t get anything done, but accepting that those difficulties and how we cope with them are what make us who we are and that “this too shall pass”. (www.katyrosebennett.com)
Back in 1988, Brian Nordhoff, Joe Stevens, Les Fleming and the sadly now late Roberto Cimarosti joined forces with Hamburg-born singer Billie Ray Martin to form dark, psychedelic, bluesy, electronic soulful house outfit ELECTRIBE 101, releasing debut single Talking With Myself, followed up in 1989 with Lipstick on My Lover and, their first Top 40 hit, Tell Me When the Fever Ended and the reissue of their debut, which reached 23 in the charts and went on to become a Balearic club classic. Their debut album Electribal Memories appeared in 1990, peaking at 26 but, dropped by their label, the band split in 1991, the four guys going on to become The Groove Corporation and Martin returning to solo work. They left behind an unreleased follow up, several tracks of which were subsequently re-recorded by Martin, as singles and for her 1995 solo debut. The album has remained gathering dust until now, finally seeing the light of day as Electribal Soul via Martin’s Electribal Records imprint, and serves as a welcome reminder of just how brilliantly they fused US house and soul with European dance, Kicking off with the hypnotic Insatiable Girl on which Martin comes over like a cross between Alison Moyet and Annie Lennox and sounds strikingly contemporary, underliving how ahead of their time they were. Elsewhere Space Oasis rides a pulsing, persistent rave groove with vague Lionel Richie echoes with Martin soaring to the high notes, the fabulous eight minute Moving Downtown is rumbling dark soul with a motorik rhythm while Conquering Tomorrow is a glistening Oriental-flavoured instrumental chill and A Sigh Won’t Do is smouldering torch soul set to a dub feel and hiphop beat. Completed by the keyboards-based Deadline For My Memories, the electronic club noir True Moments Of My World, Hands Up And Amen and the sinuously snaking seductive soul Persuasion with its femme fatale spoken passages plus bonus additions on an alternative Deadline mix and the You and I (Keep Hanging On) which goes from skeletal spooked to full on Lorraine Ellison meets Bassey diva, it doesn’t feel remotely dated and puts many of today’s kindred musical spirits in the shade. It’s been 20 years coming, but it’s a genuinely lost masterpiece.
YIKES are a cool fuzzed guitar anti-pop four piece with shades of Stone Roses through a Nirvana grunge filter, deftly compressed into assuredly arrogant new single Iron Deficiency.
