Having released her punchy, rocky debut back in 2019, Irish-blood Solihull singer-songwriter CERI JUSTICE returns with Walk In Shadow (Self-released) keeping the power still pretty much turned up with her vocals at times reminiscent of the raunchier side of Carol Decker. While playing live she has a band backing, the album is, save for strings and pedal steel on one track, impressively just her and multi-instrumentalist producer Paul Johnston, opening in swaggery bluesy form with Wanted, underlining the solid blue collar bar band nature of her sound. Beginning with an electronic hum, the pace pulls back to a slower, snakier groove with The Creek, which initially seems to be a brooding portrait of the sort of toxic guy you really don’t want to strike up a liaison with (“Fork-tongue runs away with you/When you start to speak …The aura of corruption/Follows you around… Love shatters into pieces/When lust is all you seek/Selfish schemes and broken dreams”), but is actually about the treatment of the Native Americans (“Stolen generation/Took away their land/Put your chains around them/Could not make a stand”).
It’s back then to a chugging guitar and drums rock number for Now I See, a number about a deceiving heartbreaking ex who “Trampled on my dreams” and the realisation that “love can be blind/A rush to the head that sends you reeling/When it falls apart you just need healing”.
As with the debut, there’s a couple of covers, first up nodding to her country influences with Jolene, taken at a slightly slower pace than the original with the opening fiddle giving it a more forlorn mood before the drums kick in. In complete contrast the other gives a sassily sung country pop-rock swagger to Eddie and the Hot Rods classic Do Anything You Wanna Do that sounds like it would go down a storm live.
Returning to the self-penned material and continuing down the path of broken hearts Love’s Let Me Down is a slow, strings-soaked Americana sway to acoustic guitar and pedal steel, an equally ruminative sensibility informing the cascading chords, chiming guitars, tick tocking beat and softly sung Got This Feeling, a particular stand out and of a more upbeat nature (“One day I’ll be there in your arms/One look at your face and I’ll fall for your charms once again/You always could make it right”). Sandwiched between, however, it kicks back up again with the riff-driven You Did What You Did where she decides the love rat should get his comeuppance (“Now you gotta pay cuz you had your fun/Gonna start talkin bout you… It wouldn’t take much for you to leave town/And she would feel better if you weren’t around… So hitch up your wagon and just roll on by/I’m done with your talkin’ and tired of your lies”).
One of two lengthy tracks, opening quietly with appropriate sound effects, the five-minute plus Thunder starts out as a sparsely arranged, mid-tempo number before a heavier drum, more tribal rhythm takes over to bolster the lyrics where new love has a more elemental rush (“Sends my spirit reeling/Sweeps me off the ground”) before it’s back to sweaty saloon band strut and bluesy guitar riffery and sparking solo for the penultimate Mess You Up where, having been walked over earlier, she’s reborn holding all the sexually charged aces and burning with animal passion. It ends (save for the bonus remix of the rocking ‘JCC’ off the debut) with the wind effects intro to the eight-minute title track where, anchored by metronomic percussion, military drums and keening fiddle, she explores her Irish heritage with its call to “take me home”, and mention of County Cork, castle walls, ancient halls, rivers, mountains and a love that keeps growing “Wild and free as the Celtic sea”, a reference to the iconic parting glass and the sound of gunfire “cutting through this Rebel land” with the image of a woman waiting for her lover away fighting with “this brave and marching band”.
Her profile’s currently largely limited to her local stomping grounds, but given the exposure this should see her finding a much wider audience.
A refreshingly eccentric singer-songwriter with a keen ear for despondent whimsy and melody, Kings Heath’s WILLIAM WILLIAM RODGERS (his stage name lifted from a line in John Cale’s Paris 1919) makes his self-released album debut with William William Rodgers Sings The Yellow Pages, a delightful collection of songs that range from the opening organ drone of the wearied swaying shanty folksiness of the ageing-themed (“Are we heading for the scrapheap/Or will life start again at sixty five”) Are We Still On sung in the voice of a woman urging her lover to not see her at her early morning worst (“I awake with a start and the air hangs heavy/Stinking of sweat and factor fifty lotion/Now I don’t want you to see me like this/I don’t want you to treat me like this/I don’t want you to see the bitterness/That’s smudging my birthday mascara”) to the funky minor to major staccato rhythm love song Gone Shrimping, and the dreamily reflective romantic bittersweet acoustic Mermaid Tattoo (“scarf weather again/I left a bag of green on a memorial bench/perched high up on the cliffside, grey-faced and lonely/in the arsehole of the year/all of the place was barred against intruders/as I was getting ready to pack up my suitcase/I went down to the strand to scratch my initials/you came like a wave, washed them away/and life would never be the same”) where he namechecks Sonny & Cher.
The album’s veined with melancholia, particularly to the end with, preceded by the brief acoustic instrumental Dickens-alluding Bleak Hut, the flute-coloured jazz-folk jittery rhythmic 77 Walking Sticks which relates an unexpected encounter with an old flame (“I rounded the corner/I thought you'd been buried/fathoms deep in my diary like a first year crush or common room grudge/a push then a shove/the sea takes a bite wipes its mouth, draws it tight”), and the lovely acoustic regret and poetic lyrics of Sigh (“now I know we haven't spoken since I spilled the beans/and it somehow got back to you/I remember stars went falling all around my ears were they falling round yours too?/I could see I'd been the villain but didn't have the strength to admit that it was you who'd been wronged and that for someone so committed to dodging every shower you were drenched to the bone”).
It ends on a similarly bittersweet note, returning to thoughts of growing older and mortality with the viola-tinted strummed guitar, accordion and piano ballad If I Die Before You (“and if I die before you/won't you burn my letters please/stoke the fire with postcards and jaundiced diaries/and if I die before you won't you check my books with care there's a petal from our wedding day and a lock of Charlie's hair”).
There’s also one cover on the album, a choice that underscores his own very English sensibilities as a writer and musician, The Slow Train being the 1963 song by comic songs dup Flanders & Swann, a lament for the rural and suburban railway stations lines lost in the cuts inflicted by The Beeching Report, here chiming with the theme of loss and regret that permeates his own work.
Female duo THE VANILLA PODS describe themselves as Powerpuff Girls in an indie edition using their guitars as a weapon to fight the evil in this world - the boredom! The mission continues with new self-released single NA NA with its persistent rhythm and repeated title chant, marking them out as a fun cocktail of Bananarama, Fuzzbox and Poppy & The Jezebels.
A four-piece from Solihull, comprising frontman Pearce Macca, drummer Niall Fennell, bassist Jonny Fyffe and guitarist Liam Deakin, THE CLAUSE exude cool and are one of the biggest rising names on the local scene, their new single Electric with its handclaps, female backing vocals and snarly guitar solo embodying their fusion of 60s, 80s and 90s rock and pop, with a Robert Palmer swagger, a Duran groove and an indie attitude.
SAM REDMORE gives Giorgio Moroder's organ-driven Tears (Jalapeno) a rework with an Afro Latin groove and cumbia percussion, horns and strings, twinned with a cover of Just Be Good To Me that shares a similar feelgood township vibe.
Another local outfit delivering punchy, catchy indie rock with infectious hooks and choruses are OVERPASS, On Your Own being their fourth self-released single that seems them moving beyond past Arctic Monkeys and The Strokes influences, their recent sell out gig at the O2 Institute a signal that they’re ready to take the next step up the national ladder.
Lining up as Garran, James, Xavier and Scarlett, their Facebook page describes HEADSHRINKERS as “Unflinching poetry set atop confrontational searing lead guitar riffs, thunderous, driving bass-lines and pummelling drums”, or, if you prefer they have a similar dark, swirly, echoey vocals post-punk sound as Editors with shades of Joy Division/New Order and The Cure as captured on new single Monocle, taken from upcoming debut EP Doorway Conversations, the video part filmed on a canal narrowboat is well worth a look on YouTube.
Fronted by James B Gibney, BIG SKY ORCHESTRA are a soulful five piece with strong flavours of classy 80s American close harmony AOR to be heard on debut single Hollywood Nights with its funky guitar distortion solo.
R.John Webb’s new project as DANDY THE VANDAL gears up for the debut album with new single We Are The Subterraneans on Pete Steel’s Catch The Buzz label, funky-Bowie styled groove with brass, steady marching beat, background woo hoos and strobe effect guitar riff as he declares “Long live the Subterraneans/We shall survive/We’re here and we are salient/Never to die”.
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