Having acoustically revisited older material in his two ‘The Custodian’ albums, MILES HUNT returns with ‘Thing Can Change’ (Good Deeds) his first (and reputedly his last) all new solo album since 2002. Despite the title, fans will be pleased to know they haven’t to any great extent as, with remote collaborations with The Cults Billy Duffy, Steve Gurl, former Ned’s guitarist Rat, and Pete Howard, this is his easily recognisable sound and style, opening with the sax of the mid-tempo ‘I Used To Want It All’, a song written in spring 2020 that speaks of finding contentment (“I can wait until tomorrow before I make any plans”. Featuring Rat, the swayalong ‘And She Gives (For Laney)’, dedicated to one of his closest friends who donated a kidney to a mutual friend, is about selflessness before the pace picks up slightly with Laura Kidd of Penfriend on the drums-driven lockdown-based title track which is essentially about not giving in and giving up.
‘In My Sights’ is jaunty little bounce of a number that finds him reflecting on his solitary status (“I’m still waiting for the One./I thought I had her but she’s gone”), but again looking on the bright side (“while the space I’m in his tight/I always make it through the night/For the morning brings me light”) and “on the upside there’s calls coming down the line from people I truly admire”.
Billy Duffy features on the catchy, tumbling ‘Lucid Is As Lucid Does’, a response to a recent bust up that has him admitting “I don’t listen to reason and that’s my bad luck”, Penfriend making her second appearance on the strummed ‘A Picture By A Stranger’, the tune originally written by Mark Thwaite for The Wonder Stuff’s last album, the lyrics inspired by a walk some years earlier in Central Park West with a girl he’d recently met and their photo being taken (“right by Lennon’s place”) by someone putting together an exhibition called ‘couples’.
Morgan Nicholls brings his bass guitar to the staccato rhythm of ‘We Can All Do Better’, a reunion of all three Vent 414 members (Howard on drums) after over 25 years, chasing a theme of positivity in the face of others’ selfish greed. ‘This Descent (Someone To Save Me)” brings the sax back with Gurl on organ, the song, one of the gnarlier tracks, a reference to his walking the hills near his home, the tempo matching his walking pace, and, in light of his earlier comment about reason, about letting his barriers down as he sings “I’ve listened to reason/And I’ve called in some favours/And I’ve held up my outstretched hand for/Someone to save me”.
‘The chugging 'Teen Valentinos’ comes with Lennon echoes and comes described as him singing the blues and ‘wistful thoughts of a life lives as a much younger man”, the album ending with Duffy and Nicholls returning for the five minute plus, sax-shaded raga-like , ‘Que Viva La Soledad’, inspired by seeing Jah Wobble in concert and another Vent 414 reunion, closing on a note of collective resilience and defiance with “when you’re sick and tired and uninspired/You should join me on the altar/To pledge our love as we bear a grudge/Against all that have defaulted”. If this does prove his final solo outing, then he definitely bows out on a high note.
A new outfit featuring former Ned’s Atomic Dustbin members John Penney and Dan Worton SPAIRS (the name comes from a contraction of despair and thus means hope) with ‘Spills’ (Good Deed) their debut album. There is, of course, evidence of their past mosh sensibility punchy guitar work. but from the opening ‘False Alarm’ there’s a wholly unexpected folk-rock influence at work, likely on account of Penney writing the songs on acoustic guitar, with the tumbling chugging notes and vocal delivery. It’s there too on the slow arms-linked sway of 'Spairs' and the spare walking beat of ‘Apart Together’ with its ‘it tears the heart from me…it spares no part of me” refrain and Penney’s soaring vocals.
There’s more familiar echoes of their Neds past with ‘Home And Dry’, ‘the urgent ‘Takes One To Know One’, ‘Solitude’ and ‘Keep It To Yourself’, but otherwise the likes of ‘Run Into A Standstill’, the shimmering ‘No Meaning’ and ‘We Know Ourselves’ with it mandolin/bouzouki could find themselves comfortably at home in a folk club acoustic setting.
Having weathered storms that might have crushed others, SWIM DEEP follow up their ‘Familiarise Yourself With Your Closest Exit’ EP, setting the platform for an upcoming album with the electronic-washed ‘Little Blue’, evocative of Caribou and a pulsingly euphoric song of hope and self-belief in its refrain “Here now we're gonna make it”. The album will be more in their familiar guitar led sound but this is an infection taster of what might lie ahead.
Wolverhampton duo BLUEBYRD, singer-guitarist Chris Rowley and Gareth Pask on keyboards, self-release their third infectious single of the year with ‘Crystals’, a shimmering woodwind-shaded, fingerpicked song, with echoes perhaps of Ralph McTell, about a woman who, “when the world just isn’t right/When we’re too scared to think”, finds strength, solace and something to hold on to through her belief in the power of crystals.
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