ANDY LLOYD has been busy reworking his back catalogue again, this time as New Shoots which gives the  21 tracks, variously from his Bloomsbury Set, Wedge, Sanctuary and Food incarnations a reggae overhaul. It all works far better than you might imagine, giving them a Jamaican groove that, rooted in both the 60s ska of Laurel Aitken, John Holt, Horace Andy,  Tony Tribe and later early Marley days,  can stand proud alongside fellow Brummies UB40’s takes on the genre.  I’m not going through all of them but you really should check out A Thing Like That. Gentleman Of The Road, the Marley-infused Getting Away From It All, the breezy I Remember The Times, the more dub shaded title track and an unrecognisable version of his 1983 Top 60 hit Hanging Around With The Big Boys. Sounding incredibly fresh, and infectious  it’s available on Spotify but he really should make downloads available on Bandcamp, and spark a real career renaissance.

His first new music of the year, trailing the second of his Christmas EPs, CHRIS CLEVERLEY releases the shimmering Lord Of Chaos on which, accompanied by Graham Coe on cellos and Kathy Pilkinton on vocals with John Elliott handling programming is a late December winter prayer to the gods of ice, gods of oceans, gods of spirals and agents of chaos for a “bright white light, that might hit me like a blessing” as release from the “extraordinary weight we carry/All through the year”.

The second single from his work in progress album documenting his travels in Nepal, 

Accompanied by drummer Ally McDougal, bassist Bart Debney-Davies, Will Looms on electric guitar and Nick Cowan on keys, GEORGE BOOMSMA releases the reflective You Said, a slow walking, gently fingerpicked, drum shuffled lightly blues-tinged song softly crooned in a whispering vocal about an “untimely adieu” and an unspoken carpe diem conversation  about casting off the things that weigh us down (“the world is passing you by two steps at a time/Have faith in your sibling/She is older and wiser than you/Enjoy the ride, it soon will pass quickly/And be filled with pride from climbing impossible skies”).

 

Available on Bandcamp or as a limited edition handmade CD, STYLUSBOY  releases The Coleshill Tapes (Home Session),  a four song EP inspired by the residents of Coleshill who shared their memories from World War II.  Opening with the upbeat strummed reverie of  Pockets Full Of Life And Freedom with its talk of waltzing the dark away at Saturday dances and battles paused for a football match between foes, it moves on to the plucked notes of  the wistful poignancy of the slow, softly crooned  winter-set The Journey That Never Came Back. A Better Tomorrow is as musically upbeat and ultimately optimistic  as the title suggests with the lyrics recounting taking shelter from bombing raids and the community spirit of the residents and it ends with Raise A Glass, a thank you toast to those who’ve gone before, the granddads, the fathers and brothers “who fought for me and you”, the mothers and daughters and sisters “who held life  together like glue” and “those who sailed that day’...and those who brought them back home again”.