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 Kez Gunes, Carsten Moss on keys, drummer Dave Hattee and backing vocalist Odette Adams, 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)
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