MIKE DAVIES COLUMN AUGUST 2022

A veteran of the 80s Birmingham scene, MARK LEMON is still plying his trade, his most recent offering being the jangly folksy strum Just Like Elvis Presley, a song based on the story of a Presley fan from Handsworth who dressed to emulate his hero, called his house Gracelands, drove a car with the registration Elvis I and even changed his name. Indeed, when he died, aged 70, in 2010 no one even knew what is original name had been. No one attended his funeral but this is a fine tribute.

WALER, an electro alt-folk project by John Napier and Vincent Gould, return for a second splash with Water Songs Vol 2, meditations on nature of water and our relation to it, opening with the scratchy, jazz-infused hypnotic summery groove Water’s  Edge followed by We Are Water where you might discern both Brubeck and Pentangle at play and closing with the keyboards led part spoken  house dance worm Drip Drip Drip. My favourite though is How To Save A Dead Man From Drowning with its staccato rhythm, handclaps, echoey acrobatic vocals and an at times Eastern tinged vibe that harks back to late 60s/early70s psychfolk. (www.waler.bandcamp.com).

And maintaining an aquatic link, recently featured on the BrumRadio A-list, THE GOOD WATER offer Love, an infectious buzzing guitar love letter to early acid haze Stone Roses complete with phasing and backward guitar notes effects.

THE GORSTEY LEA STREET CHOIR have been into the remix game again, offering up The Dragons Of Mont Blanc - Extended Play with variations on three tracks, Enter the Dragons as a pulsing Neon Crow Prelude, a seven minute title track about wanting to turn back the clock to a brief moment of glory, here featuring the Junkyard of Silenced Poets, and a Black Star Liner dance floor restyling of Back To Drag a la early Depeche Mode. It’s completed with a  radio edit of The Dragons Of Mont Blanc Part I and a radio edit of the same featuring The Junkyard of Silenced Poets, retitled Junkyard Sweetheart Number 13.

THE HUMDRUM EXPRESS returns with the follow up to 2020’s Ultracrepidarian Soup, Ian Passey for  Forward Defensive (Cynical Thrills) with songs about Peter Shilton,neighbours with pubs in their gardens (the drone bowed strings, whisperingly sung  “Staying Inn), manscaping, and people who talk loudly at gigs (The Gig Chatterer – “Acoustic bands are best, less need for me to shout/My naturally booming speaking voice will do/I’m 6’4” and I quite like to stand near the front/Helps me get a better view”). It opens in scampering form with Brave Boy, an amusing ditty aboutkiddies getting a sticker for overcoming needle phobia that proceeds to take a swipe at a failed track and trace system, Downing Street briefings and clapping for health workers in lieu of paying them.

Riding lolloping drums, the spoken Christmas With Evan Dando announces that, while prone to some exaggeration, “I know this may sound like an unlikely tale but, I once spent Christmas Day on Bondi Beach with Evan Dando” because, after all, “Exploring the southern hemisphere can throw up so many new experiences and unlikely situations - None more so than the sight of the 90’s Slacker pin-up casually wandering amongst jubilant festive revellers.”

A companion piece to the Gary Numanish new wave noir One Man’s Tat (Is Another Man's Treasure), Nostalgia For Beginners is just that as he namechecks League ladders in Shoot! Magazine,  The Sports Argus Spot the Ball, Spud-U-Like, Berni Inns, Crossroads, Azumah Nelson, Pat Cowdell, New Romantics, New Wave, One Step Beyond,  One Foot in the Grave, Amos Brearley, Shoestring, Streetband and Ronnie Radford. The embedded soccer references find full expression in When Peter Shilton Tweets, the lament of the Third Choice Keeper (“45 appearances spanning 20 years, I played 6 times one season – the most in my career…On each year’s team photo I’m the one that you can’t name”) set to a tumbling bluesy riff,  and the wry fashion and football observations of Denim In The Dugout (“2-0 down half time at Grimsby Town/His wardrobe and his team get a dressing down/Roy Hodgson still looks sharp in a suit, but /Wait till you see Bielsa in boot cut!”).

An acoustic swaying anthem with cello backing, Manscape Monday is a particular highlight with its Ray Davies influence(“A dedicated follower of price tags”), nod to Manic Monday and mutedly sad lyrics  (“My hobbies include my wardrobe and my hair/My fitness routine and my daily skincare/I hope my chosen fragrance adds to my allure/Along with my frequently scheduled manicure”). 

Further social commentary can be found on the clattery What A Time To Be Alive! (“I’m scouring applications for a job that won’t exist”) where he wheels out another line in trademark puns (“I enrolled as a mature student, in desperate times/Turned up late for calligraphy classes in the hope of being given lines/You can have that one in writing”) while the lockdown trend of online live streaming forms the Jona Lewie referencing the spoken You'll Always Find Me In The Kitchen At Watch Parties, detailing a mate’s decision to play an online gig “to top up his reduced wages and maybe re-connect with those he was missing but, most of all, take his mind off his employment uncertainty”, with its wry lines “It was noted that there were 30 people watching – the biggest crowd he’d played to in years!/As he openly admitted, the lack of applause at the end of each song was something he was already well accustomed to”. And a “note to self, never do a home gig on wash day”. 

It ends with some space rock and another dose of Passey cynicism with the intoned Celebrity Death Etiquette about cashing in on the death of someone in the public eye, “the opportunity you’ve been waiting for to scroll through those endless phone photos/To re-share that blurry image of you invading the freshly deceased’s privacy during a chance encounter” and “Shrewdly turning someone’s passing into more about you than them”. The cutting edge of cutting comment.

 

ALBUMS

BREATHLESS

See Those Colours Fly (Tenor Vossa)

Formed in 1983 by frontman and This Mortal Coil collaborator Dominic Appleton, guitarist Gary Mundy, Ari Neufeld on bass and Tristram Latimer Sayer behind the kit, Breathless are a majestic and melancholic dream pop outfit of symphonic proportions. Making their album debut in 1986 with the Herman Hesse titled The Glass Bead Game, they released a further six albums before going into a ten-year hiatus. They re-emerge now with another stupendous opus, albeit featuring   Neufeld’s drum programming on account of Latimer Sayer having been involved in a car accident prior to the band going into the studio. 

It opens with the dreamy Looking For The Words, a song of support in the face of  oppression (“I’m looking for the words/To arm and strengthen you/You know they would break us/If we gave them the chance/You know it’s just fear/You know it means nothing/Fear is all they know”, the band’s familiar cathedral of sound slowly swelling. It’s followed by early morn orchestral tones (Grieg?) that opens The Party’s Not Over, another number about support (“If you need my help some time/To ease you down/I’ll be here for you”, a gathering drone behind the muted vocals before the hushed ebb and flow My Heart And I (the title borrowed by Elizabeth Barrett Browning), from hence the album title comes,  with its theme of loss and memory (“Who would have thought/That you’d be the first to go?/Trust you to put yourself first/And time sails by these days”), the quivering vocals  putting me in mind of the pre-disco Bee Gees emotive vibrato.

The tempo picks up as the drums lay down the rhythm for We Should Go Driving,  a number about turning the gaze inward (“Tonight/In this safe place/We’ll lay down our guards/And examine our mistakes/They’re who we are/Are they?/Are we?/Are we more?”) and clearing the air (“We should go driving/We should talk about these things”, distant churchy organ notes and a solitary drum beat introducing the soothing wash of the unrequited love Let Me Down Gently with its relationship in flux (“So now you see/Just what you mean to me/And, so graciously/You let me down gently/Why can’t things be/Just as they seem to me?/What do I do/To hold on to”) you?)

Another quiet orchestral tide washing against the shores, The City Never Sleeps opens a panorama of urban alienation and isolation  (“Here I am /In this small life/Look at the night/Dripping with nostalgia/Here I am/But it’s so hard to feel anything”) the notion of being adrift continuing with Somewhere Out Of Reach, shimmering bells and pulsing keys providing the framework for a song that addresses the refugee crisis (“They’re a walk across the water/Are they really not our friends?”) where “The weakest are always left behind” as the narrator pleads “Give something back/Could it be as simple as that?” and ends asking “But what do I do?/Just what will be done?”

It comes to a close with first the fuller sound, undulating rhythms and cascading notes of  So Far From Love, another song about offering support to a wounded heart (“Don’t believe the things they’re telling you/I wouldn’t hurt you…You know it’s true, don’t you?/How he lied and lied to you/That’s all he ever did to protect you/That’s all he ever did to comfort you/Well that’s not love”) and, finally, the seven-minute keyboard drone I Watch You Sleep that offsets the tender opening of  “I watch you sleep/Like an angel here in the room with me/My innocent” with the later unsettling lines “They’re going to shame you…And the shame/It sticks like tar/You raised a demon” that calls to mind the parental agonies that inform things like We Need To Talk About Kevin, Mass and Nitram.

Hallucinogenic, ethereal, otherworldly and mesmerising, it’s been a long time coming but the wait has been well worth it. 

Mike Davies

 

MIKE DAVIES COLUMN JULY 2022

If the phrase English Zen Rock conjures up enticing thoughts of majestic, chilled, meditative and pastoral music to calm and soothe the mind and spirit during these dark and troubled times, then you want to make a pilgrimage to the temple of the ARMCHAIR GODS.

Brummies born and bred with a friendship stretching back over many year, Paul Kearns and Steve Peckover have a collective musical career of playing in numerous bands based in and around the Midlands, among them Hela, touted as ones to watch back at the end of the 90s. Steve was a regular at the Ronnie Scott’s  Singer Songwriters festivals while, studying music at the Musicians Institute in London, Paul was a finalist in  the UK Guitarist Magazine of the year competition.

Today, however, they are Armchair Gods, a progressive rock instrumental duo with a full pantheon of sound drawing on such diverse influences as Kate Bush, Nick Drake, Heather Nova, Jonatha Brooke, IQ, Marillion guitarist Steve Rothery, PFM and, perhaps, most notably, The Enid. Not to mention a touch of Mozart, Rodrigo and John Barry.

Their mission is to create extended, nuanced and multi-faceted musical compositions that will engage and immerse listeners in  its sonic tapestry, the first fruits of which are the debut album Vanaprastha, titled from a Sanskrit term derived from vana, meaning "forest" and prastha, meaning "going to", translated as  “retiring to the forest”,  one of the most important concepts in the Hindu religion, representing the third of the four ashramas, or  stages of human life.

Recorded using a repaired Dell Inspiron N5050 laptop, it’s loosely based on a symphonic arrangement with an exposition section of contrasting themes (Hero I and Riverman I) with a  transition (The Waltz) a developmental section (The Hunt), a recapitulation section (Hero II, Riverman II) and a coda (The Gate) all flowing together as a seamless whole.

Each of the themes conveys different life experience/stages. Emerging from the early morning mist to embrace classical acoustic guitars amid the hypnotic swirl and disembodied voices, Hero I represents finding the courage to step into the unknown for the very first time, an experience that can bring joy, but also a realisation of grief. 

Announced with a fanfare flourish and floating on pastoral strings with a hint of Leonard Cohen to the guitar lines, Riverman I marks a return to the familiar, finding comfort in going with the flow  while The Waltz is a pulsing, woodwind flavoured piece representing being locked in step with toil but with the knowledge and hope that things will get better. 

With its steady drum beat, nervy strings, keyboard trills and echoing distant electric guitar howls The Hunt, the first single, captures the sensation of fear and how to confront it, appropriately visited by a thunderstorm and the evocation choral voices mid-way, unfolding into the aftermath calm of Hero II and an exultant Riverman II before closing with The Gate, its David Gilmour tinted guitar wizardry and a state of acceptance, ready to move on to whatever the next state of the journey may be.  (Available to download from armchairgods.bandcamp.com)

Ploughing similar territory to Paolo Nutini and Jack Savoretti, JAMES BROADFOOT lays down a warm, smooth funky groove with debut single Ordinary People featuring Isaiah Sharkey on vocals and a tasty guitar solo.

THE PINES are a three piece (Callum, Conor, Cartney) indie outfit with Oasis and Arctic Monkeys colours, the new single Standard Model being about not working so hard to never have a life (“To get this far, work this hard/And you'll have a life of happiness my friends/But on the flip side you might miss out/On all the pretty memories instead”. 

GLASS CEILINGS are another “light-hearted indie sweetness” crew, this time a four piece, with new single When In Rome the sort of catchy summery funky pop designed for lazing in the grass.

A noisier proposition, HEADSHRINKERS line up as Garran, James, Xavier and Scarlett, a post-punk cocktail of guitar riffs, thunderous bass-lines and pummelling drums headed up by frontman Garran Hickman.

Their debut EP,  Doorway Conversations, pulls together five propulsive numbers, kicking off with a New Orderish Interrobang and keeping the energy exploding through the title track and the bass-heavy Monocle while showing their slower side on the delightfully named and very Joy Division influenced march beat drums and keyboard swirls of Haggard Mullins and the more acoustic, spoken poetic lyrics of The Sea Has No Friends, gradually swelling to huge climax. Named Brum Radio’s Band of the Year in 2020, they’re now ready to conquer far wider territories.

An early taster of his forthcoming The Glass Age album, an online collaboration with producer Gustaf Ljunggren and born from the Rising Sun Stream Series he ran from Japan during lockdown,  DAN WHITEHOUSE releases ‘Campfire’, a beguiling minimalist folktronica single using a single synthesizer, that likens the glowing sunrises over Tokyo Bay  to the campfires burning back in the UK. Speaking of how we are unified by the warmth of the sun and fire and the transformative power of perception,  he sings “When you change the way you look at things; Watch the things you look at start to change”.  

ALBUMS

JOHNNY HUNTER – Want (Cooking Vinyl Australia)

The debut album by the Sydney four piece comes steeped in a high energy, driving mix of New Wave and gothic post-punk. It’s 70s punk that launches proceedings with the title track, summoning thoughts of iconic Australian new wave legends The Saints with its driving riffs and declamatory vocals, though you might also hear traces of The Skids and Cactus World News. That feel is carried over into Endless Days with its assault battery of hooks, but then The Floor introduces a new, and more pervasive, influence  with its heady evocation of Joy Division (and, naturally, New Order) while Life and Dreams bring both The Cure and The Smiths to the party.

Although the album is predominantly a  ball of power and energy, as with the ringing guitars of Cry Like A Man, they do slip in some slower moments with Nick Hutt’s Ian Curtis-styled vocals of Fracture where they find beauty in sadness  and big building soaring and positive album closer Clover. A hugely impressive debut, that should certainly see them building an enthusiastic following well beyond their antipodean shores. 

MIKE DAVIES COLUMN JUNE 2022

HONEY I SHOT THE PRESIDENT are a new local four piece comprising singer Nathan on rhythm guitar, Jack on lead, Josh on bass  and Brad on drums. They describe themselves as an eclectic rock band, which seems a fair description given their stylistic diversity. The recently released the earworm single On A Whim which with its circling guitar pattern and Nathan’s vocals called to mind REM and The Mighty Lemon Drops. They follow now with a debut 6-track EP, Cutting Corners, that shows a harder edge, opening with the riff-driving Devils In The Details while Here Comes The Kennedys has a punkier urgency sporting some pummelling drums and a blistering guitar solo. The swaggery blues rock Monroe has echoes of The Stranglers had they been reared on hard rock riffs while Porcelain Promise suggests some Deep Purple DNA and allows Guy to showcase his drum solo muscles. Shoot The Crows is more hard rock riffery with a bass line that had me thinking of Jack Bruce and it ends with the slightly poppier and melody-led 80s guitar rock and descending chords punch of Time, taken together a very impressive calling card.

It’s been nine years since OCS guitarist STEVE CRADDOCK last released a solo album, . but he returns now in a very different mode to his psychedelia-influenced previous albums, with A Soundtrack To An Imaginary Movie (Kundalini), a jazz, folk and classic inspired instrumental album that, variously featuring assorted family members and friends on gong, Tibetan singing bowls, piano, cello, violin, congas, flute and trombone ably demonstrates his multi-instrumentalist and compositional skills across the ten tracks where traces of Coltrane, Morricone, Satie Bacharach and Glass can be heard.

Each track named for a colour (most being obscure terms), it opens in serene fashion with the troubadour classical guitar work of Lapiz Lazuli featuring Joe Cox’s cello and Morricone hints, keeping things tranquil for Quercitron, Cox joined by Lila and Hugo Levingston on violin and flute respectively, the closing moments conjuring bird song and distant church bells.

Built around Hammond organ and featuring congas, Cochineal recalls the music from late 60s Italian reveries while Sarcoline sees the return of flute and comes with a late night, neon streets sax from the late Brian Travers. The first half ends with the floating ethereality of Annato that has a similar relaxed vibe to Fleetwood Mac’s Albatross, part two seeing his wife Sally on gongs and singing bowl for the eight-minute slow gathering meditational and minimalist Dragon’s Blood, a track that’s the equivalent of a wind spirit whispering quietly in your ear. 

The Satie-like piano based Falu featuring son Cass is a true piece of keyboard magic that deserves prime exposure on Radio 3, followed by Fulvous, a  showcase for Cox’s dark, droning cello and hints perhaps of Sibelius or Delius that conjures the build up to a gathering storm. Glaucus is another tentative notes piano piece complemented with sad, brooding cello and violin and it closes with the seven-minute orchestral sweep of Gunjo where the strings are joined by Tim Smart’s mellow trombone as it builds to a brief swell before the dying fall.  Think Pasolini, de Sica, Visconti, Fellini, Bresson, Tavernier or, perhaps English director Terence Davies and  you can build the film in your mind’s eye, this really deserves a showcase at the Town Hall.

 

SICKY has a new album due shortly and there’s a couple of tasters doing the rounds. The Bridge comes with a video that has it soundtracking Uma Thurman and John Travolta’s dance from Pulp Fiction, the track an upbeat chugging slice of catchy 70s pop with a percolating keyboard riff that recalls Doug Sahm and The Texas Tornados while, after a whirligig intro, Swim Shallow (Kitchen Dance Part Deux) rides a glam stomp swaggery handclap rhythm with a shadowy seam of menace to the breathy vocals and urgency. On this form, it could be his best and most commercial album yet.

And on the subject of glam, R.John Webb unleashes his DANDY THE VANDAL project, with debut album The Ingenious Gentleman Dandy The Vandal & The Godforsaken Sweethearts (Catch The Buzz Records). As you might have surmised with the nod to  Dandy In The Underworld, Marc Bolan is a prime influence (though Ziggy and his Spiders are there too) and were he around I’m sure the bopping elf would have loved this. Described as  having a  Brexit backdrop and a dialogue with the 70s, it kicks off in surging manner with Coup Coup Collider where it’s apparent that T.Rex is but one of the touchstones, the pop particle collider also swirling together Roy Wood,  Mud, Slade, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis and more. The strobe light swagger of Dandy The Vandal  welcomes Bowie and The Stones to the party, followed by  the Chic funk groove meets  Robert Plant of Do Juan Don and the skittering Feel The Madness where Talking Heads get a look in. 

A tip of the hat to 6os Spector (and a sniff of Bryan Ferry) arrives with the synth backed   Small Island, then it’s the dreamy retro crooning balladry of The Moment You Love Me before everything gets thrown up in the air with Toast Gown, basically a cacophony of Margaret Thatcher samples, returning to Young Americans era Bowie for the simply irresistible funky grooved siren cry strobe-lit march We Are The Subterraneans. It ends in fine style with the chant rhythm and Hotlegs marching beat of We Belong To Her with its rousing synth anthemics, a glorious pinata of 70s pop and Dylan undertones waiting to be beaten open with a big listening stick.  A cornucopia of affectionate reference points, it’s basically a 21^ST century answer to The Dukes of Stratosphere and one of the best things you’ll hear this year. It gets an official launch on July 28 at the Hare & Hounds, and it promises to be night to tell the grandchildren about.

Not a solo artist, QUENTIN FRANCIS is in fact a four piece indie-pop outfit headed up by songwriter Matty George, with bassist Luke McCrohon, lead guitarist  Ross Carley  James Morris on drums. The latest self-released single is Work, a fine earworm number with Postcard era choppy guitars and swirling keys that, given  decent headwind, could set then up as the next breakout act. 

I was much impressed with the previous single from Birmingham trio  THE MASSES and even more so with the latest, Inside My Head, a wheezing, riffing swagger and stomp of distorted guitar, handclap shuffle, raspily sung voodoo swampy Louisiana blues that has a similar vibe to John Kongos 1971 hit Tokoloshe Man by way of Dr John. An eventual album is highly anticipated.

MIKE DAVIES COLUMN MAY 2022

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”.

MIKE DAVIES COLUMN APRIL 2022

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.

MIKE DAVIES COLUMN MARCH 2022

 

Curated by Dave Twist, released towards the end of the month, Un-Scene! Post Punk Birmingham 1978-1982  (Easy Action) is exactly what it says on the label, a collection of 18 rare recordings from the era of angular guitars and strained, declamatory vocals, comprising unreleased demos, hitherto lost studio tracks, and no-fi live artefacts, packaged in a gatefold sleeve with a booklet featuring sleevenotes by Twist and Stewart Lee, notes on the tracks and unseen images.

First up is We Are The Fashion, credited to the pre-truncated Fashion Music, as far as I can tell a never released track (neither as a single or on the Product Perfect album) recorded at Outlaw in 1978 and, disregarding the echoey late 60s pop la la las, a typical example of the trio’s staccato  style with the sparse lyrics just comprising of Luke singing the title. One of the bastions of the scene, featuring Nikki Sudden on slurred vocals, Swell Maps are represented by Vertical Slum, Sudden also featured on his own Channel Steamer recorded in Battersea in 1981.

Twist puts in his first appearance behind the drum as part of Dada, John Taylor on lead guitar, with the bass rumbling Birmingham OK recorded on a portable cassette machine live at the Crown in Hill St in 1978, reappearing on the next track as part of The Prefects, another live recording from Oct 28 at the Festival Suite, The Bristol Road Leads to Dachau sprawling over almost ten minutes and written and sung by Rob Lloyd who went on to form The Nightingales (the only band here still making music today) along with fellow members Joe Crow and Eamon Duffy, showcased on  1980 Vindaloo  track Idiot Strength. Crow also has his own solo contribution playing everything on The Final Touch, a hint of Bowie recorded in Mark Rowson’s front room in Moseley

Another ubiquitous name of the period was Dave Kusworth, his first credit here being as guitarist with TV Eye alongside Eamon Duffy on bass, Paul Adams on guitar and drummer Goff with Andy Wicketts on vocals for the almost poppy Stevie’s Radio Station. Kusworth and Adams were of course   members of The Hawks, the cult outfit fronted by Stephen Duffy and again with Twist on drums, their track Big Store recorded in Bob Lamb’s bedroom. The last of the tracks to feature Twist’s drums as well as Kusworth’s guitar  comes from the rather more obscure The Bible Belt whose brief A Fistful Of Seeds, fronted by Jeremy Thirby, has more in common with late 60s Nuggets style psychedelia garage.

Two more familiar names will be The Denizens, fronted by Andy Downer, and The Nervous Kind  featuring the  Comaskey brothers Owen and Paul on vocals and drums respectively, the former represented by the marching beat Ammonia Subway and the latter with  Five To Monday which spookily presaged the sound of The Smiths.

Moving on and further less well-known names join the line-up with Cult Figures and the almost protoglam bass chug of I Remember, the slightly X-Ray Spex-like Fast Relief with Lindy Short on vocals and sax, the Public Image conjuring Vision Collision with Cara Tivey on keys, and the aptly named Dance, which featured subsequent  Fashion bassist Martin Recci, with the handclappy driving Revolve Around You which surely has a touch of The Stooges to its DNA. The real find though is Lowdown International whose vaguely keyboards stabbing motorik Batteries Not Included features no other than football pundit,  writer and BBC and BrumRadio presenter Adrian Goldberg doing his best John Lydon.

The collections rounded off with two final well-known names, The Pinkies with Jayne Morris on vocals and both her and Lindy Shortt on sax for Open Commune and, of course, The Au Pairs, their distinctive sound captured in Love Song. 

Following on the heels of the recent anthology by The Hawks this is another highly welcome celebration of the city’s alternative music scene and serves as a prelude to the June release of On Record, a concept album billed as ‘a sonic love letter to Birmingham’   commissioned by Birmingham Music Archive to be released free for the Birmingham 2022 Festival and, alongside a new track from UB40, featuring a wealth of the city’s rising musical talent, including Bambi Bains, Cherry Pickles, Dapz on the Map, SANITY, and Tj Rehmi, and spanning Afrobeat, neo-soul, trip-hop, Asian electronica, folk, garage rock, jazz, reggae, RnB, Hip-Hop and UK rap.

MIKE DAVIES COLUMN FEBRUARY 2022

ROBERT LANE makes his first appearance of the year with the self-released lazily strummed, dreamily McCartneyesque love song ‘Sick Of Me’,  the slightly Latin-flavour colours behind the walking percussion beat adding to the romantic miasma. www.robertlanemusic.com).

SWIM DEEP are also in soft tones mood for the equally dreamy, but more cosmic and catchy, The World’s Unluckiest Guy (Chess Club), the first taster from their upcoming EP, Familiarise Yourself With Your Closest Exit, the tempo gathering as the drums kick in and the keyboards swirl around Austin Williams' vocals as they interweave with harmonies from Australian singer-songwriter Hatchie. The EP will also feature guest female singers on the other tracks, including Phoebe Green for On The Floor.