MIKE DAVIES COLUMN NOVEMBER 2022

Keeping his creative renaissance going, MARC LEMON digitally releases The Key, the sound harking back to the psychedelic 60s (although the intro actually recalls The Beat’s Can’t Get Used To Losing You) with echoes of Sonny Bono, John’s Children, The Herd and The Kinks and the sort of reverb guitar solo that regularly featured in British movies of and about the swinging sixties.

It’s twelve years since Birmingham’s Michelle Lawrence (cousin of Omar) released her debut album, Invisible, the track I’m Not Invisible justifiably earning her comparisons to Joan Armatrading, though sadly remaining a somewhat undiscovered classic. She most recently (2018) released a single, Running Away, but these days is focusing on live work with her band the Equations playing Motown and soul covers and writing for and with her multi-hyphenate  daughter JAADA LAWRENCE-GREEN, a model and actress as well as a singer. As such, she’s just released a new single, The One That Got Away, a bittersweet midtempo strings-swathed pop soul love song with an earworm melody she clearly having inherited her mother’s vocal talents (though perhaps more with shades of Natalie Imbruglia, the hugely catchy chorus having hints of Torn) that, in a just world, would be getting saturated airplay. 

Mick Butler aka alt-pop individualist SICKY returns with a new album, Garbage Town, one that, unlike the melodic wash of last year’s Bowling Balls, is more about the dirty pop groove, opening with the swaggeringly propulsive, breathily sung and nigglingly infectious Northern Soul influenced The Bridge and following on with glam stomp boogie Swim Shallow, the repeated title providing the nagging refrain.  Beans is a more staccato rhythm with a strobing guitar riff and ooh oohs while None Of That, with lyrics about violence and murder, plays like a spry antique clockwork fairground carousel.

Marc Bolan vocal influences and falsetto suffuse the sinewy stop start rhythm and fuzzy synths of A Bite Without A Mark while Sleep On It has a swift handclap marching beat, a growly refrain offsetting the lighter anxiety-laced tone of the verses and some discordant flourishes as the effects pedal wails in the background.

The remaining six tracks vary the textures, Head First a falsetto sung woozy otherwordly dream miasma, Protect Me, Protect Mine a keyboard pulsing nervy soundtrack to a noir police series, the title track another sinister Bolan meets Slade boogie crunch with a bounce across the walls chorus hook and a lyric about breaking free of a toxic state of mind as he sings “finding my way ain’t easy”. 

Under 30 seconds, the vocally mixed back New Bones comes over like an unsettling lullaby, things rounding out with the insistent repetitive driving beat of Einstein’s Baby, another number propelled by sonic strobe lighting and the final creepy off-kilter Blur jauntiness and background cooing of Times Ten. 

The son of Neil Cook  of Wild Flowers and Salt Flat 80s underground fame, OLIVER COOK nods to his dad’s Neil Young inspired guitar rock with his self-released one-man band debut album The Boy With Pearls For Eyes, following on from the Candy Moon EP. Indeed you can heard Young’s lonesome weariness in the spare, echoey Pearls along with perhaps the strangled afterhours tones of Mark Eitzel as well as in the swaggery, circling slung guitar riffs of Apocalypse Now (with of course references Brando and Sheen) and   Plush Theatre.  

But strung out post alt-rock (Bell Tower Blue) and druggy American prog-folk (To Be A God) are also in the mix. Identity issues (I'm perfectly okay with staying in and rotting away/Now don't go search for the man you used to know”) loom large (on the lockdown-fuelled Everything Explained he despairs “What exactly do you find funny about the current situation that we're in?/I can't keep this persona/The Boy With Pearls For Eyes/Nothing's ever gonna get solved through digital ones and zeros”), along with  fractured relationships as in Completely (To Me) (“You know I'll never go again/You know I'll never hurt you again”), To Be A God (“You kept calling me up/Didn't I tell you to give it up/We're not friends/So why do you keep me alive?”) and Please Let Go containing the line “Take your metal clamp off my arm/This isn't love/It's an ambulance in a scrap yard”.

Clearly a gifted musician and lyricist, this is nevertheless a rough and raw album that takes some time to get under the skin; it’ll be interesting to see what he can do with a solid band and a good studio behind him.

Formed from the ashes of Active Restraint in 1985 featuring former members Paul Marsh on vocals, bassist Tony Linehan and guitarist David Newton (who had a brief interim stint alongside Neil Cook in The Wild Flowers) with Keith Rowley on drums, Wolverhampton’s THE MIGHTY LEMON DROPS were one of the leading lights of the so-called C86 movement. Between 1985 and 1989, following indie hit Like An Angel on Dreamworld, they released three albums on the Blue Guitar label (a further two would follow in 1991 and 1992 via their American label Sire), the second, World Without End, making the Top 40 (and topping the US Modern Rock/College chart above Morrissey and Talking Heads) and four singles, including Blue Guitars’ first release, The Other Side Of You, entering the lower reaches of the Top 100. Likened to Echo & The Bunnymen, with Newton’s semi-acoustic "Teardrop" 12-string electric guitar and Micro-Frets Spacetone 6-string giving them their distinctive sound, they were one of the era’s most exciting bands and, I’m pleased say, their reputation and influence has only grown over the years. 

Having issued the 24 track Uptight: The Early Recordings 1985–1986 in 2014, Cherry Red have now put the boat out and repacked it as Inside Out 1985-1990 as a jawdropping 83 track, 5CD box set that embraces the first three albums alongside non-album singles, B-Sides / bonus tracks, extended versions, US radio mixes, previously unreleased demos and rare session recordings with extensive sleevenotes by Dave (currently out in the States working as a producer and fronting Thee Mighty Angels). 

I won’t even attempt to detail the album bonus tracks or the exhaustive rarities gathered together on Discs Four and Five, but suffice it to say there’s four different recordings of the  seminal Like An Angel, three of Inside Out (one extended) and Happy Head (including the rough demo version on the NME C86 cassette), both studio and live covers of Paint It Black,  a live take on the Velvets There She Goes Again and a storming rendition of The Standells garage hit Sometimes Good Guys Don’t Wear White from the Dominion in 1989, a demo of Hear Me Call recorded at the legendary Old Smithy studio in Wolverhampton along with Mighty Lemon Talk, a 1988 promo by Tony and Dave detailing their background for US radio bridging live at the Astoria versions  of Fall Down and Inside Out. It’s like Christmas come early.

Following his acoustic live album, CHRIS CLEVERLEY pushes his musical envelope with  Broadcast The Secret Verse (Opiate Records) exploring the use of electronics and more complex arrangements to create new textural soundscapes. Produced by and featuring The Little Unsaid’s John Patrick Ellliot alongside drummer Rob Pemberton, bassist Lukas Drinkwater, Graham Coe on cello with backing vocals by Lucy Farrell and Kathy Pilkinton, it’s both experimental and accessible work, breathtaking in its musical beauty as it touches on issues that range from displacement to connection.

It opens with the quiet dawning wash of Borderlands, a song that explores the making of the modern world and how a rise in nationalistic, isolationist ideologies will shape young minds and how parents should address this.  Just under a minute in, the guitar and other instruments emerge from the electronic mist along with the whisperingly hushed vocals that evoke thoughts of Art Garfunkel’s solo debut, Angel Clare. 

Joined by Farrell, the walking beat drum rhythm, electronics swathed Chlorophyll with its dreamy chorus was inspired by the mechanism by which flowers change their colour pigmentation cells to protect themselves from UV rays but, in the process, become less attractive to pollinators. You don’t need me to tell you how this serves as an analogy for the way that we harden ourselves to the world around us but lose a part of who we are in the process.

Several songs sound a cautionary note, most notably so the subtly funky piano and drum pattern driven post-apocalyptic Still Life where, in breathy tones he imagines the result of mankind’s  destructive path of consumption, growth and unsustainable carbon footprints, a world of collapsed “junk bond empires” in which “The last tree stands in a purifying tank/Centre of Times Square/In the remnants of the billboard screens/A dead American dream/Faint scream from the crossroads of the world/s the sunset sinks behind/A hollowed-out skyline”.  

The train of thought continues with the more stridently strummed, echoing vocals of the veritably rocking Ouroboros, the title referring to an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail and the song about “the small atrocities we commit towards one another within the cosmic loneliness of the 21st Century relationship” that doesn’t compromise on its lyrical imagery or the pessimistic conclusion of history repeating itself.

He’s addressed depression on earlier songs, and he returns to it again for  the near six-minute Eight Of Swords,  a measured walking rhythm and mixed back liminal vocals tracing a song exploring the intersection with love, the title referring to a Tarot card in the Minor Arcana that represents feeling trapped and restricted by your circumstances, your options limited with no clear path out. On the card, the woman is hemmed in by the swords, but if she only removed her blindfold she could break free, the lyrics striking a personal note as, the instrumentation swelling to a wordless fade,  he sings of emotional rescue.

Returning to a political commentary, the urgent tempo of  Paradise anchors a musing on global inequality a world of deregulation, be it on the basis of race, gender, class or wealth, where only the elite survive.

Another previous single, the pulsingly hypnotic Nausea continues into the darkness and depression, the line “You turned you face away, as we drowned/In the cosmic loneliness/While 'Figure 8' played loud through the stereo” a reference not to Ellie Goulding but the last album by Elliott Smith, an equally whispery-voiced singer who was plagued by mental issues.

Titled for the Greek city on the island of Crete and the Mediterranean warmth is embodies, an ambience captured in the balmy melody and cloud-surfing vocals, Heraklion draws on the Buddhist concept of ‘Interbeing’, the belief that nothing exists inherently in its own right, only in relation to everything that comes before and after it. In acknowledging that by being present and taking care of the world, we are taking better care of ourselves, it marks a more upbeat tenor. 

The light is dimmed again, however, with the subsequent The Centre Cannot Hold (the title a line in Yeats’s poem The Second Coming), a keyboard-based, gradually sonically building narrative account of the evacuation of Aleppo during the Syrian civil war in 2016 and a  reminder how in such events the human element becomes lost.

Another number that begins with an electronic wash and rides cosmic musical waves as its climbs to heavenly heights on a melody that echoes I Can’t Take It off the previous album,  Artificial Intelligence is the subject of  A Prediction Algorithm, examining the mental and emotional impact of the notion that that a quantum computer may one day be able to run a simulation of everything that has happened and everything that will happen, returning to earlier themes of interdependence with one.

The musically closest to his past work, it ends on the masterful gloriously upbeat anthemic choral note of  If I’d Have Listened, one of the year’s greatest  and another autobiographical-based song of a mind recovered and restored, a  reflection in gratitude of the light after the dark,  of not succumbing to oblivion and a radiant encouragement to hang in there. It’s a song born to be sung to a mass of swaying arms as the sun sets over the main stage at Glastonbury from an album that is unequivocally one of the year’s very best. Broadcast it on all wavelengths. 

MIKE DAVIES COLUMN OCTOBER 2022

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.

MIKE DAVIES COLUMN SEPTEMBER 2022

 

A recent featured album on Brum Radio, JOHN NAPIER’s The Man In Me (available via Bandcamp) is steeped in a love of Paul McCartney whose influence glows throughout this terrific mini-album. He’s not the only touchstone though, conscious or otherwise. The opening riff of ‘The Exception’ suggests their creator, Andrew Souer, had a slower take on the intro to ‘Marrakesh Express’ in mind, Olly Forrester’s shuffling drums joining the acoustic guitar that carries along a number aimed at those who reckon they’re going to be the one to make a difference and “triumph where no one else has done”, pointing out the million times before others have assumed the same only to find their efforts are in vain. Essentially, a cynical song about expecting things to get better.

Wryly borrowing from the ‘Three Lions’ chorus, ‘It’s Coming Home’ is the first McCartney-tinged number, a warm psych-60s folk pop tinted scuffed swayer that kind of  continues the idea that things will just drop into our laps and everything will be fine but spun into a commentary on those who harbour  sense of superiority and privilege  (“the world belongs to us/There's no use protesting, it's our destiny/To sit at the top of this hierarchy/A natural order, why can't you agree?”) with the well-rehearsed politician’s argument that the pains of change are  all for the common good (“What seems like brutality’s all done with love”).

Another evocation of 60s folk pop that musically sounds as though it might have come from some children’s TV show, ‘Not Your Enemy’ has a woodpecker clicking percussive bedrock and synth flute on a song that speaks of how people, gender, races, sexual orientation, whatever are proscribed and lumped in a single entity (“Reduced to a member of one single tribe …viewed through a prism of violence and vice…Stripped of your agency, dehumanised”) and, while admitting “there are patterns that can’t be denied”, the fact remains that “Each individual’s one of a kind”. Hence the title choruses refrain and the plea not to see foes when none exist.  

Clocking at under two-minutes, the vocals mixed back but rising on the refrain a la ‘Twist and Shout’, the ‘Same Old Conversations’ takes its musical cues from the folksier strums of Revolver and maybe even Joe Brown on a number that sounds like a wry commentary on getting older and stuck in your ways (“Same old conversations, same old dumb beliefs/What the hell is happening to me?!... All there is now is tumble-weed/Who drained the colour from my dreams?”).

With a guitar line that evokes ‘I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight’, the title track kind of continues the line of thought of somehow falling short of  your expectations (“Faith tells me there is something more to me/But fate has not dealt me the hand I thought I'd see”, but still holding fast to a determination make it so (“Well I may not be the man I thought that I was s’posed to be/But I still believe the answer lies in me/Cause I made a vow so long ago that I intend to keep/And I won't give up until the world has seen/Oh, the man in me”). It also harks back to the opener as he sings “What makes you think that you are special?/What makes you think you are the one?/When there are millions more just like you/Who think the world has got it wrong”, with the observation that “You don't deserve it and you sure as hell ain't earned it/Perhaps it's time you moved along”. But it comes with an implicit faith in the capability of the individual to do something bring about some kind of revolution because “change/Is never gonna happen without me”, even if you don’t yet know how. 

It ends with the near six-minute fingerpicked dislocated rhythm standout that is ‘The Dissident’,  a song addressed to those “Drunk on vicarious smugness… who think all of my yearnings/Are unpatriotic at best” and  how those who don’t conform to the majority opinion are inevitably regarded as having some personal agenda (“Passion is viewed with suspicion/As is ideology”) and that, quite frankly, they should be happy with what they’ve got and not that they’re entitled to anything more. The message to those who see themselves as “some kind of bastion/Of clear-headed rationality” is that their so-called wisdom is just a form of misanthropy, or, succinctly summed up  “The ones least concerned are the ones who think most cynically”.

Released at the end of the month, The Space Between is the second album from (largely) instrumental al-folk outfit BONFIRE RADICALS, comprising Pete Churchill on organ, bass and accordion, drummer Ilias Litzos. Sarah Farmer on violin and viola, Kate Steven on clarinet, Michelle Holloway on recorders and – where applicable – lead vocals with the female answer to Etic Clapton, the amazing Emma Reading on guitar, again drawing on folk traditions from around the world for some fiery soundscapes on a collection of original, traditional and borrowed tunes. 

A reworking of Cape Breton fiddler Jerry Holland’s Brenda Stubbert’s Reel ignites the torch paper, followed by Matt Heery’s The Bonfire with recorders firing off, clarinet answering back and drums clattering. The first traditional number is Café de Flore, a  set of two French dance tunes that have a somewhat township feel, while the self-penned material makes its bow with the jazzy staccato rhythm Satsuma Moon, clarinet and recorder doing acrobats.

The longest cut at five and a held minutes is Mary Ashford, Jon Wilks (who recorded a version with Katherine Priddy) proving the melody to the traditional lyrics of  a murder ballad relating the true story of the 1817 murder of a local woman (who narrates as her ghost) and the subsequent trail and acquittal of prime suspect Abraham Thornton who then challenged her brother to trial by battle when he launched an appeal, Ashford refusing to fight and Thornton emigrating to the America. Just 28 seconds shorter, introducing Eastern flavours,. The Man From Suburbia returns to instrumental form for an original dedicated to Churchill’s hometown of Surbiton, which is nowhere as exotic as the music makes it sound. 

A brace of klezmers comes next with the lurching traditional Sha, Sha, Di Shviger Kymt followed by the livelier more ebullient Freilacher Nashele before a reworking of their own Bulgarian inspired Coffee Countdown from the debut, here served piped and unplugged. Veering between solemn and frenetic, exploding with self-confidence it’s a huge step forward and should easily earn them appearances at major festivals here and across Europe for a couple of years.

Former co-presenter of Brum Radio’s 50 Miles of Elbow Room, DAN HARTLAND follows up 2018’s Great Novels with new album Haywire due in November. Prior to that comes the single Cast A Coin in which the symbols found on maps become a metaphor for how to situate oneself in one’s own story and finds him working with The Brink, a local collective comprising Marko Miletic on upright and electric bass, and  Becky Pickin and Andy Miles of synth pop outfit Grande Valise, bringing an electronic sheen to his contemporary folks-based songs.

Enjoying a new creative burst, MARC LEMON revisits  his past for a refurbished version of Rollercoaster with new echoey acid pop vocals and pumped up production, opening with a sort of Hang On Sloopy drumbeat and swamped with twangy surf guitar. 

OFFAL CLUB offer up another witty ditty with Blood Orange, a song about not deluding yourself about your pulling chances as you get older (“You think the young stuff’s giving you the eye/Well I think you must’ve had a few though/When you go kid yourself/That she would go and give herself to you”) that comes with a slight hint of the Lightning Seeds’ Pure.

With a hugely professional mock TOTP video on YouTube, OPEN  ARMS (Ben Farmer, guitarist Sam Barratt, drummer Drew Peters) deliver a new dose of highly infectious indie pop in Other Side Of Life which, in tandem with Farmer’s glam androgynous look, suggests that TOTP video may one day be the real thing.

 

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.