MIKE DAVIES COLUMN JANUARY 2023

A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL OUR READERS

Inevitably a quiet start to the year, but, taking their name from a long gone city-centre green space near the Bull Ring once home to the giant statue of King Kong, mention should be made of MANZONI GARDENS. Lining up as singer Greg Bird, guitarists Andy Roberts and Steve Lawrence, drummer Tom Rees and bassist Basith Udin , their sound’s a cocktail of  80s new wave, college rock and 90s alt-rock. They kick off their 2023 with a new single that marries the fuzzy guitar riffery wash, propulsive drums and blurry vocals of the defiant Boundaries (“I'm not dropping out/Not gonna die now/And I’m swinging fine now/I was just holding out for something more”) with the more psych-narcotic Bowie-shadings of  the reflective ALL CAPS (“Problems way back when/Felt way smaller then/All forgotten friends and time to spend/And on that night/That haunted night/You kicked and cried as we hurried away”) with its circling guitar line and clouds of drums.

MIKE DAVIES COLUMN DECEMBER 2022

John Napier is a man of many musical aliases and genres, one being THE SNOWFLAKES where he’s joined by Andy Miles and Becky Pickin from Grand Valise and Andrew Souter. Their new single on Bandcamp with its Sun Records homage cover combines Summer Days, a late 70s summery laid back McCartneyesque ballad (borrowing a musical phrase from the intro to Band On The Run) along with spoken passages that variously suggest Barry White and, later, The Streets. It’s twinned with Regrets with its retro Bond theme song style, keyboards more to the fore, vocals adopting falsetto notes and an ooh la la refrain.

Joined by Florence Brady on  shruti box and backing vocals alongside Lydia Catterall, BENJAMIN DAVID BLOWER is in protest mood for his Hymns Of Disobedience EP, which features a clattery percussion  take on the traditional civil rights movement song adapted from the spiritual Don't Let Nobody Turn You Round, the other two, written or re-written in 2019 around the October rebellion in London, has him in full Billy Bragg meets Pete Seeger mode with the spare  environment/climate-changed What Shall We Do, the other being the equally Seegerish slow-paced five-minute strummed call to action and awareness amid times of darkness Rebel For Life.

Originally recorded for their 2012 Union album but never included, MAGGIE & MARTIN  (the spectacular voice of Scarlet Fantastic’s Maggie De Monde and the superb piano work of Martin Watkins) release I’ll Always Remember You, a download EP of four covers that opens with a stunning version of Amoreuse that totally eclipses the Kiki Dee original, an inspired, slowed down, achingly sad piano ballad reinvention of Blondie’s Dreaming, a magnificent classical piano backed arrangement of Leo Sayer’s Dancer and top it all off with a stripped down version of Cat Steven’s Wild World. Essential stuff.

Following on from his two albums this year, DAN WHITEHOUSE gets into the festive mood with his first Christmas-based release, a rather fine intimately sung, piano ballad cover of David Essex classic A Winter’s Tale.

KATY ROSE BENNETT sees the year out 'You Are My Team', an inspirational ballad that, played on electric guitar with the vocals layered to provide a choral backing, is not just inspired by Amazons Prime’s gay baseball series but features lyrics constructed totally from lines of dialogue in the show. Katy writes “As a butch, sports-playing teenager in the 90s, slowly becoming aware of my sexuality, there was such little LGBTQ+ representation anywhere, other than in 2-dimensional caricatures - I clung to k d lang in the sea of heteronormativity. Seeing this beautiful TV show as an adult had a profound effect on me. I wish it had been there when I was growing up. It would have saved me a whole lot of shame. This song is a love letter to A League Of Their Own”. She knocks it out of the park.

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