MIKE DAVIES COLUMN JUNE 2023

A swift follow-up to last year’s  Vanaprastha,  ARMCHAIR GODS duo Paul Kearns and Steve Peckover return with Doubt The Stars, another outstanding collection of chilled and meditative progressive rock instrumentals, here with a cosmic backdrop both musically and thematically in what they describe as a sonic celestial odyssey.

Indeed, it opens with Odyssey reflecting the journey into space after leaving earth, awed by the majesty of the stars and feeling insignificant in the scheme of things, flowing into the darker sounding  and turbulence threatening Argo Navis, named for a constellation of stars, with its pulsing keyboard tempests and heavy drum beats transposing the myth of Jason and the Argonauts into space conjuring with the initial siren’s call and then the sea god Triton holding back the clashing rocks to provide safe passage.

Passing through the storm, things become calm with the ebb and flow of Ataraxia, named for the term meaning calmness untroubled by mental or emotional disquiet, the drums kicking back in for Requiem, a number fuelled by anger at the contradiction of how humanity can create something like the James Webb telescope and yet still be mired waging medieval barbaric wars, the piece composed of two states representing a star moving violently though its life cycle before burning out, the monastic chant element taking its influence from Mozart's Requiem while the soaring guitar solo midway was improvised in a  single take. 

Echoing the time portal motif at the start of Ataraxia but revisited with different instrumentation, Portal II is a 30 second transition into the serene synth-strings opening title track, which,  with drums and losing guitar solo and  , is a collaboration with Derbyshire-based singer/songwriter Carol Fieldhouse who also provides the pure crystalline hymnal vocals (reminding me of Maggie Reilly on Mike Oldfield’s Moonlight Shadow)the words inspired by Shakespeare’s poem “Doubt thou the stars are fire” and the beliefs of his  day and exploring the relationship between ourselves and the perception of enduring truth in the aim of bringing light and hope to the shade. 

It ends with the steady marching beat and keyboard swirls of Red Shift Dawn, a musically stirring, guitar cloud surfing celebration of the  James Webb Telescope mission, looking back in time at red shifted starlight from the very first stars created just after the big bang. Resisting the prog-rock tendency for long, self-indulgent pieces, only one track runs anything approaching five minutes, creating a seamless flow that creates its intended impression before moving on. Like the space mission it conjures, this feels like just the start of a voyage into the vastness of the galactic horizons, long may they boldly go. 

MARK LEMON doffs the cap to the Carry On films on his infectious singalong new single All The Carry On Stars (which, he in leather jacket, comes with a great video with 60s clips, www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ch7IT0TyRU) celebrating its saucy double entendres.

ELIZABETH J BIRCH is what might be called alt-folktronica, using synths and loops to create the textures and melodies that enfold her words. Her latest self-released excursion is Kenopsia, which means the eerie atmosphere of a place that is usually bustling with people but now abandoned, a definition that well captures the atmosphere she weaves as her voice swoops and soars across and between the music. Available from Bandcamp (https://elizabethjbirch.bandcamp.com), it’s an eight track set that opens with the title number, moving through the cosmic drift of  Barely to the stabbing pulses of Night Turned Morning by way of the turbulent Wallpaper m the underwater ambience of Come Home and the heavy electric storm of the instrumental closer Stages One, Two and Three. You might detect traces of Kate Bush and the enigmatic quality of the lyrics, but Birch is very much a singular voice.

MIKE DAVIES COLUMN MAY 2023

Recorded live at the Red Lion In Kings Heath, the appropriately titled Alive (Wafer Thin) finds ROB PETERS & THE SLAPDASH COWBOYS  in blistering form, he on 6 and 12 string acoustic fronting a trio that also features Hannah Brown on vocals and, From Bonfire Radical, the incredible  Emma Reading on electric, a sort of female answer to Clapton. Pretty much the whole two part set, edited into 72 minutes with some corrected, enhanced or replaced parts, it’s a generous 16 tracks with chat intro (and tuning) that include  all bar one of the numbers off his last studio release, 2021’s The Moon That Thought It Was The Sun, opening as such with the urgent strum of A Little Box Of Forgetfulness and its reflections on getting older and proceeding through the delicate way of Inside Out, the Syd Barret-based Madam Misery, and, written for his partner, Suse Loves Cooking. As  indeed, Brown on harmonies,  was the  83 second strummed blues This Is Love, which  was a hidden track on his last album.

Digging into the past with a preamble about touring in America with Boo Hewardine, Sister Smile dates back to 1998’s Zinc album  and was co-written with Neicey Mann who recorded her own version on 20002s’ Decree Neicey album. It’s the first of three in a row from that album, next up being a powerful version of The Wheel, written by former singing partner Della Roberts (who also has a Hewardine backing vocalist connection) and followed by the  urgent, driving Jesus In The Parking Lot.

The more recent back catalogue is visited with Why God Is So Slow To Punish The Wicked before returning to The Moon, etc. for Leap  Of Faith, Scapegoat, The Bearer Of The Poisoned Chalice (Part One), When We Fall (which originally appeared on Copper Heart and from whence the title for  the 2021  album comes) and the slow swaying Alive, the set closing up with the opening psychedelic flurry of guitar notes of  Copper Heart’s near nine-minute pedal effects Finger Rain with its nods to George Harrison and, finally, from 2000’s Flatiron, the alt-country inflected poignant balladeering Our Memories. While a highly respected producer, Rob’s probably unfairly better known for his Beatles – and especially Lennon – tributes, but this is a dynamite reminder of what a great songwriter he is, one with a very distinctive voice, literally and metaphorically,  of his own.

STYLUS BOY trails his upcoming Back in the Day EP with Fourteen Days (Tortoise), , his acoustic guitar shuffle here augmented with experiments in electronic beats and synth sounds and Alva Lee on backing vocals.  The song’s inspired by  102-year-old  named John who, now blind and unable to walk, was a  WWII pilot who was shot down behind enemy lines and survived for 14 days on wild fruit and vegetables before getting back to safety, narrowly avoiding being mistaken for a spy and shot

Following on from The One That Got Away, again co-penned with mother Michelle, JAADA LAWRENCE-GREEN returns at the end of the month with another solid Euro-flavoured club dance track, You Make Me Feel Alive, this time conjuring thoughts of classic Donna Summer.

Out on May 19, COLIN HALL takes a musical swerve for Beep Beep (Money-Go-Round), a woozy fairground carousel midtempo waltzer with a kiddie chorus , fiddle  and a deliberately mannered vocal delivery that evokes  Bowie in his formative Davy Jones days and lyrics that take a swipe at political slight of the hand, wheel greasing  and schmoozing with lines like “the government’s warning/Of tight belts and wearing more sweaters to combat the chills/But the truth of the matter/It won’t get no better, we couldn’t drink half as much as they spill” in a “them and us” society where all the “I love you fakers were cupping their hands for a loan”. There’s a great video to go with it available from May 17 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC41Iiotags

MIKE DAVIES COLUMN APRIL 2023

Sporting an Orbison hairdo and shades, MARC LEMON keeps them coming, his latest up on YouTube being the reverb heavy, Velvets/Syd Barrett-influenced shoegaze chug of Lighthouse, an ode to a visionary and rebel  (“they say that your ideas are an anachronism to the thinking classes/They are sheep to be sheared/Much of what you've said and done reveals a deeper truth/One they have obscured but you have made clear”) that uses an image of a rusty Ford Corsair as a metaphor for society (“A fragile entity you work to save/Are both beyond repair”). (www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUqw8T6wWmA)

Recording as SHY FACE TROUBADOUR, singer-songwriter Tony Willé self-releases ‘The Train’, a folksy Americana piano and guitar ballad about the loss of his brother some years back, a musing on the previous nature of time and the realisation that when it’s up then the train is never late and “all our tears and prayers couldn’t slow it down”, the lyrics managing to reference not only The Rolling Stones but Mickey Channon, who played forward for  Southampton, and represented the England national team in the 70s, scoring over 250 goals alongside the poignant refrain “I don’t have a religious bone in my body but I believe in love”. (www.shyfacetroubadour.bandcamp.com)

Awash with drones and interlaced with readings adapted from the Bible, The Book of Bare Life & Returns - Full Liturgical Edition, subtitled  Praying the Psalms in the Anthropocene  (the time during which humans have had a substantial impact on our planet),  is the latest from  DAVID BENJAMIN BLOWER, one he describes as “songs based on psalms, deep time, anarchy, the agricultural revolution, the domestication of the horse, the industrial revolution, oil, walls, ruins, wilds, kindness, wine, waiting, and the dreadful otherness of god”.

It opens with To and End, a  drone and spare guitar accompanied ode to mortality and the peace of accepting sung like an old work song blues,  moving into the sparse plucked accompaniment of the eco-apocalypse prophesying Sing O Hills (“Let the hills sing the song they have been keeping/And the waters clap their fierce ancient hands/Let the hills sing the song that’s down there sleeping/Because its coming”) and followed by the eight-minute Happy Be They, a prayer for the downtrodden and lost (“Oh harken to our hurt/Behold and enfold/The worn out faces of the earth”) and the peace of those who “know ye’in the warmth of the sun and the soil”.

Six  tracks are spoken passages set to atmospheric instrumental backing, varying from 50 seconds to the four minute early dawn purity of Ascents, while elsewhere the semi-slurred The Earth is Full (“Break all the ceilings to the floors/Let all things be silenced and stilled in awe/Hear the wind my Loves/Know ye the Fear upon the heights/Know all the stars beyond the whirring lights/Light your prayers my friends”) is what Beans On Toasts might sound like had he trained in canonical singing with lines such as “The Kings shall not be saved by all their wars/Nor armies saved by all their saddled horses” very much of an Old Testament persuasion.

Eco themes and exploitation of the earth are present again on the slow and measured plucked rhythm and echoing vocals of  A River (“If the black gold burns/And the wheel yet turns/And the States keeps friends/Who pillage in their violence”), continuing in the quasi-lullaby reassurance of The Gentle Strong (“Fret ye not, little heart/At the wheels that want and take and hurt/O forsake their heartless rage/For the wheels shall all lay down and be covered in moss/And the trees shall take back all their walls/And the gentle strong shall inherit the land”), one repeated with Why So Sad? (“These wastelands have an end/Ye shall praise again”) in its call to remember the joy before the despair (“I remember/Walking midst the crowds in the streets/All toward the house with dancing feet/And the procession was all/All’s a festival”) that would seem to have its roots in the idea of the Second Coming.

Calling Billy Bragg to mind, the tranquil and quite lovely The Knowing with its pulsing rhythm and intermittent piano notes is another eight-minute piece, here about finding peace in trust in the “song of the God-in-love”  (“With the wine that flows down the mountainside/And every creature eats from the loving hand/And every creature rests on the loving breast”), again calling out the despoliation of the land (“wherefore this butchering the soil?/So may it perish from the earth”). The final ‘song’ being the chiming notes of the sparsely accompanied Unholy States, a blessing that speaks to a rebirth of nature: “Resting bodies where the dwellings are singing/Bow thee low to meet the clear spring/Unmake the walled unholy states/Open up the goats’ lonely gates/Blessed be the soil that creates and waits”. It comes with a short essay (physical with the CD, pdf with the Bandcamp digital) on the Psalms, the Anthropocene and Doughnut Economics. Blower may be a theologian, but you don’t have to be of any religious persuasion to appreciate the beauty of his words and music, but it might help if you share his concern for the fate of the planet.

From Haiti via America and now living in Birmingham, Creole singer-songwriter GERMA ADAN has self-released ‘The Women Of Dan’, watery blues-folk guitar accompanying her softly sung vocals on lyrics taken from Audre Lorde's poem The Women of Dan Dance with Swords in Their Hands to Mark the Time When They Were Warriors, a celebration of the female warriors of Dahomey as featured in the film The Woman King. (www.adanproject.com/about-me).

MIKE DAVIES COLUMN MARCH 2023

FYFE DANGERFIELD resurfaces after a long absence with new track and video Shook, a drum-led slow march beat  rhythm festooned with electronic beeps and squiggles on which he furtively sings “call me Shook/what are you?” like something out of a creepy children’s story that circles enigmatically around a theme of loss of identity (“i got so involved in your ghost stories/now i can’t even see the path before me”) and mental health (“richter scale anxiety/what the hell’s become of me?”)

Following her recent album using just unaccompanied treated and layered vocals, KATY ROSE BENNETT goes full on experimental   with the sonic manipulations of Dissolution created as part of her time as one of Drake Music’s Artists-in-Residence, a musical journey through grief and loss, to understanding that’s might be described as Bjork and Radiohead filtered through a Laurie Anderson lens and the work of Stockhausen. Constructed entirely from samples of Katy’s voice, looped, layered and sonically manipulated to emulate percussion, converting lyric texts into midi keyboard patterns mapped to vocal samples,  it comprises five parts, each representing a stage of the grieving process, based on the Kubler-Ross model: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. She reflects on the grief experienced resulting from Functional Neurological Disorder, a disabling, long-term health condition, and the consequential sense of loss of identity and potential.

As you might assume, it’s not one for the car stereo, but requires full immersion to appreciate the nuances and indeed the wry humour evident in lines like “what if I eat more spinach, what if I eat more fish, what if I drink more water, what if I drink less gin” on Dissolution III. It opens with a  disorienting soundscape, revisited on the eight-minute Part IV and closes with the choral/hymnal-like tranquillity of the seven-minute Dissolution V. About as far as you could get from her Songs Of The River Rea, it’s a bold journey into unknown waters and astounding evidence of her progression of an artist not afraid to take chances in the pursuit of her music. 

Now settled into Bolan spelling mode, MARC LEMON turns is focus to the plight of the homeless , mental health  and depression in the simply strummed  Night Shelter, a song written from a dark place with the title carrying a bitter  irony (“the gentle cloak of death”), the track ending with a children’s chorus singing Silent Night (www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvxNcrChDLw)

MIKE DAVIES COLUMN FEBRUARY 2023

 

From New York, but currently living in Birmingham, THOMAS TRUAX is an art rock  experimental songwriter and inventor whose past work has seen collaborations with Jarvis cocker, Duke Special, Richard Hawley and Terry Pratchett as well as an album  interpreting music from the films of David Lynch and writing  a score for a production of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt. His tenth album, Dream Catching Songs (Blang), sees him joining forces with Siouxie and the Banshees drummer Budgie, while also crediting his self-made mechanical drum machine Mother Superior.

Featuring animal howls, the languorous, muted twang title track opens proceedings, initially semi-spoken before slipping into a narcotic croon as he sings “Heart be strong/This night might be long/Be brave, hold on”, the drums making their presence felt with the spoken  noir Everything’s Going To Be Alright (“We try to play a game of poker with an incomplete deck/Between the booze and the takeaways the kitchen is a wreck”) with its synths, raspy guitar, urgent sung chorus poppier refrain and references to William Shatner, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Coco Chanel and Priti Patel. Birds & Bees goes all clattery rockabilly  in a celebration of sex (“Daddy always said you’ve gotta watch out for them floozies/Momma always said you’ve gotta watch out for them floozies/But I like it”) while, with its staccato clipped guitar riff , blurping synths and rattling drums, The Anomalous Now is another talkie track where lines like “Swearing in Hungarian, strange cravings for bananas/Fear of strangers/And general mild discombobulation” can’t help but bring David Byrne to mind as he introduces the ‘band’  (“First off we have the wonderful Mother Superior on mechanical percussion/And here behind the human drum kit, our very special guest star: the one and only Budgie/Joining us with noises from the beyond,  my long time business partner The Hornicator/And of course here in my arms, let’s not forget Hank the Guitar”) while Free Floaters is more of a laid back Lou Reed with a lovely image of clothes  dancing on the washing line (“A sheer white skirt, red shirts from France/Some polka dotted underpants/Blowin’ in rhythm in a laundry line dance/Their undulations leave us lost in a trance”).

Seagulls caw over the intro to the relatively mainstream love song balladry of A Wonderful Kind Of Strange (“I'd become resigned to nothing more/When I washed up in my bottle on to your shore”) with its military cum Spector drum beats, to be followed by the mechanical instrumental chimes, harmonica and drum splutters of Origami Spy Arrives In A Paper Boat and a return to skewed rockabilly for the loping, finger-snapping A Little More Time that owes a touch to the melody line of Sixteen Tons.

It ends with, first, the percussive distortions and rumbles of the cool swagger of Big Bright Marble, an ode to the wonder of the sun that we’re orbiting round, and then the six-minute plus musical paranoia of The Fisherman’s Wishing Well Prayer, the vocals shifting from conspiratorial to croon before the mid-section erupts into a brief apocalyptic drone and nervy tinkling piano scales and the final ebb into the ether against a lyric about mortality and faith (“now she’s in the hospital/She’s refusing all her medicine/And we don’t dare wake her sleepwalking/The doc’s got an air of resignation/He avoids meeting my gaze/I don’t know if you’re out there God/But I hope you are because now I’m scared/And I’m gonna kneel/And stare deep into this wishing well/And I’m gonna pray”) and miracle cures (“I dip my pail, bring it back up full/Then I stroll right back to that hospital/With this dazzling medicine/Sloshing at my side”). Not one you listen to casually, but well worth exploring when you have the time to absorb.

Following a 2019 collaborative EP, Birmingham-born singer-songwriters Robert Lane and Emily Ewing join forces again under the name of MIDNIGHT ASHES, the first fruit of which is ‘Life Is For Living’, a moody, blues-flavoured number with walking beat drums with Ewing on lead and Lane harmonising on the chorus with a carpe diem message about not having any regrets when it comes to leaving this mortal coil. (https://midnightashes.bandcamp.com/releases)

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.