MIKE DAVIES COLUMN MAY 2022

Having released her punchy, rocky debut back in 2019, Irish-blood Solihull singer-songwriter CERI JUSTICE returns with Walk In Shadow (Self-released) keeping the power still pretty much turned up with her vocals at times reminiscent of the raunchier side of Carol Decker. While playing live she has a band backing, the album is, save for strings and pedal steel on one track, impressively just her and multi-instrumentalist producer Paul Johnston, opening in swaggery bluesy form with Wanted, underlining the solid blue collar bar band nature of her sound. Beginning with an electronic hum, the pace pulls back to a slower, snakier groove with The Creek, which initially seems to be a brooding portrait of the sort of toxic guy you really don’t want to strike up a liaison with  (“Fork-tongue runs away with you/When you start to speak …The aura of corruption/Follows you around… Love shatters into pieces/When lust is all you seek/Selfish schemes and broken dreams”), but is actually about the treatment of the Native Americans (“Stolen generation/Took away their land/Put your chains around them/Could not make a stand”).

It’s  back then to  a chugging guitar and drums rock number for Now I See, a  number about a deceiving heartbreaking ex  who “Trampled on my dreams” and the realisation that “love can be blind/A rush to the head that sends you reeling/When it falls apart you just need healing”.

As with the debut, there’s a couple of covers, first up nodding to her country influences with Jolene, taken at a slightly slower pace than the original  with the opening fiddle giving it a more forlorn mood before the drums kick in. In complete contrast the other gives a sassily sung country pop-rock swagger to Eddie and the Hot Rods classic Do Anything You Wanna Do that sounds like it would go down a storm live.

Returning to the self-penned material and continuing down the path of broken hearts Love’s Let Me Down is a slow, strings-soaked Americana sway to acoustic guitar and pedal steel, an equally ruminative sensibility informing the cascading chords, chiming guitars, tick tocking beat and softly sung Got This Feeling, a particular stand out and of a more upbeat nature (“One day I’ll be there in your arms/One look at your face and I’ll fall for your charms once again/You always could make it right”). Sandwiched between, however, it kicks back up again with the riff-driven You Did What You Did where she decides the  love rat should get his comeuppance (“Now you gotta pay cuz you had your fun/Gonna start talkin bout you… It wouldn’t take much for you to leave town/And she would feel better if you weren’t around… So hitch up your wagon and just roll on by/I’m done with your talkin’ and tired of your lies”).

One of two lengthy tracks, opening quietly with appropriate sound effects, the five-minute plus Thunder starts out as a  sparsely arranged, mid-tempo number before a heavier drum, more tribal rhythm takes over to bolster the lyrics where new love has a more elemental rush (“Sends my spirit reeling/Sweeps me off the ground”) before it’s back to  sweaty saloon band strut and bluesy guitar riffery and sparking solo for the penultimate Mess You Up where, having been walked over earlier, she’s reborn holding all the sexually charged aces and burning with animal passion. It ends  (save for the bonus remix of the rocking ‘JCC’ off the debut) with the wind effects intro to the eight-minute title track where, anchored by metronomic percussion, military drums and keening fiddle, she explores her Irish heritage with its call to “take me home”, and mention of County Cork, castle walls,  ancient halls, rivers, mountains  and a love that keeps growing “Wild and free as the Celtic sea”, a reference to the iconic parting glass and the sound of gunfire “cutting through this Rebel land” with the image of a woman waiting for her lover  away fighting with “this brave and marching band”.

Her profile’s currently largely limited to her local stomping grounds, but given the exposure this should see her finding a much wider audience. 

A refreshingly eccentric singer-songwriter with a keen ear for despondent whimsy and melody, Kings Heath’s  WILLIAM WILLIAM RODGERS (his stage name lifted from a line in John Cale’s Paris 1919) makes his self-released album debut with William William Rodgers  Sings The Yellow Pages, a delightful collection of songs that range from the opening organ drone of the wearied swaying shanty folksiness of the ageing-themed (“Are we heading for the scrapheap/Or will life start again at sixty five”) Are We Still On sung in the voice of a woman urging her lover to  not see her at her early morning worst (“I awake with a start and the air hangs heavy/Stinking of sweat and factor fifty lotion/Now I don’t want you to see me like this/I don’t want you to treat me like this/I don’t want you to see the bitterness/That’s smudging my birthday mascara”) to the funky minor to major staccato rhythm love song Gone Shrimping, and the dreamily reflective romantic bittersweet acoustic Mermaid Tattoo (“scarf weather again/I left a bag of green on a memorial bench/perched high up on the cliffside, grey-faced and lonely/in the arsehole of the year/all of the place was barred against intruders/as I was getting ready to pack up my suitcase/I went down to the strand to scratch my initials/you came like a wave, washed them away/and life would never be the same”) where he namechecks Sonny & Cher.

The album’s veined with melancholia, particularly to the end with, preceded by the brief acoustic instrumental Dickens-alluding Bleak Hut,  the flute-coloured jazz-folk jittery rhythmic 77 Walking Sticks which relates an unexpected encounter with an old flame  (“I rounded the corner/I thought you'd been buried/fathoms deep in my diary like a first year crush or common room grudge/a push then a shove/the sea takes a bite wipes its mouth, draws it tight”), and the lovely acoustic regret and poetic lyrics of Sigh (“now I know we haven't spoken since I spilled the beans/and it somehow got back to you/I remember stars went falling all around my ears were they falling round yours too?/I could see I'd been the villain but didn't have the strength to admit that it was you who'd been wronged and that for someone so committed to dodging every shower you were drenched to the bone”).

It ends on a similarly bittersweet note, returning to thoughts of growing older and mortality with the viola-tinted strummed guitar, accordion and piano ballad If I Die Before You (“and if I die before you/won't you burn my letters please/stoke the fire with postcards and jaundiced diaries/and if I die before you won't you check my books with care there's a petal from our wedding day and a lock of Charlie's hair”).

There’s also one cover on the album, a choice that underscores his own very English sensibilities as a writer and musician, The Slow Train being the 1963 song by comic songs dup Flanders & Swann, a lament for the rural and suburban railway stations lines lost in the cuts inflicted by The Beeching Report, here chiming with the theme of loss and regret that permeates his own work.

Female duo THE VANILLA PODS describe themselves as Powerpuff Girls in an indie edition using their guitars as a weapon to fight the evil in this world - the boredom! The mission continues with new self-released single NA NA with its persistent rhythm and repeated title chant, marking them out as a fun cocktail of Bananarama, Fuzzbox and Poppy & The Jezebels. 

A four-piece from Solihull, comprising frontman Pearce Macca, drummer Niall Fennell, bassist Jonny Fyffe and guitarist Liam Deakin, THE CLAUSE exude cool  and are one of the biggest rising names on the local scene, their new single Electric with its handclaps, female backing vocals and snarly guitar solo embodying their fusion of 60s, 80s and 90s  rock and pop, with a Robert Palmer swagger, a Duran groove and an indie attitude. 

SAM REDMORE gives Giorgio Moroder's organ-driven Tears (Jalapeno) a rework with an Afro Latin groove and cumbia percussion, horns and strings, twinned with a cover of Just Be Good To Me that shares a similar feelgood township vibe. 

Another local outfit delivering punchy, catchy indie rock with  infectious hooks and choruses are OVERPASS, On Your Own being their fourth self-released single that seems them moving beyond past Arctic Monkeys  and The Strokes influences, their recent sell out gig at the O2 Institute a signal that they’re ready to take the next step up the national ladder.

Lining up as Garran, James, Xavier and Scarlett, their Facebook page describes HEADSHRINKERS  as “Unflinching poetry set atop confrontational searing lead guitar riffs, thunderous, driving bass-lines and pummelling drums”, or, if you prefer they have  a similar dark, swirly, echoey vocals post-punk sound as Editors  with shades of Joy Division/New Order and The Cure as captured on new single Monocle, taken from upcoming debut EP Doorway Conversations, the video part filmed on a canal narrowboat is well worth a look on YouTube.

Fronted by James B Gibney, BIG SKY ORCHESTRA are a soulful five piece with strong flavours of classy 80s American close harmony AOR to be heard on debut single Hollywood Nights with its funky guitar distortion solo.

R.John Webb’s new project as DANDY THE VANDAL  gears up for the debut album with new single We Are The Subterraneans on Pete Steel’s Catch The Buzz label,  funky-Bowie styled groove with brass, steady marching beat, background woo hoos and strobe effect guitar riff as he declares “Long live the Subterraneans/We shall survive/We’re here and we are salient/Never to die”.

MIKE DAVIES COLUMN APRIL 2022

Formed at Bham Uni and fronted by Shannon, four piece dance pop outfit DAME release Cold Water, opening staccato before hitting its groove and conjuring thoughts of Lisa Stansfield. Fusing rock and folk influences and inspired by the likes of Damien Rice and , Daughter,

RYAN SPARROW delivers the six minute plus To Know, a slow, heady and soulful ballad that breaks into a lengthy chilled guitar solo in the final stretch, promising well for the eventual album. 

Taken from upcoming EP Fracture, The Night And Its Charms finds THE TABOO CLUB  in a  kind of  Editors-like dark and intense mood but also coloured with a dance sensibility, fractured rhythms, squally brass and snarly guitars. YIKES are a cool fuzzed guitar anti-pop four piece with shades of Stone Roses through a Nirvana grunge filter, deftly compressed into assuredly arrogant new single Iron Deficiency. 

OFFAL CLUB is, according to the website,  a self-proclaimed ‘singer/songwriter’ who serves up amusing, confusing, sometimes absurd punky indie-pop over home-cooked rhythm tracks, seasoned with a hint of melancholy. Roughly translated, that means he’s poppily playful with simple but catchy tunes, as to be found on new Unavailable EP featuring current BrumRadio playlisted single Ah Dear, Don’t Cry with its hints of 60s Spector over the intro ad he sings about getting angry after being hit in the face by a football. Elsewhere the swaggery stride along Less is More (“though the future's bright I stand in the shade/To avoid the limelight of my victory parade”) is equally catchy while the title track is a punkier pop drum pummelling bounce that manages to namecheck Ventnor and Blackgang Chine on the Isle of Wight and Festoon Lights with its loose limbed guitar line and scuffed snare is a brief little love song with a  vaguely Latin sway. 

Irish folk-pop siblings Us4 follow up last year’s Tears Of A Clown (no, not that one) with a lovely rendition of the traditional The Fields of Athenry, which, joined by Mike Egan from Liverpool alt-rock outfit Polybius, opens in sparse, restrained Irish balladry style before erupting in a flurry of drums and guitars to positively scamper along with a ringing zest and tin whistle (played by singer Áine) putting me in mind of Lick The Tins.

ROBERT LANE continues to get increasingly poppy, strings patterned, piano-led new single Pass The Day, about  letting things happen and being open to the possibility that sometimes things go the way you want without being forced, conjuring myriad thoughts of Leo Sayer, Gilbert O’Sullivan, and McCartney.

Riding on the back of the recent upsurge of interest, THE NIGHTINGALES release I ❤ CCTV as a free download from Bandcamp (https://uknightingales.bandcamp.com/album/i-cctv-free-digital-single), a typically abrasive number that strides along sounds like a fractured, bass monster version of Iggy’s The Passenger and is twinned with a live recording from Scheer of  the warped Beefheartian Simple Soul.

Following on from her voice only album Alone On A Hill, KATY ROSE BENNETT gets positively symphonic in comparison on new single ‘Hard To Be Human’  (Little House On The Hill Records) as she draws on organ, warped piano and, er, scissor samples to augment her vocals on a dreamily drifting number about recognising how it can sometimes be a struggle to deal with the demands of life, those days when you can’t get anything done, but accepting that those difficulties and how we cope with them are what make us who we are  and that “this too shall pass”. (www.katyrosebennett.com)

Back in 1988, Brian Nordhoff, Joe Stevens, Les Fleming and the sadly now late Roberto Cimarosti joined forces with Hamburg-born singer Billie Ray Martin to form dark, psychedelic, bluesy, electronic soulful house outfit ELECTRIBE 101, releasing debut single Talking With Myself, followed up in 1989 with Lipstick on My Lover  and, their first Top 40 hit, Tell Me When the Fever Ended and the reissue of their debut, which reached 23 in the charts and went on to become a Balearic club classic. Their debut album Electribal Memories appeared in 1990, peaking at 26 but, dropped by their label, the band split in 1991, the four guys going on to become The Groove Corporation and Martin returning to solo work. They left behind an unreleased follow up, several tracks of which were subsequently re-recorded by Martin, as singles and for her 1995 solo debut. The album has remained gathering dust until now, finally seeing the light of day as Electribal Soul via Martin’s Electribal Records imprint, and serves as a welcome reminder of just how brilliantly they fused US house and soul with European dance, Kicking off with the hypnotic Insatiable Girl on which Martin comes over like a cross between Alison Moyet and Annie Lennox and sounds strikingly contemporary, underliving how ahead of their time they were. Elsewhere Space Oasis rides a pulsing, persistent rave groove with vague Lionel Richie echoes with Martin soaring to the high notes, the fabulous eight minute Moving Downtown is rumbling dark soul with a motorik rhythm while Conquering Tomorrow is a glistening Oriental-flavoured instrumental chill and A Sigh Won’t Do is smouldering torch soul set to a dub feel and hiphop beat. Completed by the keyboards-based Deadline For My Memories, the electronic club noir True Moments Of My World, Hands Up And Amen and the sinuously snaking seductive soul Persuasion with its femme fatale spoken passages plus bonus additions on an alternative Deadline mix and the You and I (Keep Hanging On) which goes from skeletal spooked to full on Lorraine Ellison meets Bassey  diva, it doesn’t feel remotely dated and puts many of today’s kindred musical spirits in the shade. It’s been 20 years coming, but it’s a genuinely lost masterpiece.

YIKES are a cool fuzzed guitar anti-pop four piece with shades of Stone Roses through a Nirvana grunge filter, deftly compressed into assuredly arrogant new single Iron Deficiency.

MIKE DAVIES COLUMN MARCH 2022

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MIKE DAVIES COLUMN FEBRUARY 2022

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

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

MIKE DAVIES COLUMN JANUARY 2022

Following on from her debut single, High On Hope, Warwick-based BIMM graduate  JULIANNE OC, the daughter from a family of Birmingham funeral directors,  releases her full album, White Camelia (Ingenius Music), a collection of melancholic, at times ethereal acoustic  folk mingled with dreamy electronica.  It opens with the slow-paced, wintry feel of Wait Till Dawn  proceeding into the similarly atmospheric melting icicles ambience of Eden where her airy voice soars to the clouds over keyboards and percussive clicks. 

The spare acoustic strum of From Elle keeps the mood whispery, building to a muted tinkled keyboards finale fade then, following the single, its  upbeat tempo remains with the acoustic pulsing notes and shimmering bells of Traces before ending with the handclaps static,  Spanish guitar and pulsing electronics bedrock to the intoxicating balladeering Ringadingding with her soaring vocals taking on a choral quality and Kate Bush meets Morricone colours  and, finally the five minute title track itself, again evoking a wintry yet warming soundscape  with her trilling crystal waters vocals and  dreamy acoustic music box pirouette as it builds to a muted cacophony. Like the flower, this is an early blossoming with a heady musical scent that promises to linger for months to come.

MIKE DAVIES COLUMN DECEMBER 2021

And to see out the year, HARRY JORDAN blasts out a storm with Outlaw, a sleazy growling rockabilly guitar riff grinding blues about dancing with the devil that comes with the addition of Hell In High Heels and the relatively more sedate but still fist to the face Death Card. 

LIONS OF DISSENT continue to go from strength to strength, conjuring thoughts perhaps of  Sisters of Mercy with the loose-limbed bass, electronics and goth-shrouded motorik of Torch, a song they’ve just released to their social media pages, as they sing “We're down on our knees like beggars in a goldmine”. 

And, finally, MATT RYDER gets into electronica for his Escape EP, a six-tracker featuring the skittering beats of Before I Go, the ebb and flow echoey sung 6am, Awake, Run, Lips and the title track, all six flowing fluidly together into an extended chill miasma.

RECORD REVIEWS NOVEMBER 2021

 

Over The Moon

Chinook Waltz (Borealis)

Cowboy country from Canada, Over The Moon are Alberta duo Suzanne Levesque and Craig Bignell, the title being their home studio and, augmented by assorted guest players,  the music being a throwback to old school bluegrass and Western swing. Featuring fiddle and mandolin by Bruce Hoffman, it opens with the self-penned ‘Lonesome Bluebird’, a folksy bittersweet number about having dreams but never having the courage to stretch your wings.

It’s followed by the first of four covers, Denis Keldie on accordion and Levesque singing lead on Ian Tyson’s evergreen ‘Someday Soon’, Tyson’s late sideman Mel Wilson providing the impetus for the second, a stripped down, fingerpicked  take on the Everly’s ‘Kentucky’, a number he’d  always urged them to learn, with Bignell up front and Hoffman on dobro.

The third takes them back to the late 1930s giving a  cowboy touch to Harry Roy’s big band swing number, ‘They Can’t Black Out The Moon’, a whimsical number about lovers making use of the moonlight during wartime blackout, a harmonising duet with embellishments from clarinet, accordion, upright bass and lap steel. Then, completing this clutch of covers, it shifts to Texicali flavours with Levesque on lead and bass for Buddy and Julie Miller ballad ‘I Can’t Get Over You’, Joshua Braca from  Grammy winners The Texmaniacs  providing the signature Tejano accordion alongside pedal steel, piano and nylon string guitar. 

Returning to their own material, the gently jogging ‘John Ware’ relates the story of an Alberta legend, the Black Cowboy who, born a slave in Tennessee, was hired for a cattle drive to Alberta and ended up marrying a Calgary girl and staying, becoming renowned for his horsemanship and an influential figure in the ranching industry.

Bergin’s back in the saddle for another swing style number with the whimsical ‘I’m Not Cool’, the narrator bemoaning how  nobody pays him any attention, but that heads start to turn when he takes up with a girl with the face of an angel and a smile to light the darkest night.  The last of the covers begins the final stretch with Bergin singing lead on another from the Ian and Sylvia Tyson catalogue, albeit written by Steve Gillette and  Tom Campbell, Levesque playing arco bass, Aaron Young on baritone acoustic and again featuring mandolin and fiddle on a lovely interpretation of ‘Darcy Farrow’ (taken at a slower pace than the Matthews Southern Comfort version).

Sung by Levesque, ‘When She Rides’ tells of a cowboy’s daughter and celebrates the bond between girls and horses and the freedom of riding away your heartaches, a bond not broken when she leaves for college and he waits for her return. And, finally, bookended by crickets chirping, there’s the five minute title track duet, an evocation of night at their ranch in the foothills,  the deer in the fields,  the dog curled up, a campfire, the coyotes howling,  the song of the birds and the peace and contentment they’ve found together. 

It doesn’t push any envelopes or break down any walls, but it’s a perfectly delightful listen that should see Over The Moon enjoying a well-deserved place in the sun.

Mike Davies