MIKE DAVIES COLUMN AUGUST 2023

Having ostensibly retired following 2016’s Let the Record Show: Dexys Do Irish and Country Soul, following a  spell in Thailand reassesssing himself and his beliefs, especially in regard to women, Kevin Rowland returns with DEXY’S  and The Feminine Divine (100% Records) as, joined by long-time collaborator Big Jim Paterson on trombone, Sean Read on sax and Toby Chapman on pretty much everything else other than Mike Timothy playing keys on a couple of tracks, they deliver an album that is both familiar and startlingly different.

It opens with The One That Loves You,  written  with Paterson in 1991 during Rowlands’ cocaine addiction, the words and melody tumbling out in an infectious evocation of 70s soul with a Dexy’s twist and a decided alpha male posturing (“I’m not denying baby, you’re a very strong woman/but you’ll need my love darling cos they’ll be times when you’re just not so sure/A man comes up to you, he says how do you do/But you can tell from the look in his eye that he’s not just the friendly kind, you show that man to me, cos he’s offended me, and I would like to demonstrate to him, black Irish chivalry”. 

That stance is, however, immediately offset by It’s Alright Kevin (Manhood 2023), another Paterson co-write and a revision of the track from the 2003 compilation Let’s Make This Precious which  opens with a spoken intro as, addressing notions of masculinity, he declares “this is what I really think” before singing “I tried so hard to live a lie pretending I was some tough guy/But now I’ve had enough. /I can’t live that way no more”,  a dose of excoriating self-therapy with the backing singers providing the call and response question with lines like “Did that compound your sense of doubt?”

Following the same structure, I’m Going to Get Free with its pounding drums,  blaring horns and Woah-ho backing vocals continues the liberation from old ways, declaring “I had so much hate in me/I stopped and I looked and I said to myself/I’m not liking what I see/Now I’m going to get free”. That’s fittingly followed, in turn, with the keys backed Irish soul disco pop, crowd singalong chorus  of the ridiculously uplifting   ‘Coming Home’, the third Paterson co-write where, the backing singers providing the commentary,  he asserts that having  “Been tortured by what I tried to be” now “I’m coming home, I want to be myself again”.

Things takes a musical swerve in the second half as the slurring funky title track with its Northern Soul undercurrents  and Maddy Read Clarke providing the counterpointing vocals, introduces the synthy electronics and shifts from masculine to feminine, announcing  that” Women have been put down for too long and it’s up to you and me”, which some might feel is rather stating the bloody obvious with Kev coming on as some white saviour of womanhood as,  repenting his past sexist bullshit behaviour (“Men didn’t know what the fuck to do/so we controlled, we bullied, and we blamed it all on you… today and I know I was the worst …I took out my frustrations on them and them devalued all their worth”), he  announces “Women are the superstars, the goddesses on earth / They need to be cherished, worshipped and adored / It’s not for them to do things for us / We’ve got it the wrong way round / We should be serving them for all we’re worth”. The theme and the funk continue with the squelchy My Goddess Is, the spoken lyrics surely channelling Dylan, as we enter the submission phase with the decidedly S&M lines “My Goddess is, glorious and mean, every time she treats me bad, I get even more keen… My Goddess, she tells me I’m her bitch, makes me serve her every need, and scratch her every itch”. It’s on then to  the sleazy, sultry Prince-flavoured electro hip hop groove Goddess Rules,  the spoken word exchanges between him and  co-writer Kamaria Castang a sort of role reversal of those old Barry White numbers.

Photo credit Sandra Vijandi

The theme of submission is overtly addressed in the gorgeous six-minute, piano ballad My Submission with its Debussy colourings and Irish soul as, voice soaring to Orbison heavens and one of the best things he’s recorded, he avows   “I will dedicate my life to serving you”, though again that S&M streak surfaces in the spoken passage  as he says “I will be your pet, to do with as you will”.

It ends with the pulsing late night electronic funk, warm and smoothly sung  Dance With Me, a number, which has him adoringly dressing up his woman and asking for one dance  so she can go out into the night and express her sexuality (“I’m thinking about you now as somebody holds you tight/Can’t wait to see you again and hear about your night/I hope you’ll take that love, cos it’s your god-given right”) which may be all rather kinky in its implied vicarious thrills but, like its predecessor, also gives the lie to those who’ve ever sneered at his vocals.  

Waving a flag for the sensitive woke new man movement may well encourage derision in some quarters, but anyone with an ear will realise this is Rowlands at the peak of his musical powers. 

Funded by The National Lottery Community Fund and working with Good Neighbours, a Coventry-based charity that supports lonely and isolated older people by linking them with volunteer befrienders, Back in the Day (Tortoise Recordings) is a new EP from Steve Jones aka STYLUSBOY, a collection of songs inspired by six of the older people he met with and the stories of  their lives. Featuring harmonies from Mississippi-born Americana songstress Alva Leigh, it opens with the steady chug of ‘Fourteen Days’ which tells of how John, a 102-year-old WWII pilot who was shot down over enemy lines and spent the next fortnight living off the land as he made his escape back to England. The line about The Caterpillar Club is a reference to an informal association of those who have successfully   parachuted out of a disabled aircraft. 

The war is also the backdrop to the acoustic guitar ringing, chorus friendly ‘Lift Your Voice’, sung in the voice of a woman who worked riveting planes and who, every lunchtime, would, just as she did for her auntie as a child and later for soldiers on leave, exhorted with “come on Joan”, sing to raise everyone’s spirits. Featuring Lauren South on violin, the swaying ‘In The Morning Light’ is about Blossom, who, grafting in the factory, “Pulls out her fight as/The nine to five begins/She works all the hours/Puts bread on the table/Determined to make it/To see through the darkness/And do it all by herself”.  Referencing the Coventry Blitz, the melodically circling ‘Waiting To Say Hello’ is a lovely tale of  old friends and good neighbours sharing memories (“She takes down the dusty box/Treasures just waiting to be found/The sadness of voices past/Joys of the loves she holds so dear”) and a cup of tea as “We talk and we put the world to rights”. Reminiscent of The Lilac Time,  Doreen is the inspiration for the slow balladeering ‘Days Are Made For Living’ with its chiming electric guitar chords, violin and  its message to “Take each step as it comes/Look each day in the eye/There’s always beauty in the moments you’ll find”, while the final track, the fingerpicked and puttering percussive beats five-minute ‘Take A Little More Time’ with its Nick Drake hints and harmonies from  Sam Lyon, Isabel Costa, Wes Finch and Evie Jones, taps the memories of Freda whose kind-heartedness saw her invited to tea with Queen Elizabeth II. (www.stylusboy.co.uk)  

MIKE DAVIES COLUMN JULY 2023

MICHELLE LAWRENCE continues on the comeback trail with Keep Falling Down (www.michellelawrencemusic.com), a terrific gospel-flavoured slow swaying soul love story that makes you wonder why she’s not spoken of in the same breath as Ruby Turner and Beverley Knight. 

Having placed plans for a seven-track mini-album on hold, feeling the material didn’t have enough variety, FYFE DANGERFIELD  returns with SFJ (invent your own acronym), a track that, with its rippling keyboards and distant largely indecipherable choral vocals,  might be best described as progressive classical , available through the usual streaming channels and with a video on www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHPl5u9bOTU  celebrating the joy of movement.

MARC LEMON is positively churning them out, following up his Carry On tribute with Psychodrama (www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNeJ_yLq3Ig(a number he describes as “the fallout from a catastrophic relationship…If they happen to be friends with, or be in love with, a certain type of person, well, there's going to be a horrible price to pay and this is why I say to you, be careful”. With distorted guitars, a Motown influenced groove and ferocious Ringo Starr drumming, it channels 60s psychedelic jangle rock through the fuzzed acid haze of the Jesus & Mary Chain and a T Rex strut.

The third album from BLUEBYRD, the Wolverhampton acoustic duo of Graham Pask and Chris Rowley, Song and Dance offers ample evidence as to why they are increasingly proving staples on the festival and folk club circuit, opening with the light fingerpicking of the title track with its carpe diem message (“The day's too short to stare at the horizon/Waiting for your ship to come in/Placing safe bets at the table/On a game you can never lose or win”) about taking risks and living for the moment  (“You’ve got to dance like there’s no tomorrow/Sing the song like you just don’t care/'Cause when the day is done/At the setting sun/We disappear”)

The shimmering woodwind-shaded, fingerpicked ‘Crystals’ follows, hints of Ralph McTell

 to a song  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. Keeping things low key, ‘Siren Song’ takes the familiar myth of sailors being lured to their destruction by watery femme fatales but gives it a spin whereby the temptress becomes music (“Don’t blame me, it was the tune, blame it on the band/They just plugged and struck this chord it took me by the hand/I couldn't stop , I had to join, I had to play along”), weaving in touch of the pied piper as they warn “Parents lock your kids away plug wax into their ears/Do not let them hear the song that robs you of your years/For once they taste this fruit your children's souls will belong/To those who play and dance and sing to the siren's song”, all of which seems rather counter-productive for a working musician to advocate.

Music continues to cast a spell with ‘Sing Me The Song’, a spare traditional-sounding fingerpicked web of circling watery, dark notes that, this time, speaks of its healing power (“Sing me the song that will make me sleep tonight…Give me the tune that will take me by the hand/Pull me from the sea/Rest me on the sand/Rail at those roarers then steer me inland… the hymn that makes the ache in our hearts end”) and which put me in mind of 70s duo Magna Carta.

Fluttering synthesised accordion introduces ‘Where Does the River Flow?’ which, starting out gentle and rippling picks up pace for a light skip and catchy refrain that echoes the earlier theme of  not trying to second guess what lies ahead (“So take your tarot cards/And hide them in the back yard… And don’t give me predictions/About some dirt track to perdition/The fool's always got the most to say”), relying on each other to weather the storms (“We don’t know what’s coming next/So why can’t we just be?”). From rivers  to a ‘Rock Pool’, things shift into a bossa nova groove for a  number about the calming balm of nature that, in contrast to seizing the day, looks to while it away in tranquillity as “A troubled world/Is kept at bay/As I rest inside your dappled drowsy spell”.

With its cascading guitar figures and synth-accordion break, ‘Babe It's Me And You’ pretty much speaks for itself, in a song about trying to keep a relationship from falling apart (“There, you sit away from me/We may be worlds apart/But this thing will be through/So listen to your heart/We both know what is true”) returning again to musical motifs with  “We know the song remains the same/So we won’t change the chords/Or add some dumb refrain/This harmony’s for two/For us to rehearse through”.  

Staying together is also at the heart of the dappled fingerpicked, Beatles-referencing, organ-shaded ‘I Ain't Got a Ticket to Ride’  (“When you wake up in the morning it will still be me that you’re lying beside/I forgot to draw up a master plan/I just crashed out on your sofa, woke up in the morning and here I still am”) and, again, not losing what you have by forever searching for what’s over the horizon (“Hey don’t you dream of all those ‘could be’s’/Forget the journeys that you never made/The grass is never really greener /They’re filtered lives that trick the eye to thinking you ain’t made the grade”).

‘The Bridge’ takes on a darker hue  where the musical phrase ‘take me to the bridge’ is recast in the story of a man whose mind’s a “broken highway, beyond repair”, looking to commit suicide feeling that “When the time is right you gotta throw in the hat”,  when  even his death will just “inconvenience the 9.15” while passers-by are too busy to try and stop him (“I could have talked him out of it/But I had to catch my train”). I’ll leave the song to reveal how his story ends.

Another shift of subject matter, ‘Stanton Drew’ with its puttering percussion is about Somerset’s mysterious stone monoliths but also returns to the same notions of stillness and serenity  explored in ‘Rock Pool’ and also of love’s permanence  (“if I had just one more day/

I would spend it here time wasting with you/And if I could change just one thing/I'd change to stone/Become still/Never to move”).

The penultimate ‘Too Much Noise’ laments the online world’s attention deficit disorder where the constant buzz “banging in our heads” drowns out the poet’s rhymes, the singer’s songs, the writer's prose, the preacher's prayer,  the angel's voice, again looking for a place to which to retreat (“I like it here in my home/I like it here in my room/I like it here in my chair/

I like it here in my head”). It ends with the brief circular fingerpicked  'Lost', a downbeat meditation on those who are, as it says, lost amid the noise and darkness, always seeking to blame and easily distracted by smoke and mirrors (“Pay the money/See the show/Go home”).

Five years on from their debut, they’ve grown into a hugely accomplished  folk force and, while they may not stray far outside their restrained acoustic parameters and the echoes of their influences, this is a hugely listenable album that fully deserves to expand awareness and following as it filters out into the world. (www.bluebyrdband.co.uk)

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)