Song reviews

“Spellbinding” is indeed a pop song of respectable strength with enough retro moves to tick all the trendy boxes on anybody’s style sheet. Nadia Vaeh throws in a suitably robust vocal performance that justifies radio play and perhaps even some remixes.

Low key in that ever fashionable minimalist synth pop style, “Deepest Ocean” nonetheless has a decided hypnotic effect on the ears. If you are going to loop then loop it right and that is just what The fin. have done with this song.

The Bartells wouldn’t be much of an indie rock band if they didn’t at least try to turn all their songs into potential anthems and their song “1972” duly takes it to the big chorus with a riff or three keeping it company. Sing along!

Ah! The sound of the city echoes around the room courtesy of Erotic Secrets of Pompeii. “The End of Love” struts about like a song on a mission to smite mediocrity with a musical sword made the of best theatrical steel. Play loud!

“Empty Shoulders” is the kind of song where meandering sounds wander about in search of greater things as the - wondrously named - Faux Fur Bean Cube emotes in the foreground. A mite pretentious perhaps but there is a certain hypnotic quality to it.

Now this is more like it. Grungy guitars, lost in space drums and a wandering female voice decorate “Artemisia” duly turning the song into a headphone weapon. The fast fade allows Faux Machismo to escape back into the night.

Speak Easy Circus are clearly a band with rather greater lyrical purpose than most and “Lions Should Hunt” is also decorated with copious amounts of well-schooled, even adventurous, musicianship. This one might even make a beard scratcher dance.

Appealing lo-fi power pop from The Third Cut with “Sugar, Stop” having more than enough steam to make it all the way to the bridge and back again. I had to fight the urge to sing along to this song which some will take as a good sign.

Oh, so classy! Jealous Tina are about as smooth as you can get without actually coming out as jazz and “Sweet Eyes” reverberates to the sound of a spell cast solely to entrance the ears of the discerning. Finger snapping good.

Ethnic influences abound in “Luz” and serve to effectively add a pleasing organic quality to the underlying looped electronica. Belau have duly made this song soothing, easy on the ear and, yet, still interesting.

“Player” rolls like it should be in a television montage yet, despite the cut to the click vibe, Zsüd still manages to infuse the song with echoes of all the spiritual emptiness that today has to offer. Indeed a song of our time.

Curiously spacious to the point of emptiness (ha!), “2Sides” seems more or less urban but the minimalist style demonstrates that the mechanism of repetition and precipitous processing can evoke something that is more atmospheric than you might expect.