Song reviews

Staying well away from surprise territory, Weston Smith strolls rather awkwardly through his series of readily recognised sequenced loops. Curiously, the song’s presentational imperfections give it rather more appeal than you might think.

I suspect that “Elevated” by Lavigne will be classed as a “banging choon” by Nissan GT-R owners everywhere but the solid rhythms and emotional vocals give the song a life outside the drifting and dancing arenas.

Ryan Valentine’s confident voice provides much of the sonic appeal of his song “Under A Spell” and lends it more than enough gravitas to guarantee what used to be called radio airplay. A song with commercial appeal, undoubtedly.

I like it when a song doesn’t quite fit into any of the modern day expectations and “Green Eyed Moron” duly avoids pigeonholing with the blues guitar and Vilma Flood’s bad girl attitude taking us on a walk down the wrong side of the road to quirky town.

It might not be clever or catchy but “Heaving” by Melbourne rock trio KOTA has the powerhouse riffs and basic honesty to encourage inadvisable beer consumption and cause the older generation to time travel their heads back to the weightier days of the seventies.

Although I can see the potential in Bianca Bazin’s voice, “Heartbroken Fool” still seems like a box ticking exercise in making a plastic pop song for these identikit times. She needs a producer with some fresh musical ideas.

Electro pop gets trendy again and, with the emphasis on exorcising those retro analogue sounds, Kap Bambino use “Forever” to blast the ears of the coffee shop crowd with enough dystopian distortion to give them caffeine powered nightmares. Light me!

I nearly thought that “Awarewolf” was going to be some sort of country song but, instead, the guitars took the song off on a rather different, almost post rock, journey into the psyche. That makes Ferri and The Fevers are worthy of a listen.

Some might regard “9 -5” as practically a textbook case of how to stay within the boundaries of the modern day processed pop song yet TAPES nonetheless have a notable appeal as neither melody nor musical extemporisation has been forgotten in their search for chart success. Bravo!

Synth pop appears to be in thing these days and BLYOLK jumps right on the trendy bandwagon with “Dogspeed”. Fortunately, he knows it is all in the attitude and, with dramatic intent, he wrenches the song from the sequenced backing track.

“Tel Aviv” might well be a by the numbers indie pop song, but The Lighthouse add more than enough summery fizz to make their song one that might even make you smile even when it is raining outside.

Full of pulsating synthetic goodness, HEZEN rumbles your speakers with her song “Bring Your Alibi” but she so confidently handles tempo changes that you are never in any doubt that her soul is not that of the music machine.