Song reviews

It says here that La Bête Blooms are a post punk band from Hull but their song “Take Arms” is a muscular mix of political commentary and dark days attitude that is more old school punk than a product of today. The revolution is back!

“Captain of The Rugby Team” has the twisted splendour of a song that is forever destined to forever orbit the art house crowd which is a shame for Sweaty Palms are a band that should surely own all the shadows of the city streets.

Jazz ain’t my thing yet Meg Cavanaugh had no trouble convincing me that her song “Good Ol’ Boys” was a thing of uptown elegance and supper club sophistication. Make no mistake about it - this kitten has class.

Suzi Island have tried harder than most do to make their song “Show Me The Way” interesting to the ear and, if you like modern day pop music, you will no doubt judge them to have succeeded with this one.

A bit of time travelling here from London band Dead Man’s Knees with all the right seventies rock moves – right down to the guitar solo - being added to their song “Pleasure”. This is loud. This macho. This is fun.

Crooked Teeth may well have excised all those retro analogue synth sounds from the demons of the past but, fortunately, they have also added a healthy dose of modern day misanthropy to keep things bleakly topical.

Energetic indie rock from Scarlet Drive with “Ceto” indicating that this is the kind of band that can play within the clichés of the genre and still impress with their sheer enthusiasm for the task in their capable hands.

“Road Less Travelled” by Atlas Wynd is the kind of song that would get banned in the more pious parts of the world as its raucous appeal would undoubtedly cause the youth of today to exceed the speed limit and drink vast quantities of beer.

Muscular enough to escape their influences, German band The Pighounds put enough guitar powered angst into their song “Worn Out” to make their post seventies rock sound seem more of today than yesterday.

There was a time when youth equated to joy but not today and Flower Face’s “April To Death” makes an effective case for yesterday being so much brighter than today. Throw in some anger and a chunk of synth bleakness and Flower Face shows that her true colour is dark grey.

Civilised to the point of being positively noble, Pharis & Jason Romero put on their rose-tinted glasses and activate their rather neat harmonies to sell the folk flavoured traditionalism of their song “Sweet Old Religion”. I’ll buy that.

Power pop in shades of urban, Said The Whale tick the iPhone integration boxes with their song “Congratulations” and thus guarantee their inclusion on in-car playlists throughout the land. The traffic lights of life will surely turn green to this one.