Song reviews

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.

“Lonely” by Moviestar is an intelligent pop song with a downbeat vibe and that noughties sound as if The Hush Sound had abandoned the piano in favour of the kind of lyrical obliqueness that is notably less empty that it initially seems to be.

Holy Now have that unmistakeable indie pop vibe and their song “Pearl” ticks all the expected boxes with wistful vocals, jangled up guitars and enough lyrical depth to earn popularity in student unions throughout the land.

Odina has a little girl voice that seems at odds with the introspection that pervades the lyrics of her minimalist song “Nothing Makes Sense” and yet the result is rather more endearing than you might expect.

A rather downbeat example of the retro synth pop style, “Benny Is A Heartbreaker” nonetheless deserves to escape the shadows and bring Alex Highton some attention. His future is indeed sequenced to the grey beats of the past.

Distinctly old fashioned in feel, “Time Immemorial” by The 286 is also downbeat and slow to get moving but, once the band overwhelms those plaintive lead vocals, the song starts to gain a sense of purpose.