Song reviews

Sometimes I forget what the mainstream sounds like today and then along comes The Dirty Youth with their song “Hurricane” and, within its bounds, is all the female fronted drama and manly guitar riffs that a band on the march to radio play might need.

There is class aplenty to be found in Megan Henwood’s song “Seventh” with a certain, and rather appealing, maturity distinguishing her from your average modern day singer songwriter. One for the more discerning ear, I would guess.

More super cool Scandinavian electro pop from Felin but “21st Century” stands out from the crowd thanks to the addition of a generous amount of post punk style and the pleasing inclusion of some sharper than you might expect lyrics. That’s good enough for me.

And now for something completely different with Canadian band Brenda taking all the usual arthouse indie moves and twisting them all out of shape to thus make “Children” a whole lot more disturbing than such a song should be.

It must be the musical disease of choice in Glasgow as The Animal Mothers seem to have caught the hard edged no surrender fuzz guitar led lurgy and “A Rain will Come” will make you want to get infected too. Play loud until you feel better.

Sounding like a throwback to the days when indie rock crawled out from under the rock, “Now” is still way fresher than most with Dead Nude – aka Mike Magoo – putting plenty of old school style into the mix.

There is not much on the way of melody to be found in Emma Jensen’s glacial electro pop song “Make You Mine” but her rather offbeat voice does have the stamp of originality all over it.

This is something quintessentially Scottish about “Dreams” with twee boy-girl harmonies, sugary sentimentality and a generous sprinkling of that Glasgow style jangly guitars sound giving Ewan Cruickshanks a guaranteed spot on the soundtrack to some never filmed Bill Forsyth film.

Some might say that “Paclew” by Moxi is an example of what the pop song has become in the 21st century and some would be right with the pounding rhythm of the urban jungle balancing the female vocals to power this song all the way to the finish line.

Hints of the glories of guitar pop season this distinctly understated song from New York’s Plastic Picnic yet “Bite” still evokes more the plastic perfection of the sequencer rather than the freedom that the fretboard brings.

Perhaps rather dated in their approach given the state of the music business today, Slow Buildings still have enough acid in their veins to add a bit of burning social commentary to their big city indie pop song “Me Me Me”.

A rather effective mix of urban style and jazz funk groove provides more than enough musical contrast to make “It’s been a While” by Normanton Street into the kind of song that cries out crossover and consequent success.