Song reviews

The downbeat vocals make “Sniper” something of a Monday morning song but Selfoss add enough eighties style meandering synths to keep your ears interested for the four minute plus running time.

Taking a rather laconic approach to the much loved, and usually upbeat, guitar pop format, Laughed The Boy stride purposely through their song “Indifferent” on their way to the Emerald City.

Wholesome, as all practitioners of Americana seem destined to be, Norway’s Darling West make a sonorous sound with their song “The Sweetest Tune” with only Mari Sandvær Kreken’s perfect diction hinting that this band is a product of somewhere other than the dustbowls of the good old US of A.

“Company of Thieves” turns out to be the kind of pop song that people might actually want to buy with Georgie’s robust vocals adding both an offbeat charm and the structural strength to hold the whole thing together. I want to be in her band.

I can’t say that rock music is my thing but Littermouth do seem to have more than adequately grasped the requirements of the genre with “Breathe” stretching out to well over seven minutes of masculine vocals, pounding drums and fiery guitars. It is, however, a song that grows on you.

Whilst many might regard “17” as just another example of the urban soul genre, it is nonetheless abundantly obvious that Sydney Raynee has the voice of a soul songstress and her song consequently proves spiritually uplifting. She has class and that’s a fact.

Although the intro to “Brother Jonathan” would suggest that discord is on the menu, Glenn Meling instead provides evidence that he is a downbeat crooner at heart. One for your Auntie Joan, perhaps?

I’m pretty sure that “Weetabix & Wine” is meant to be ironic yet Harri Larkin perform it with all the niceness of well brought up boys and girls. That may well be the true irony as making things seem what they are not is the sign of true talent.

Still knocking out songs that are more a soundtrack to unarmed combat than anything else, Kim Gordon lets “Murdered Out” cruise the dystopian urban environment in search of something shiny (like a knife?). She’s still got it and got it good.

Sweden’s Avakhan know what makes an effective pop song with “Just Let Go” having just the right mix of joie de vivre and retro influences to take it through your ears and straight into your heart.

“The Blue” is pervaded with kind of oblique rhythms that once were the trademark of the Paisley Park pop machine and this three minutes of potential fame uses, with inherent irony, the power of sequenced insistence to get inside your head. That’s enough to make me think Cocoa Futures have a future. Oh dear, I have punned myself into a corner again.

Maria Kelly keeps things neat and tidy all the way through “Stitches” thus counterpointing the emotional storm brewing within the words of her song. She is, without doubt, the mistress of organised angst.