Song reviews

Musical degenerates the New Mystikal Troubadours continue their trek towards the dawn with “Sparkler”. This time there’s even a melody and something akin to a consistent tempo which, as their loyal fans will attest, is practically a sell out to the devils of commerciality. Much as with soup, it would seem that the best is usually homemade. Download from the Free Musical Archive.

Now we are getting somewhere. Downbeat and yet compellingly melodic, the vocal harmonies of Sopheak and Sophea Chamroeun add an elegant poetry to the music of Cambodia’s Krom with “Mekong Delta Blues” easily exceeding the sum of its unassuming parts.

Old fashioned but none the worse for that, Detroit’s Reverend Fly walk the seventies funk road with the aptly named. “Funk Me”. They’ve got the feel right and they’ve got the moves right so get out on to that dancefloor and, as they used to say way back when, shake your groove thang!

There used to be this thing called light entertainment and, with a wry sense of humour on his side, Richard Haswell invokes its ghost for two and a half acoustical minutes on the glories of getting old. In “Virtual Record Collection” he even manages to name check Aldi so he’s alright for urban cool too.

An easy rolling rock song, as they used to say back in the seventies, “Loving You From The Start” shows that Amazon Blonde know how to mix musical fluency with conventionality. However, the rather familiar lyrics don’t give the female vocalist much to work with but she nonetheless gamely goes for gold anyway.

Essentially, and probably cosmologically, low key, Left rummage through the streets like urban folksters armed with a laptop and a sense of isolation for company. Downbeat certainly, but their appeal should exceed the boundaries of the headphones permanently on brigade.

An Argentinian rock trio with a sound grasp of what is expected of a band in their genre, Fear Me December keep it both low key and muscular all the way through “Good bye to You” with the restrained, almost girlish, vocals of Lintu Doll adding a twist of lemon to their cocktail.

Laidback soft rock is still a soft spot in the affections of many people and it is they who will best appreciate the emotional drama that Butch Walker brings to “Bed On Fire”. So if they are you, pull up the collar on your battered leather jacket for it is cold outside.

“Trouble” is a mid-paced and inoffensive example of Scandinavian style electro pop that looks inward for musical energy and finds that someone forgot to charge the battery.

Mixing the ethereal with the primitive may not be unusual in the world of folk music but it is in the post rock world so “Hush” therefore demonstrates that Hawk do not lack courage in their musical endeavours and, like so many things classed as beautiful, this fragile song crumbles into nothing at the end.

It is the time of year for sentimentality and Jim Byrne is the man to serve it up between slices of wholemeal bread. “For We Are Born” is, however, a song rather darker than you might expect with the underlying message more akin to Leonard Cohen than Bing Crosby. No doubt about it though, Val Doonican would have appreciated the irony in that and taken this song as his own. The song is available for download from Bandcamp.

Although outwardly lightweight indie folksters, In All Honesty are the proud possessors of altogether weightier lyrics with “Heroin For My Heart” embracing obsession in a manner that would suggest a world view more appropriate to the streets of New York.