Song reviews

Even if you ignore the fact that this song is released in aid of a charity and that it is also a Christmas song, the drama and lack of sentimentality that Mark Northfield infuses into “Christmas Eve, Gracechurch Street” is more than enough to remind us all that the festive season is cold indeed for the less fortunate amongst us. A musician with a conscience? It would appear so. Do the right thing and buy it at Bandcamp.

“I Think Not” may well be the name of the song but I think so is a much more appropriate response to the music of The Twistettes. Raucous and yet rammed with post-feminist sentiments, they pump up the volume until your conscience and your feet achieve synchronicity. I call their name for I am a believer.

“Castle in the Snow” is a surprisingly effective slice of Europop from Kadebostany. Built of the finest Swiss plastic, downbeat lyrics and charmingly accented female vocals, this rather trippy song should find favour and remixes anywhere between Geneva and Cherbourg.

Earnest both lyrically and musically, Sweden’s Jennie Abrahamson makes “The War” as acceptable to as many people as she can. Some might say that such an approach will likely render a song anodyne but, nonetheless, there is little doubt that her heart and mind are in the right place.

Pleasingly mature, melodic and redolent of the days when songs actually mattered, “Conquer The World” shows that all you need is a piano, a voice and talent. Alexis has these three things. Job done, as they say.

Balancing the icy precision of the insistently robotic backing track with her deep and intense vocals, Allyson Ezell makes the street and the art house as one with her song “Landmine”. Music for the educated.

It is easy to categorise Twin Lakes as a wholesome and worthy band – for they are – but “Wolf Hall” suggests that they have dramatic motivations that will allow them to scale up and escape the size limitations inherent to indie pop. They are a band that deserves to go large.

Downright old school in its funkiness, New York’s 12KO have the horns and full on female vocals to make you wish it was 1975 again with “Left, Right Left” being all the proof that you need that soul is where it is at. That’s true now, then and forever.

So shiny and clean that they could only be from somewhere in Scandinavia, Timshel nevertheless sound like the kind of American indie pop band that should have a cult following and “Halfway To Anywhere”, unsurprisingly, makes for the perfect soundtrack to brightly coloured knitwear.

Mixing robotic indifference with pan European musical influences, Jibóia casts the kind of spell with “Treta Yuga” that makes you question whether your enjoyment of psychedelic substances has reached saturation point but it matters not for the female vocals had you from the start anyway. Hypnotic.

With the confidence to once more walk the well-worn path from Scotland to the land of downbeat Americana, Fife’s Milton Star use “Salvation” as their off peak ticket to musical redemption. I’m sure the Fates will smile upon them but the rest is destiny.

Ernie Jackson has perfected his manufactured sound with “Stars Fall Down” and undoubtedly what is left of mainstream radio will joyously lap this song up before delivering it on to the hairdressers of the world. In other words, it’s pop music as they used to make it.