Song reviews

“Pearly” harks back to the days when a pop song was a pop song and you can’t blame Et Tu Brucé for reliving the musical pleasures of times past so let’s clap our hands once more for the verse-chorus-verse-chorus and take it to the bridge format and sing along just as we should. I am feeling the love here.

Jim Byrne roughs himself up and gets petulant regarding the time honoured four to the floor beat and thus uses “Black Sky Blues” to give himself something of a sonic makeover. The slide guitar and the side order of whiskey surreptitiously served up to his voice add authenticity even if the drummer urgently needs new batteries.

Polished and professional and yet still infused with a sense of the dramatic, The Courtesans throw their angst into a late night fairytale called “Lullaby”. It’s all atmosphere and deeper meaning but convincing nonetheless. The word is duly given for this song.

Mainstream, and thus perhaps unavoidably unadventurous, Dante present “Wake” as the summation of all the right Scottish musical influences, i.e. Frightened Rabbit, and will no doubt present this song to the masses at as many summer festivals as their manager can get them into. I hazard a guess however that not many of those present will remember this song.

Surprisingly effective for a Glasgow indie band, United Fruit set out and succeed in rocking the house with their guitar driven “How Long (Change You Into Something Better)”. Hellfire, this song even has a big chorus to get you punching the air so drink beer and sing along for that is the greater purpose here.

Earnest to the point of being well intentioned, “I Created” provides more than enough evidence that Abscondo have mastered the art of being anodyne. An inoffensive and eminently forgettable song.

It would appear that “2” is the first single from a new rock band called Paradigm. They manage to go commendably large on the chorus but the rest of the song drags by in extended repetition mode. Editing a couple of minutes out of this five minute plus song would prove beneficial to all concerned.

“Road to Salvation” is a straight down the line blues song with some smoke filled vocals providing the urban melancholy that sells the lyrics. Not the most original song that you will hear this week but nicely performed nonetheless.

Imagine calling your song after your band? Alansmithee nearly manage to do that with their single “Alan Smithee” but the drifting psych-rock groove suggests that the musical motivation may have been a chemically powered mind expanding moment. The guitar engine gets revved erratically towards the end just before the song heroically and untidily collapses. Yesterday is, once more, the new today.

You can’t beat that melting pot of time travelling musical influences that powers Glasgow scenesters Kick To Kill on their journey down life’s urban highway. “Dreams” postures in an emotionally meaningful way but click those electro powered heels three times and you’ll be in eighties, mascara for everyone, territory before you know it.

Feet of Clay, who are from Coatbridge, are certainly not short of energy and “Revenge of Icarus” is evidence of that with some truly spirited guitar work providing the source of the momentum that drives the song along the rock track towards beer drinking nirvana. Not bad at all.

Earnest if conventional in her approach, Zoe Louk smartly turns up the emotion to compensate and consequently turns “Up To Me” into the kind of honest ballad that should find a friend or four in mainstream radio.