Song reviews

Simultaneously fragile and serious, Swedish singer If You Say So steps right up to the edge of melancholy with her debut single “Paint Me”. This is another slice from the Scandinavian pop cake, of course, and therefore this song stays close to the retro norm but I have to admit that the lady’s voice is not without that wistful appeal.

Rather careless in both its execution and production, the duo going by the name of Ummagma will struggle to generate any interest in their lo-fi single “Rotation”. I have no problem with DIY music making but this song would have been so much better if someone had been doing some quality control.

Obviously determined to ensure that you remember his name, Canada’s Jesse Burke takes as much looped plastic as he can find and recycles it into a song called “My Name”. Whilst his voice is much better than the song, all potential credibility is lost with the addition of a painful (but no doubt obligatory) white boy rap.

Although “We’re Going To Rio” is an oddball concoction of indie influences, Francobollo – yet another Swedish band – don’t go quite far enough to gain left of field support. A pleasant enough song but most likely not the one to break this band.

“Shoulders” makes for a rather pleasant intrusion of the present into the musical past with Petter Seander proving that being Swedish can make retro guitar pop an uplifting experience. His impassioned vocals suggest that this song is more than one for the road.

Although “Loud and Loveable” by Swedish band Long Long Showers seems little more than an untidy and rambling hybrid of Britpop and Postcard, there is nonetheless an underlying theatricality that suggests that the live environment may be their forte.

“Fall Out” is, to the credit of its creators Fou De Toi, an upbeat and melodic pop song that has more than enough musical buoyancy to overcome its drag bag of retro Europop musical references. It’s a pity that it isn’t summer as this song would be very compatible with warm nights.

“On The Way” is a respectable example of one man minimalist soft rock with more than a hint of retro psych pop seasoning added to the musical recipe. Although rather awkward in his execution of the song, Pop Culture Pirates – or at least the captain of their ship anyway – knows how to emote reflective bedroom melancholia.

Walking right down the middle of the mainstream rock road are Finnish band Burntfield. Manly guitars from Ville Repo ensure that there is more than enough testosterone flowing through “Change My Ways” to ensure your appetite for rocking loud music (and concurrent consumption of cold beer) is satisfied.

Here we go again.  “The World Is Over” proves to be little more than an exercise in maudlin laptop powered musical masturbation for London producer Post-Ape. Apparently he played all the instruments on this dull song himself and it isn’t hard to work out which one he played with the most.

The past is again the future and SybiAnn prove it with “Cosmic Favella”, their resoundingly retro electro assault on the better class of European dance floor. As you might expect of something so heavily sequenced, this song is hypnotic in the after dark urban combat environment.

The sequenced brutality and alienated vocals of “Mae Pawb Yn Haeddu Glaw Yn Waeth Na Fi” once again shows that Y Pencadlys is as much of the electro-fied dance floor as he is of dull grey streets of a Welsh housing estate. One day he may indeed be legend.