Song reviews

“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.

I would be inclined to call Weather Music’s “Incredible” old fashioned but you might perceive that as some sort of insult and that would be an injustice. Instead the jury finds the case proven for this song being an uplifting, and carefully constructed, pop song that soars off down the highway of life with Susanne Trolleberg’s seventies style rock solid vocal giving it all the direction it could need.

“Give Me Arms”, by London boy/girl duo The Honey Ants, is so light that it could float upon the waters of life and so cute that it could readily be converted into a teddy bear. That makes the winsome acoustic charm of this song something of an oddity in these overt days.

Vivid Dreamscapes have included all the usual stuff that you would expect of white boy hip hop in this song.  “Black Dogs Interlude” therefore has a soundbite or two to decorate the looped ambience, a metronomic monotonic Eminem style rap and - as you might have surmised by now - not a lot of originality.

A mean and moody take on the cascading indie guitar sound lifts “Sleep Spindles” skywards and Lëura – she is Australian, by the way – emotes like she has absorbed all of the world’s post punk angst. If you like to look deep down inside then this song will work for you.