Song reviews

“Back To My Youth” is written, produced, mixed and mastered by Billy Cullum, it says here. Unsurprisingly therefore, the song is dull, derivative and reeks of self-indulgence. Mr Cullum really must learn to play with others.

Ah, the eternal philosophical question of what drives the boys and girls out on to the dance floor gets addressed by London’s The Young Pinx. “Girls Like Disco Boys Like Bass” is pretty much incessant electro with just enough samples to make it catchy (or maybe just plain annoying if you aren’t out of your face on something). Summer must be coming after all so turn on the boogie lights!

Light and fluffy pop with that girl on the edge of adversity feel from the delightfully named Caracol. She would appear to be Canadian but she sounds like she has absorbed high end European pop influences with her sugar sweet voice floating over the hypnotically looped backing track.

You can’t really argue about the appeal of a bit of boisterous indie pop like “Lover’s Cave” by these purveyors of post punk diversity Is Tropical. They even have the courage to take the diversion down the noisy guitar route just to make sure you don’t forget this one when you hear it in the middle of a field. Bonus points will be awarded to those who can identify where the guitar riff was borrowed from.

Endearing if a touch mundane in that Cheryl Cole kind of way, Sonya Titus shows off her commercial moves with “Now”. It’s a proper pop song and any song that you can sing along with is just fine with me. It’s a sunshine kind of thing.

Drawing on classic Scottish guitar pop for inspiration, No Fxd Abode neatly sidestep the limitations of the indie rock genre and then add their own swaggering determination to “Start Again”. It’s the sort of song that will soon be spinning round at 45rpm in your head.

A rough sounding and sometimes awkward demo but “Pedestal” nonetheless shows that Brighton based band Wolf Like Child are capable of evoking that past midnight atmosphere. Edgy lyrics and laconic female vocals seal the deal.

“Tell It To The World” is a relentlessly upbeat inspirational song from Texan singer Jaha. She’s all very Glee in her approach but even the made from plastic backing track can’t distract from the two important facts – Jaha can sing and her heart is 100% in the right place.

Here we go again. It’s not as if there is a shortage of such things but Tom Dibb quickly adds himself to that long line of singer songwriters with both a limited vocal range and a limited grasp of what it takes to write a good lyric. A determined attempt has been made to make “Lost” interesting by adding a suitably mournful string arrangement but the song just does not justify such efforts. Dull.

If memory serves, Royston Vince was responsible for a couple of ambient type albums themed on his native London but here he has instead gone all sensitive singer songwriter. “At The End of the Day”, fortunately, strikes off in the right direction for acoustic melancholy without stopping off for self-indulgence. Quite sweet really.

I have little difficulty working up enthusiasm for some intelligent power pop so, despite being a rough and ready demo, “House of Cards” by Edinburgh band The Alibis just about impressed me. The drummer did sound like a machine but there was definitely heart in the vocals. Oh, and you could sing along with this song which is always a good sign.

Bouncy and highly derivative,  “Does She Make Noise” is about as fine an example of style over substance in just over two minutes as I have heard in quite a while.  The Bright Ones who purvey this song to you hail from Brighton so it would appear that they are also too cool to burn the midnight oil thinking up a name. The next big thing? I wouldn’t be even slightly surprised by that.