Song reviews

Keeping on their retro power pop track, Bony Macaroni riff their way through their three minutes of nihilism just like it was 1995. It is the kind of song that makes you want to set fire to a shopping mall so play loud and burn!

“Feel The Weight” by Kilgour is indeed a song with weight with many kilos of guitars keeping this Glasgow band on track over their three and a half minutes of emotional neo catharsis. I’ll take substance over style any day.

Never thought I would get to review a James King and The Lonewolves song yet along came “My Queen Has Lost Her Crown”. It might not be a Texas lullaby but they still sound just like they did back in the day. Fans will no doubt rejoice.

I do actually remember the Hedrons and, in a sure and certain case of you can’t keep a good band down, “Only When It Rains” rocks with the same attitude that the band had when the guitar was God in Glasgow. Praise be!

Mellow is as mellow does and, in the best indie pop tradition, Wojtek The Bear emote their way through “Slowly, Then All At Once” as if ordering the last cappuccino in the world with the chorus and a bit of fiddle adding the essential foam.

I am of the opinion that I should know who Billy Reeves is but, no matter, for “Soapbox!” is powered by enough retro synth pop minimalism and repetitive ranting to make you wish it was the past again. Beep beep boom.

There is plenty of laid back elegance to be found in “Who Do You Love” by Asaf Ashkenazy. It’s a mellow love song, of course, and the world needs plenty of those so, easy on the ear and soothing to the heart, this song works for me.

Endearingly retro, Cadet Carter dance their way through their emo seasoned power punk song “Lift Me Up” with all those guitars and choruses making you wish you were back in the day when going to the shopping mall was the thing to do.

The sound of brooding synthesiser repetition once again reaches my ears with CCTemple looping the atmosphere right into “Homeseq” and somehow simultaneously managing to inject style into all that he sequences. Plastic perfection.

Whilst “Red Stripe Remedy” plays out like a fairly energetic attempt to do something anarchic with that very familiar indie rock vibe, Lock-In still manage to sound like someone else. I didn’t need a watch to know this one went over the three minute limit.

Where is today to be found but in yesterday and Norwegian band Laughing Stock duly take us on a journey of enlightenment back to the fuzzy days of prog rock with “A New Home” woozily swaying in a breeze of late sixties rock influences. Groovy!

Helen Townsend jumps in at the deeper end of the Americana pool with her song “Battlefield”. The song is, of course, a love song of the broken down blue collar variety but it’s nicely put together in a seventies folk rock kind of way.