Song reviews

Straight down the line alt-rock from Johnny Batchelor and “Bad Mood Bad Groove” duly ticks all the boxes that fans of music that sounds like it should be on an eight track player in a seventies tour bus would want.

Brutal and heavily looped, “Sucker” reeks of the underground and the song duly pulps your ears just like a basement sound system would should you happen to find yourself in one. Kaput also add enough angst to give this one arthouse appeal too.

As casually paced as “The Fence” is, the song nonetheless has all the elegance and poetic sensibilities to keep the listener on track and onside until the end. Erik Flaa hits it right into the back of the net with this song.

Gareth Sager might well have a few more years than most under his belt and “St Jock” also has enough in the way of eighties retro buzz to cause an overdose yet the song still manages to make you want more of the same.

The art is strong in this one with Miss FD throwing the piano into her neo gothic melodrama “Curse Breaker” and her voice fits precisely into the kind of theatrical presentation that a song like this needs. I sigh once more.

An odd blend of programmed synth pop stylisations and heavily processed vocals more akin to the urban genre, “Hardy Boyz” by Chuck Vibes turns out to be more than the sum of its creator’s influences well before the sing’s untimely end.

You can feel the emotional weight in “These Hours” and Carla Aakre has duly found the poetry that is hidden in the shadows of her heart and set it to music. It’s a sensitive singer songwriter thing to do and she does it rather well.

In their endearingly offbeat way, Lora and The Stalkers go deeper than most with the lyrics to their song “Social Anxiety” but it is the combination of half spoken half sung vocals and dancing guitars that make this song candy for the ears.

Retro retro retro is the way to go for Stacey Jackson with “Both Ways” looping the synths around a singalong hook in a manner that makes you wish that the glory days of FM radio and daytime soaps were back again. Play and repeat.

There is drama aplenty in Marie Minet’s performance and “Hanoi” duly sounds like the kind of song that would be heard in the presence of cigars and champagne. With little more than a guitar as accompaniment, she sounds gloriously…French.

More an artistic statement than a venture into ear candy territory, Vanarin whisk heavily processed vocals into a mix that sounds almost like a reinvention of the eighties urban sound. “What We Said” certainly isn’t an ordinary song.

It’s not often that words like education and healthcare make into the lyrics of a song these days yet they feature in “No Music No Hope” by Cozmicsoulfire. Although the production is untidy, an earnest protest song is always welcome here.