Song reviews

Pleasingly parochial, Braw pull in their best harmonies to turn “Whisky in Hand” into the kind of song that will make both residents and expatriates feel suddenly sentimental about dear old Scotland. I’ll raise a glass to that.

Low key bedsit electronica is getting to be the style icon of our troubled times and Kat Duma gives us a rather melancholic addition to the playlist of the moonlight shadows. “System” has hints of a trippy dancefloor yet still generates cerebral approval.

Drift me baby and it’s one more time for Shiva and The Hazards as they resurrect the woozy sound of rock’s genesis and inject it with a fix of modern day power chord mentality. Swaying but always steady on course, “Revolution Son” takes it home.

I miss big city festivals as they always gave a home to songs like this. Almost overdosing on the machine polished irony inherent to political correctness, Karen Bishko nonetheless kicks her song “My Name is Karen” right at the audience. Hallelujah.

With appealing wistfulness, “Pink and Blue” evokes the sugary side of C86 as Magazines take us on a three minute musical journey into the corners of dreamland. I have always had a failing for honeyed female vocals so this song works for me.

So sentimental the song is almost country, “By My Side” rolls on down the road of life at a leisurely pace driven forever forward by delicate harmonies and the Red Hearted Vibrations’ evident warmth. All it needs is a slide guitar.

“7’11” plays out like low key bedsit electronica but there is enough in the way of poptastic hooks and ladders to give Reyna a chance at moving themselves into the fast lane. All it is going to take is a bit of luck.

Starting off fey and acoustic but gradually growing into something grander and altogether more electronic, Mear nonetheless strike the right emotional note with “Soft Chains” even if the song is rather more cerebral than it might at first seem.

Guitars. Drums. Bad attitude. Three things that you need to make a rock song work and those three things are to be found in “Mean Rock n Roller” by MeMe Detroit. Take me to the guitar solo, I said, and indeed they did. Rifftastic.

Even if the machine runs the show throughout “Wasting Time”, it is still possible for a voice to score enough points to win the prize and Yawn duly takes the crown with a burst of inwardly targeted melancholy. Hypnotic.

I like a song that encourages delinquency and “No Ghosts Walk” by Paper Tigers does just that. A conventional rock start soon develops into a rasping, crash your car into the wall, three and a half minute house brick. Play loud.

Bleak synth pop has become something of a fashion statement these days with the robotic minimalism of “Under The Gun” ticking all the style boxes whilst allowing Violent Vickie to deliver her message on the dangers of conformity.