Song reviews

“Sugar Paper Heart” runs at a middling pace and is not bereft of repetition yet it remains the kind of song that sneaks up on you whilst you are stuck at the traffic lights of life. Doug Alldred & The Silver Lining duly cross that road.

Walking that tightrope between mainstream and offbeat, Jenny Banai maintains the balance of her song “Paper Plain” with loops and lyrical sensitivity. Any accusations that there is more here than meets the ears are well founded.

As is to provide the soundtrack to some woozy movie about life in slow lane, Chappaqua Wrestling strafe their song “The Rift” with maximum riffage and emotional intensity. Not one that will be heard in a shopping mall, methinks,

Proving that music doesn’t have to be trivial are Peter Cat with their song “I Don’t Want To Come Back To You” resonating with melancholy and arthouse style. The result may be deeper and darker than most but this is a song that stands tall.

I feel a sigh coming on. Holly Tomás has a mastery – or is it mistressy? – of the ethereal that turns her songs into weapons of mass hypnotism designed to capture the hearts of those of us cursed with romanticism and misty morning melancholy.

Now we are getting somewhere. Bleak and robotic to match the downbeat lyrics, “Don’t Ask Why” demonstrates that Kraków Loves Adana have mastered that post-midnight synthesiser groove. Locked to the loop but in a good way.

I thought I heard the dancefloor. Well, I did but, with the injection of African rhythms, Saronde turns his song “Firewood” into something most unusual for these times – a song that is positively and infectiously buoyant. Play and play again.

You don’t have to be happy to smile and, with a twinkle in their collective eyes, Reyna turn their song “Lonely Girl” into something that transcends the song’s shadowy synth pop stylisations to venture forward into your musical memory.

The mainstream used to be a happy place to be but not today and, with “Runaway”, Emi Jeen duly gives us a soundtrack to accompany the voices lost in the crowd. It’s an empty plastic world we live in and she knows it.

Few musicians can keep their finger on the pulse of today in the way that George Barnett can. “Parasite” is locked to the loop and full of retro stylistic influences yet the end result still sounds fresh as tomorrow’s smoked salmon sandwich.

I am told that there was a time when folk music was a playful thing often infused with more than a modicum of class A quirkiness. “Paid My Dues” by Crooked Weather harks back to those mystical days and duly manages to induce a big smile.

Squeezed all the way into distortion, “The Blame” rumbles like a synth on a bedroom massacre mission with Violent Vickie herself echoing round inside your head like a witch high on discontent. Shadows are the new truth.