Song reviews

Balancing a sharp edged guitar with a wistful female voice is not an easy task yet Claire Pitt Wigmore pulls it off with her song “Intoxicated Girl”. The song itself is laidback in pace and seasoned heavily with melancholy yet the end result is uplifting.

“One Last Embrace” rumbles with nefarious intent as Eliza Shaddad grinds the power chords and insistent percussion into something she can sprinkle in the spaces between her words of angst and regret. I hear her!

A song about a Volvo? Indeed it is and, with the manic assistance of his drum machine, Lodet duly hits the road with his song “Volvo” whilst throwing in just enough twisted Beatles influences and angry guitars to make you want to join him.

Despite the underlying computer precision, “Gladstone” is still a song that wanders about in your mind after you hear it with Blair Lee putting enough of her heart into the words to make this one seem more organic than you might expect.

Striking a balance between minimalism and melancholy seems to come easily to Phonettes with his song “Make Up Your Mind” meandering nicely on its way down redemption road. A low key song without a doubt but not without melody.

You can’t go wrong taking a bath in reverb and Caroline Blind does just that with her song “Need To Say” and, as the guitars echo all around her witch song voice, it soon becomes obvious that her take on matters ethereal was designed to entrance you.

You don’t really expect any surprises from a song that, superficially, seems like just another example of the urban genre yet Ego Ella May springs one on us all with “Girls Don’t Always Sing About Boys” as she twists both words and music into something deeper, darker and different.

With a pleasing directness, Unbroken Expanse plough the furrows of proper rock history with their song “Go” and dig up more than enough in the way of guitar solos and blue collar, beer drinking energy to make any Friday night worthwhile.

More of a groove than a song, “Main Squeeze” still finds space for enough urban influences and hypnotic percussion to allow Jazz The Glass to get the song down the tracks to the next radio station. Smooth is where it is at

You don’t find many artists with a true sense of the dramatic these days but “Hopeless Romantics” demonstrates that Emmrose has the voice and attitude to make what is a straightforward song into something that crosses the border into chanson.

Some standard alt rock moves disguise the observant lyrics and nonstandard stylisations that Deva St John brings to “The Information Age” thus making her song equally acceptable to those who know and to those who do not know.

One for those who appreciate an artist who defiantly mixes and matches her musical boundaries in order to make a song interesting and, to some at least, challenging. “Monument” duly marks Kid Be Kid out as one worthy of respect.