Written largely in a flurry to meet recording times, “Moments Stolen Back” travels; it toys with momentum and (re)captures glimpses of golden aura hues; it phases emotional recourse and aural ambience paradoxically.

Flirting with the structure of modern popular song, ‘Positively Halcyon’ opens with the sound of crystal clear jumping acoustic melodies, the feeling that must have risen from within when a new Beatles song hit the airwaves growing inside.  Within the simplicity and architecture of reconstructed childhood, lies the multi layered frequency of jolting reclaimed memories, the shaking emergence of glowing feathered discoveries.

From ..Southern England.. flies the only cover piece, light toned love folk ‘Hares on the Mountain’, best known and twice recorded by Shirley Collins.  Chris brings along the dusty spirit of the Western, the gunslinger blues of Johnson’s Devil.  His voice is true and untainted, the breaking of innocence caught in the wind.

Never mind ye who holdeth New Musical Expresseth as The Bible, giver of the Word, and their 2009 top lists (after all, they caress covers with evil clowns of musical disgust for Christmas).  ‘Sugarbowl Moon’ is unequivocally the track of 2009.  As heartbreaking as Ryan Adams at his most humble, the evocation of Dylan by harmonica slides ghostly, with the temperance of everlasting imagery vital yet contemplative.  The chords are naïve almost, to a point of obtuse understanding, strung together naturally and beautifully, for antique language to settle against, bequeathing poetic appreciation. 

“Lend a Colour” is a racy little number, pacey and urgent, brief and cute.  Musical paint, splattering like Pollock, guitar now rolling by like a river, a waterfall of liquid notes.

The lullaby-esque “Precious Touch” has an ending for a beginning.  A gentle crackling, vaguely familiar and lamentable, Cohen perhaps; the warmest feeling to ever come from a closing, a comfort from a missing part.  The slide solo is a humanistic android hymnal instrumental break, a clover pinholed on John Fahey’s best suit.  Talking of Leonard, “Passing Through” is an original, not his.  It is a pure gem, a hobo travelling pastiche echoing down the years and roads alike.  

The closing “Thistle” is anti-folk calypso, Langhorne Slim jazz flinches.  The song you turn to as the early hours burn on, eyes piercing the dark with tiredness and stinging tears that won’t drop.  The song which alleviates hurt, creates a meditative calm, belies a musical nature of wonder and belief.

This steals more than moments; it steals your heart too.

Bat for Lashes – Daniel

From a session with Yeasayer (NYC conservers of bass and beats) builds the epitome of atmospherics, native whistling calls and synths, quirky drumbeats that evoke Stevie Nicks (or Tusk era Mac) and Enya, and an ethereal ode to the Karate Kid.  Whispering 80s fashions disciplined to soundwaves, this story of hyper-true love to a fictional boy from Natasha Kahn’s factual childhood fits nicely into Pearl’s world (of whom the album this is lifted is a concept for).  With the mysticism of MGMT (or perhaps more poetically Empire of the Sun) it cherishes every reverberated soft toned crushed velveteen word lullabied, discordant strings breaking charring to ash in a much more apposite use of orchestration than the usual preening and swooping.  The creation of loneliness through the massage of doubts, regrets and betrayal.  Beautiful and fawnsome. 

Lady Sovereign – So Human

Sampling (sacrilegiously some might say) Close to Me by The Cure, the First Lady of Grime teasingly cleans up.  Leaning towards Gwen style gloss, this has US make up with London’s grime stains still dripping down the damp walls of basement bars and underground hip hop stars.  It’s remarkably perky (a trick the sampled Godlike Genius’ consistently triggered anyway), and her lyrical waxing of moving on over bad days reminiscent of her own near breakdown tendencies while promoting last time round.  Fingerprints of Eminem smudge the track, but with more forgiving than murderous intent, squeezing every germ of sprightly rewards from the upsets of yesterday.

Depeche Mode – Wrong

At last, a band from the 80s sounding like the 80s, as opposed to a new band harking back to it.  A chain gang rhythm, reprimanding in industrialised tension, in its sparseness magnifying the surfeit of predestined bad energy, the gorge on bleak inverse freedom of choice, the extreme girth of negative will.  Affirmation for the hopeless, this nevertheless manages to chime in concordance with the actual darkness of everyone’s favourite musical decade, as opposed to the supposed perkiness heaped upon it.  Sexual, urban, decadent, shadowing, gothic, downcast, ominous and twisted on psychosis.  Or maybe I just overdosed on Jesus and Mary Cure.

The Hours – Big Black Hole

This seems offensively unoffensive; desperately familiar to the point of knowing exactly where it’s going (like observational comedy) without totally reaching the point of realisation.  Consider Keane becoming less imaginative with a blander singer.  They haven’t even bothered designing a new album cover, hence the degree of thought put into the music being severely lacking.  Dangerously close to what will emerge if Robbie goes back to Take That.

Franz Ferdinand – No You Girls

Like an immature playground chant, the mimicking cawing of one taunting child to another, this is the musical variation of my dad’s bigger than your dad.  Eyes widen to explosive proportions in an effort of understanding whereby such mundane and churlishness can capture the pulse of so many.  As welcome as gas gangrene of the armpit, but no where near as infectious, the pissing over Bowie guitar hook implodes within the band’s history and predictability, while disco floors erupt in unimaginative movements not seen since ‘Take Me Out’.  As the Welsh say, diflas.

Jack Penate – Tonight’s Today

On tracks of the unexpected tonight… to stem the flow of complacency and manoeuvre out of bargain bins in closed down Woolworth’s stores everywhere, the boy from Blackheath takes it forward.  It’s more constant (though never reaching the repetition of boredom), while retaining his usual triggers of mind sticking melodies, and this consistency as opposed to lynching on a vagary of styles is a point of applause. So what do we have… clap-a-long funk, hillbilly punk; a dance makeover (also available: a 7 minute plus DJ format) with Yeasayer inflections, afropoptastic layers.  It ties up elements lost since Blur’s Girls and Boys – old skool beats matched with noughties variations, Casio keyboard guitar riffs cut and paste throughout, world sounds hitting the mix, echoes and delays, gospel backing; and the moment church bells hit you the day after zombiefication, you can literally feel the sun through squinted eyes and hear the morning dew dropping from leaves, volume magnified to Big Ben proportions.  Managing to keep the excess to the lyrics, Jack steers his destiny to a new horizon.  Today and tonight.

Doves – Kingdom of Rust

Do you think bands write songs in the hope they will be selected for a future Quentin Tarantino film these days?  Surely not Doves, which is probably why they flit from the double tracked surf jittering guitar lines to swelling piano flows and wind whistling across the moon, and then to soar farther than the farthest planet with an illustrious country jive shuffle.  Returning with the ambition of champions, an enormous record, then.  They have it in them to hit a rise like Elbow, and most deservedly so.  Four albums old and overwhelming every one; they have always managed to serve up Northern Soul without the grit, every ounce of determination without the clichés.  Hear instead the bright and shade of literary musicianship, of blackbirds and moors, of towers and snow.  As a tribute to Jimi’s late father, its initial dourness soon manipulates and grows to the strength of unconditional love, religious overtones displaced by the metaphor of ancient rust eroding slowly, dying naturally, perhaps intimating at the ongoing never-ending nature of true bonds.

Antony & the Johnsons – Epilepsy is Dancing

Anyone averse to the spectacular, peculiar and dissident should turn away now.  This should be preserved not derided, this should be playlisted on every radio station (even the spoken word), this should be molested by a success that extends further than an annual semi prestigious music award.  It is unusual, it is unique, it is a viable option to soundtrack a John Waters’ movie (indeed the cover sleeve designs run a gamut of S&M costume delights).  But when does something need to be accessible to be worthy?  The advantage of the sacred is more inclined towards the unobserved.  Antony Hegerty denies detractors the pleasure of comfort by spreading vulnerability like a rash at a Stinging Nettles Convention, his tenderised vocal massaging piano keys unconventionally and cryptically.  A mellowing for the awkward.

Twisted Wheel – We are Us

Meat and potatoes from the North – you couldn’t get any more “real” than pulling down a flat cap and taking a whippet for a walk to buy gravy and chips.  Or should I say swaggering in Pretty Green style.  Getting down to serious album recording has pared the rough edges when compared to the likes of ‘She’s a Weapon’ or ‘Lucy the Castle’, a more polished, tamed affair, despite a confrontational chorus of “you will never stop us / change us, because you are you and we are us”.  It has intent then, and after a couple of minutes of mundanity, where you fear they may be going the way of Proud Mary, they unleash an instrumental break that ramps up, amps up, pulls fists and becomes insuperable.  Not instant, but passionate.

Dinosaur Pile-Up – Traynor

Refusing to let musical incapability get in front of their aggression, Dinosaur Pile-UP nod to Kurt Cobain’s ghost and wish for something to rub off on them from his shotgun.  Unfortunately Dave Grohl got to ground zero way earlier, so this classic rock grunge mash is served up cold.  Like a serial killer terrorising without his trademark disembowelling instrument, this turns up without any hooks, no memory triggers, just feedback trailing fret slides.  Whoever said all you needed was to be pissed off and angst to the hilt was lying.

White Lies – Welcome to the Fairground

Is that a clown?  No, just Robert Smith riding the carousel.  Ian Curtis spins on the dodgems, while Editors pull scares through the Tunnel of Love.  Usual suspects but new shapes, new settings… The ice cold drums and sheer key slices are almost classical, cinematic jolts breaking free of this history through eating itself alive.  The jarring middle eight contradicts itself through persevering and pulverising beliefs and fears, running away from the safest place.  A cavalcade of dramatic tension taken from the carnival to Palace grounds, under moonlight and supernatural bearing clouds.

The Noisettes – Don’t Upset the Rhythm

Funk fun and Boney M induced shapes to buy a car.  Ignore the early sell out factor if you can, and the dubious rhymes that knock the titular rhythm for six, and this takes a Lady GaGa disco plumage to costume change central, and a primate-sexual gyrating bassline bounce that leads singer (and dancer) Shingai Shoniwa to dress and manoeuvre surely illegally around the stage (of performance and mind).  As catchy as swine flu, but unequivocally more thrilling.

Peter, Bjorn & John – Nothing to Worry About

Move along please, no more whistling here… that’s been swapped for chanting children.  And handclaps.  Don’t forget that.  Such aside, the music seems to suck itself in backwards, with a lazy hypnotic dreaming vocal from … Peter (?).  It’s a flimsy rap wrapped around low production values, but stills packs swoonsome values of stoner carelessness.  Its indie schmindie-tastic that sidles against you in the early hours when all your friends have left with someone, and all you want to do is grow a beard. 

It Hugs Back – Now & Again

Getting grungier and more stifled with every release, it’s a claustrophobia that tightens your senses to a heightened tune.  These muddy and crammed guitars are warmed by detuned radio whines and the whitest noises that Sonic Youth ever paraded through the gloom, across two minutes of distant vocals and mumbled “ba-doo-bah-dooh-ba”s.  It’s a sighing extravagance to lo fidelity convenience.

Dananananayroyd – Black Wax

A manic energy and singing drummers (and former drummers) with counterintuitive Fallesque slouching in the corner; keyboard throughlines with no obvious player in their midst; a more clattersome  Los Campesinos! which encourages you to “write your name in cellophane strips / across contours of your bloodied mouth”.  It’s Friday night out in Glasgow, the gangs all here, celebratory cheers and the drunken embodiment of angelic screeching being pissed out under the halogen blinking lights of a closed supermarket car park, fit with bouncy castle fun factor.

Little Man Tate – I am Alive

Now deceased, with probably their least offensive song in their four years existence as a final offering.  Still mundane and vulgarly dull, but what’s expected from a band who can’t even stick to an ‘our final ever gig’ announcement without adding an extra date?  Just because there’s nothing explicitly wrong, doesn’t mean that everything is right… about as modern as Mr Motivator and Quantum Leap on a prime time channel, with the anything but “this is my time” a monotonously intoned inverse epitaph to cringe by. They could cover the unending joyous sunshine sounds of The Wannadies (which this basically adheres to) and manage to break thunderclouds overhead. 

When the planet is finally destroyed, it won’t be due to a catastrophic ignorance of environmental concerns or an abhorrent level of disparate understandings or an unapologetic, apoplectic lack of caring; it will be a stroke distilled from a mass consciousness  of boredom, an inherent bubbling psychosis of mind numbed wonderless degenerative listless neurosis, the population as one looking out of the window and seeing a reason for nothing,  a lust for a physical attrition, to screw the world into a (tighter) ball and hurl it through a black hole, to blink a universal blink and fuel a gas explosion of sun powered proportion, away to sleep to the peacefulness of non-existence.


Until then, be thankful for new music.  A quartet nailing the zeitgeist picking back the scab and pouring on bleach, to necessitate a scream, to feel alive.  Except, perhaps, for pre-headliners Friendly Fires, who seem to generate as much if not more excitement to the encroaching hordes, but appear as an 80’s throwback disaster, disfiguring the face of dance and promoting the chicken funk.  Maybe I’m discophobic, but such a technotrocious display carrying a synthetic energy erodes with an erudite plasticity, instilling a dystrophy with pre-recorded elements of entropic moulded antiseptic traces.  Feels debilitating not euphoric, like Shania Twain backed by the sound of KIT.

She shrieks and bursts lungs with her opening assault, and showers a shimmer of healing harp over open wounds at the close.  She is Florence Welch, a writhing yogic cat, pouncing and gyrating, a modern day female Elvis phenomenon, Harvey breathing life back into Joplin, and her Machine tonight includes Charles Cave from White Lies on bass.  From sex-fuelled blues attacks, all danger and dirt, brazen screeches that stem from the guttural and raw and end breathless and vengeful, kicking out literally flat on her back, to leading her microphone like a ballroom dancer and fading gently to the floor.  Largely the former, though.  “Howl” appropriately lets reel banshee wails of werewolves and eating people, calling up the 80’s with power-plink piano and devilish enticing drums, and there’s hardcore excitement in a Kate Bush reminiscent mould as she literally beats her own drum to er.. “Drumming Song”.  It’s Egyptian dreaming, flailing, bashing, and then audience diving and crowd surfing for the riled “Kiss with a Fist”, an accomplished and competent Ting Tings wonder.  Possession as a horned fairy takes over on the demonic baiting, fit inducing, shakedown exorcism of “Dog Days are Over”.  It’s a sequel to music, the next chapter, told in a fantasy forest, enthralling, beguiling, destructive.  My wife senses sexual frustration; I propagate sexual manifestation, a total consumption of heat and desire.

Ahead lies the sweeping glacial constructs of ice synth monoliths heralded by White Lies, charging forward on the back of Goliath, pulling his hair and laughing in his ears.  A three piece formerly partying in a rock indie Ash way under the moniker Fear of Flying, painting themselves black and finding a new found respect for “Death” (their closing towering moment, capturing the slinkiest keys of the night, almost jazz in the moonlit woods, turning to a behemoth basilisk of defiance, a majestic push towards life).  Indeed, the opening opus “Welcome to the Fairground” brings on the Reaper trailing Echo and the Bunnymen, creating a terrifying, fascinating Wizard of Oz-esque darkened fairytale.  “To Lose My Life” accedes to the seed of doom laced hope (or should that be hopeless doom?) sown throughout UK musical heritage, from Ian to Robert to Tom, Harry McVeigh a worthy successor to the throne.  With a beat to guide a UFO home safely, a deluge of bass drawn in, and guitars reflecting off the Manics’ devastational heart (Grace of God anyone?), "A Place to Hide” cowers from the scissors and hands awash with blood turning up next.  Charles Cave, bassist and lyricist, stares out demons and pushes out fears, “Unfinished Business” buoyed afloat a bottomless black ocean by electric pulses and sonic echoes, breaking vocals joined by Florence (ultimately the best vocalist on this tour, no doubts).  “Fifty on our Foreheads” kicks out a simmering hearted Dirty Dancing theme, an epic haunting of Machiavellian proportions, guitars transcribing to bagpipes on a windy moor.  Muse correlated space rock absorbs and coordinates the cosmos through “The Price of Love”, to plummet on the aforementioned “Death” finale.  Is there a more appropriate end?

Towards the end of their set, Glasvegas bestow upon the backdrop a headspinning cyclical illuminated collage of iconological reference – James Dean, Martin Luther King, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Joe Strummer, and randomly, themselves.  The fact that they fit already, despite not being the band on the bill to earn a number one charted album (that virtue belongs to White Lies, but come on, Glasvegas were up against the monstrous gigantic Metallica’s near decade comeback), is the spurs that crown them headliner status.

Rewind and a 3D crystal cracked statuesque angel hovers above the stage, flickering as though trying to make contact, reach us from another world, a floating holographic seraph.  And then “Geraldine” explodes from a tremor to a bang, soaked with so much reverb it’s like an earthquake riding choir summoned by James Allen’s care-fuelled epithet.  This same energy lyrically observes a disused liner on “Lonesome Swan” and propels it ghostlike across placid waterways, with a bombastic flare and chilling moonlight passage.  The entire oeuvre set down by James Allen exemplifies a massive conscience, whether socially established or mechanically steered, but especially when encountering the personal vitriol of the heart’s consumption.

“It’s My Own Cheating Heart That Makes Me Cry” rains diamonds of torment and wages a personal war being drained in ravaged epiphanies.  It’s a savage incarceration to the self, made butterfly beautiful nonetheless, and their distinctive mould is chipped further with the aching fall from grace “Polmont on my Mind”.  Angelic drawls are stretched to elegiac white noise to create a shadow pop meditation, before dropping the dramatic and intense bomb of immeasurable misunderstandings bestowed in “Flowers and Football Tops”.  Another social mediation, it carries the weight of teenage murder and the inconsolable loss attached, with a segue to the traditional “You are my Sunshine” that will burn a hole through your heart.

There’s a scrum with emotive sensation, the immensely intriguing “Ice Cream Van” charging forward with man mountain guitarist Rab Allen rocking against keys to erect whit is almost a lost Spiritualized track, blaring out to the frantic and expletive “Go Square Go”, a national anthem that deserves a manic synchronised polka dot 60’s dance troupe stage front, Caroline McKay’s stand up drumming a force to break dams and flood cities.

The ever sensational “Daddy’s Gone” ends the drama, brining a sublime revisitation on doo-wop, that vein to the past still wide open, those images flying behind.  The emotion instilled in the unsettling story of growing up without a father is exaggerated and surpassed only by the cohesiveness of collected wet faces and exploding hearts throughout the venue.

Polar Bear Club arrive (appropriately) amidst the worst UK snowstorms to ice the UK like a cake for some eighteen years, and lack the cute and cuddly factor paraded on sumptuous and inviting winter wonderland documentaries, with fur ball cubs and doe eyed fluffed up bundles of Arctic loveliness.  Here roars ferociousness incarnate, the inner protective violence of debased and devolved nature, reminiscent of hardcore skater park kitsch.  See closer “The Bug Parade” if you want to hear a prime example of Jimmy Stadt, a vocalist who sounds like he’s been gurgling on the remnants of a porcupine corpse in his warm up.

Frank Turner is in a sense the biggest treat of the night, and shares more in the punk root values of our headliners than perhaps realised.  He may be standing solo, with semi acoustic strapped across checked shirt, but a cult following ensures the venue is already packed, and his anthemic, flawless superior set of independent and triumphant songs fuel the hearts and minds of all.  Starting out with “I Knew Prufrock Before He Got Famous” spins a nostalgic optimism, an Irish tinted soulful tune about everything at once, into “Father’s Day” and the passion of a broken promise.  “Substitue” manages to cultivate an array of tunesmithery, from a sweet melody and lyrically astute rhythm; to frenzied hoarse impassioned almost screams, re-imagining his previous life with Million Dead.  This bleeds into tracks like “Back in the Day”, about punk rock and its importance, and lends raw honesty and value to modern protests like the pacey and motivational new song “Try this at Home” and “Love Ire and Song”.  There’s an immense intensity on board, and part of his greatness is the ability to focus your consciousness with an easy zeal, our impotence with clarity.  Activate yourself, construct with meaning, anticipate the positives, draw together an understanding of the unique of being and rebel predictability (“Photosynthesis”).  Like Chris T-T (who, Frank has played with in the past, and dedicates the gentle and plucked “Casenova Lament” to), he returns your brain to a new frequency, turns an inner valve and shows the world in a different tone, shades falling against new textures in everchanging patterns.  The gentle urgency of “Long Live the Queen”, for  a friend who recently passed away, reconfigures the anthem, stumbling words battering into the back of each other, while the musical microscope plays over friendships on “The Real Damage”, a sorry tale of a night out and realisations of making things worthwhile – albeit lacking perfection.  There is a circular closure, a meritable reflection on evolving emotions, with the final “The Ballad of Me and My Friends”.  Empowering.

New Jersey’s The Gaslight Anthem are high on the critics’ lists at the moment, and subject to the SOLD OUT signage on the door tonight, on the people’s too.  Using Tom Waits as your intro tape will do nothing but endear you to the musical elite either.  When the band take to it, their leader Brian Fallan done out in tattoos and flat cap (like some jubilant Steptoe in a punked up time warped Bugsy Malone vision), you can feel the snow being shaken from the roof, defrosting before it hits the ground.

Two albums old and ravaging roots claiming a nostalgic simplicity, their furious raw stomps forge links to melody and history.  They’re a punk band of pure independence meddling in a commercial fold, looking for a home as much as their audience (“Everybody leaves, so why wouldn’t you?” asks Brian), and perform melody encroaching buzzsaw surgery to get there.  Ripping through next single “Great Expectations” with Replacements style gusto, a bristling on edge Hold Steady clawing “The Patient Ferris Wheel” and the break neck paced high fever of “Senor and the Queen”, sees an uproarious trio opening salvo.  And in the manic pace, the musical hysteria lighting up your mind, you can feel the wonder, the longing, the rain within.

Having been formally ordained by The Boss (opening for him at this summer’s Hard Rock Calling) they throw flames through “Old White Lincoln”, still their most melody ridden, peerdelic inspiring – think Bruce covering Killer’s hurtling into space, fuelled by pure sunfire.  There’s a moment where it breaks down to E-Street style drumming from Benny Horowitz with humming buzz bass electrifying your blood line, projected out of Alex Levine.

There’s a rush on, and at times through the middle of the set the sound gets muddied, as though everything hits the wrong level in the mix, much to the chagrin of discovery that could be made here.  “The 59 Sound” and “We Came to Dance” are like dirty shadows clinging to brickwork, while “Film Noir” encouragingly seems to claw back from a cliff edge into a country drunk abyss.  There’s a smooth rolling drum intro on boogielicious “Casanova Baby” and the stadium in waiting punkism explodes like an expurgated Pollack spunked across the sky when “Wherever Art Thou Elvis” sheds itself like a hard edged Bon Jovi (yes - how much proof do to you need of the NJ credentials??), flashed in lightning fork detail.

“Miles Davis and the Cool” is a frenzy of cinemascope, widescreen freshness and pogo friendly delirium, a danger of the murky sound the same syndrome zone being entered, but goodwill holds out for the remarkably brilliant “Here’s Looking at You Kid”, dedicated to the thought provoking in ways you’ve never thought before realism of Frank Turner.  It’s slender and stripped, ice cold honesty and shivering beauty, a red eyed torch song of affection and everlasting melancholy chivalry.

The Gaslight Anthem are nothing if not a people’s band, they care and make you deeply aware of the truisms and the faith of the good.  There’s a soulful musicianship on display, not always easy to hear in a dive bar, but like emotional darts they still find the bullseye, the meaning and classic meandering of subtle rhythms and mystical melodies plastering smiles across faces en masse during “The Backseat”.

The encore includes “Boomboxes and Dictionaries”, and inspires enough differential from the punk core attitudes in lairy blues howl jewel “Say I Won’t Recognise” to keep the connection alive, to maintain the quality and classicism gloriously longing, creating a futuristic nostalgia for the next generation of musical anarchists.

A gloriously referential, beautifully designed, tastefully rendered and wonderfully realised document which trails Richey throughout their career as a trio; a tributary testament to his genius across a subsequent legacy of James, Nicky and Sean.

Book-ended by the true pilgrimage to The Holy Bible, with the acid bass and raw open wounded kit beats of Peeled Apples and the unsymmetrical hidden Bag Lady, in between comes a collage of musicality passing through time.  Jackie Collins Existential Question Time and Me and Stephen Hawking offer a rifftastic gleam and James’ organic howl which could settle amongst the Sent Away Tigers, while the acoustically divine This Joke Sport Severed – with its bugs crawling over insects midway delight, like a beehive opened – could be made for This is My Truth Tell Me Yours (being as personal in its way as ‘Born a Girl’).  Find too dramatic strings and the most spacious drums since the Heavenly era.

Title track Journal for Plague Lovers is as close as another Richey album may have been, all ‘Judge Yr’Self’ atmospherics and deliciously paranoid peeling guitars.  She Bathed Herself in a Bath of Bleach carries the spirit of Kurt (an Albini trait washing over perhaps), and feels like a sister song to ‘The Girl Who Wanted to be God’ from Everything Must Go.  Timeless rhythms and one of those solos you can envision James spinning endlessly to.

Facing Page: Top Left ventures into (or from) James Dean Bradfield’s solo territory, more beautiful than ‘Still a Long Way to Go’, ravaged by the subsequent Marlon JD and its heavier than disco grunge culled from the (subtler) ‘There by the Grace of God’ period, or the clinical Gold Against the Soul days garnered with a razor’s edge.

The haunting Doors Closing Slowly has a desirous soul spun from Lifeblood, a deluxe graciousness of vulnerability, playing entirely away from the plucked energy and breaking stuttering beats of All is Vanity, mirrored through a pyramidial reflection of ‘Yourself’ and Know Your Enemy’s punk attitudes.  This fury flows into Pretension/Repulsion and its engrossing lyrical style.  Virginia State Epileptic Colony is viscerally polished, like a b-side never used from Everything Must Go (not inferior, but something they may have been too afraid to unleash directly at the time).

William’s Last Words is undoubtedly part of Nicky’s Zeitgeist.  Telling, touching, torn from history, lodged in the memory.  Poetry, prose, daunting and magical and teary.  The obvious and necessary beguiling sentimentality bleeding through for real, seeping from respect, admiration, love and memories for and of Mr Richard James Edwards.

The Gaslight Anthem – Great Expectations

Playing like an old scuffed 45, full of NJ working class rush and a guitar throughline of melodious alarm, that culminates in the closing classic chiming dream shimmers with heartbeat beats of Gordy records.  The literary inspirations of the title are lyrically matched smartly, inventively and poignantly amidst motown expectations, as reminders of first loves are poetically replayed like inmind fireworks. “Her heart was like a tomb / my heart’s like a wound“sings Brian Fallon, before wrenching out the devastatingly true “everybody leaves so why, why wouldn’t you?” It appropriately mentions a character from Dickens, spikes references in references (the song from 1962 is a line from a Seger track, which in turn referred to ‘Be My Baby’ by The Ronettes, and is that what’s being harmonised here??), with petroleum fuelled beats from Benny Horowitz and that turn tail zig zag guitar badge zap from Alex Rosamilia.  Expectations fulfilled.

Two Door Cinema Club – Something Good Can Work

Banjos bring the new electro beats, a strict dietary requirement given the lack of real life drumming amongst the 3 Welsh/Irish contingents.  A jerky pure airy pop song that shines brighter than the noon day sun on the Med, with enough quirky contamination to keep it indie (see the random cut and paste Kasabian crowd overflowing midway).  The Death Cab for Cutie comparisons lie in vocalist Alex Trimble’s falsetto Gibbardisms, thrown amidst crammed words of loveliness, Vampire Weekend afrobeat rhythms and that kind of summer catchiness you last associated with the whistling tune from Peter Bjorn and John.

La Roux – In for the Kill

“Abra–abra-cadabra, I’m gonna reach out and grab ya..” it wrestles so heavily, a spiced up cousin of… must stop… must crush away any mutated variations as 1982 is revisited again.  Mind you, this starts a night out in a way that Franz Ferdinand failed to, or alternatively soundtracks a glam gamestation shoot ‘em up.  Either way, if you can steer clear of any Steve Miller Band nightmare aural visions, you on for a good time.  The future can sound at once exciting and derivative if it’s done right, especially when hairstyles a la Elly Jackson appear to have broken every rule of physics (and this is a strong focus, La Roux translating to ‘red haired one’).  It relishes what Neon Neon were reinvigorating last year, and revolts against the classicism of Duffdele magnificently, with strong instincts from producer and ‘other’ member of this duo Ben Langmaid whispering back through the years to other famous duos Yazoo and erm… Blancmange.  Lively and stimulating and playfully familiar.  Altogether now.. “abra abra”…. Aaaaaaahhhhhh…..  

Hockey – Too Fake

A ruler bouncing along a desk edge, streaming in a funk veined, stretched to tightened creased vocal, Easyworld if they had survived and moved to ....Portland.....  It holds you like a fever, but has sprinkles of magic that will only last until midnight, not the next single.  So indie discos will be fine for another month, it beats to the lights (LCD Strokesystem?) and vibrates floors with drumbling (that’s deep and rumbling) bass.  But is it an ironic take on a fraudulent soulfulness paraded by the fake and lonely, or simply and literally fake?  Whatever, shake it out your system and look forward to the next one…

The Foxes – Bill Hicks

Kick start drums (vaguely reminiscent of Mystery Jets aping some 80s wonder) and Arctic Monkey riffing, hurled out with the energy of a Bill Hicks tirade (“play fro m your fucking heart” as he once ranted in E minor).  But the apparent one take-first take blastaroo lacks content - it’s all over after139 seconds with 45 of them at the build em up kick em down intro – and it won’t lead to a nicotine style addiction or political rage or porn addled drug spiralling visions or worldwide shakedown solutionary theorems.  Try SFA ‘The Man Don’t Give a Fuck’, or indeed one of our titular hero black hearted poets CDs. 

Keane – Better Than This

At the risk of becoming the biggest plagiarist reviewer, and saying what must obviously have been aired before, Keane prove you don’t have to be a music fan (fortunately) by dropping Bowie sounds so large it’s like they have painted their faces clown colour and sewn together a 20 foot Thin White Duke mascot to jerk on steel wires stage side, scarily mimicking a Spider from Mars.  Not a cutting and bitter protest attempt by Tom to moleculise non celebrity wannabes hinged to a copy of Heat, rather a pointless and patronizing ramshackle debasing conversation with himself.  Falsetto me this… a 4^th release from current disappointment “Perfect Shitmetry” which will neither raise enough funds for a course in rehab nor feed any relapsed habit.  Is this what you dreamed of?