Song reviews

A slick slice of classy Euro electro pop, “Your Girl” shows what the normally wistful Lina Hansson can really do as she leads Violet Days confidently on a sequenced march towards stardom.

Splendidly robust in their performance, Voes kick up the eighties with their big, radio friendly, electro rock song “Live Through This” and the larger than life vocal from Harriet Whitehead easily drives this song right into your head.

Squeaky clean in style if not lyrical content, Allie & Ivy, for it is they who are one, hits harder than most indie pop with her song “Get- Hi”. It might be a side effect of the warner weather but I actually felt the urge to sing along to this one.

They love their rock in Russia and Mitya takes a slinky, bordered by both the sixties and seventies, west coast of the USA approach with “Fabula Spatium” adding in all sorts of electronic inconsistencies to update it for today’s more cynical ears.

Athough, on the face of it, this is just a rambling run through the hierarchy of European hip-hop, “Smokid All Stars” is from the distinctly oddball French outfit Smokey Joe & The Kid and is therefore blessed with a style so often missing from the genre. This song is smoking hot and refrigerator cold all at the same time. How do they do it?

Never a band to waste your time, Seattle spunky punkers Pony time enlist Lisa Prank to front their sub two minute psychotic rant “Stop Talking”. Turn it right up and it’s 1978 all over again.

A downright reverential take on the old school synth pop style, “Beyond Memory” shows that the past is the new black and that Nina has the voice to make that post midnight feeling of déjà vu into something so right.

Reminiscent of peak period Ryuichi Sakamato, Fiordmoss successfully mix tribal and urban rhythms together with the result that “Madstone” sounds like a work of electro maturity. The haunting isolation of the female vocals add the organic touch.

Not sure if "Dukes Up" song is meant to be pastiche of the urban style but the robotic simplicity would suggest so even if the irony evident in Miss Krystle’s voice points at aggression rather than regression. Girls don’t just want to have fun, after all, and ambition, as always, is the new black.

“Moving Up” is a conventional and affectionate retake on the early days of melodic rock with Greeves, who are from Australia, throwing in enough additional grooviness to keep your ears happy.

Cool song from a cool French pop band conceptually about the second coolest man in the world (ever). The alternating male and female vocals add that certain je ne sais quoi to “Alain Delon” and make you wish you were either Alain Delon or in the band. Love is blue.

Surprisingly robust for a song borne of the folk genre, “Fayre” steers clear of the expected twee romanticism and substitutes instead David Webster’s vocal pyrotechnics as the means to impress the listener. That turns out to be a very wise choice indeed.