Song reviews

Downbeat and with enough old school folk rock influences to make you wish you were listening to vinyl, “Under My Skin” highlights Amy Blaschke’s smoky laconicism. Life is, after all, about love and cigarettes.

Intelligent Scandinavian electro pop from Norway’s Highasakite with “Samurai Swords” displaying enough additional arthouse pretension to convince the better minds of the quality of this band and consequently turn Ingrid Helene Håvik into their new poster girl.

The Tambo Rays strike the right balance between bittersweet lyrics and upbeat indie pop with their song “Get It Right Now”. Retro synth sounds keep the anguish alive but It must be all that sunshine that they get in California that gives the song its undeniable warmth.

Yes! That’s what we need. The bleak tub thumping nihilism that underpins “Senior Pictures” crashes through the oppression of conformity with the kind of relentless dirty needle sharing pretension that would surely earn this band a place in the gutter next to any number of overdosed luminaries from rock’s car crash past. Vomitface – I worship you!

I should hate this song. “First Day Of Summer” is cursed with more than its fair share of awkward thesaurus rhymes yet Jesse Ruben manages to make this throwaway song into a smile inducing sunshine song.

On the third day or thereabouts God invented the guitar and shortly thereafter blues rock was borne. The Blue Poets are therefore as old school as you can get – their song “Goodbye” even has a guitar solo – and yet the robust vocals and four on the floor virtuosity make them as welcome as they would have been in 1975.

Einar Vilberg certainly knows how to make a song to escape from your headphones with “Apathy” scaling upwards and outwards to make a fine example of American influenced, testosterone powered melancholy.

Endearingly hypnotic, Ronley Teper and Her Lipliners go all little girl blue with their song “Faith” and, whilst leaving plenty of space for both piano and her plaintive vocals, take us to the crescendo that inevitably collides with redemption.

Curiously upbeat and optimistic for a Scottish band of these dull and dreary times, Jargo strikes a nice balance between lyrical sentimentality and the sing along guitar pop groove with “Photograph The Feeling” therefore easily justifying its place on the summer playlist.

An odd one this. There is a pleasing quirkiness to Maisie Hutt’s voice and the lyrics take a welcome walk away from the dancefloor but the derivative and yet still clumsy electropop backing track that powers “Eight Till Ten” undoes all that is good here.

Although nearly drowning in a sea of musical reverence, “Break of Dawn” is nonetheless the kind of robust song that might well be seen as stadium friendly but let us not forget that it is Mudibu’s soulful vocals that actually gets the song on to the safety of the shore

Whilst “Voodoo” isn’t the kind of song to trouble your memory, you can’t deny the style and presence that Beth Macari brings to the party and she duly makes more of this song than many could. I’m sure the smart money will be watching out for whatever she does next.