Song reviews

“Blonde American Girl” lasts a lot longer than you would expect of a song with such a title. It is also relentlessly downbeat with Alex Bent & The Emptiness spending his six minutes of fame milking the electronic melancholy for all it is worth.

Guitars on reverb, girlish lead vocals and that retro sound might well be the trademark of many an indie pop band with intentions of making a pilgrimage to the beach but Seattle’s Acapulco Lips have more spirit and charm than most with their song “Tonight” easily making the world seem a better place.

“Pathway” provides all the proof that you might need that Americana is a worldwide phenomenon and all credit to Croatian band She Brought Me Gasoline for managing to sound like they hail from the good old US of A. This is the kind of band that should do well at roots festivals throughout Europe.

Ploughing the mainstream of the nineties is Carly Jamison but, underneath the riffs and sing along chorus that moves “Dynamo” forward, there beats a heart made of something other than gold. One to watch.

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.