The Nite Songs Singles Bar May 2021
Welcome to our monthly visit to the Singles Bar for May. Plenty of new sounds from all across the musical spectrum this month so take a seat and let us mix up something for you to enjoy...
Kicking us into gear in suitably frenetic style this month are Los Pepes with their new single Want You Back(🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑). This does exactly what you'd want a Los Pepes song to do essentially - whiplash riff, scowled vocals, a bit of unexpected harmonica honking and it gets in, says what it has to say and gets out again before the two minute mark. B-sides Never Get It Right and Tell Me are similarly high quality too and well worth a listen in their own right. Bandcamp link here.
Making a welcome comeback this month are Desperate Journalist with Fault (🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑), the lead-off single from their upcoming fourth album Maximum Sorrow. A bit more urgent than the band's usual output, the pounding drums, swirling bass and echoey guitar remind me more of Siouxsie & The Banshees than anything here and that's not a bad thing by any means. Desperate Journalist are one of those bands who seem to have been threatening to break through into the big leagues for a while now and fingers crossed the new album is the one that finally does it for them. Bandcamp link here.
It seems as though a trip to the Singles Bar at the moment isn't complete without a Penfriend single turning up somewhere. With Laura Kidd's first album under her new alias due in the next couple of weeks, Seventeen (🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑), a lurching ode to the dark side of teenage memories is another tick in the box for confirming Kidd's credentials as both a songwriter and lyricist - if the album lives up to the promise shown by both this and its predecessors, it should be well worth a listen. Bandcamp link here.
We reviewed Calling All Astronauts' excellent #Resist album on this blog a couple of months ago and the anti-X Factor diatribe Fifteen Minutes (🌕🌕🌕🌗🌑) is the latest single to be culled from it. Sounding like a mash-up between Tones On Tail and Nitzer Ebb, it's not a bad place to end up at all especially for those into the more dancey end of goth music. Bandcamp link here.
I mentioned a few weeks ago when we did the Sounds From The Junkshop entry on Lush that Miki Berenyi's new band Piroshka had a new album (Love Drips & Gathers) out later this year and Scratching At The Lid (🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑) is the first single to be culled from it. While the group's debut album Brickbat from 2019 saw them taking a spiky post-punk sound, the new one is being touted as a return to the shoegazing sound that early Lush were acclaimed for. Except...while the hazy distorted guitars are definitely in evidence here, this packs an urgency to it which certainly sets it apart from the laconic sounds of the early '90s. Shoegazing for a new generation then? Who knows but I like it. Bandcamp link here.
It would appear to be the month for this sort of thing as we also have a new four track EP from Londoners and self-confessed shoegazing revivalists Lemondaze in the form of Celestial Bodies (🌕🌕🌕🌗🌑) which certainly has the ethereal vocals and distorted guitars but similar to Piroshka at least attempts to add a bit of urgency to the formula with the riff on lead-off track Twin Paradox sounding more like the Cult's Fire Woman than anything else. The more laconic and trippy Art Form is maybe a bit closer to what you'd expect from a shoegazing band (ie good but it meanders a bit) while 1990 nine sounds like Ride's Vapour Trail slowed down for the opening minute before it kicks in properly to decent effect and closer io has the same ponderous concrete heaviness as OX4's finest's Dreams Burn Down. A little bit of a mixed bag but if you're the sort of person who yearns for 1991 then this might be something worth investigating. Bandcamp link here.
Now here's a name I'd not heard for a bit - there was a time in the mid-noughties when St Albans natives The Subways were briefly being touted as indie's Next Big Thing. Their new single Fight (🌕🌕🌕🌑🌑), released on the excellent Alcopop records, sees them in a much more political mode than when they last disappeared off our radar a decade or so ago, standing in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter protests of the last few years. It does go a little bit "Rick from the Young Ones" in places but you can't fault the sentiment behind it. With a bit of work on this new direction, they could be on to something. Bandcamp link here.
Rich Ragany is another name we've seen in the Singles Bar files quite frequently of late both with the Digressions and solo and The Great Nothing (🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑) shows another string to his bow - a sinister, almost gothy ode to the darkness at the heart of the human soul which sounds like an almost post-punk take on the old Church classic Under The Milky Way. Rags remains a songwriter with an impressive ability to challenge your preconceptions of him with every release and I'm looking forward to reviewing that Digressions album when it hopefully surfaces soon. Bandcamp link here.
The Dowling Poole seem to have become regular visitors to the shores of the Singles Bar and the ominous Be There (🌕🌕🌕🌕🌗) is arguably one of their strongest singles to date, directing righteous rage against the tabloid brainwashing of the general public under ominous strings, tribal drums and a general air of uneasiness. No denying it, this band are definitely on a good run of form at the moment and as long as it continues, you won't catch me complaining about their regular presence in this column. Bandcamp link here.
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