Nite Songs

  Jump for joy, it's Top 40 time - cue Whole Lotta Love / Yellow Pearl / The Wizard /your TOTP theme of choice... *** 40.    SARAH SHOOK & THE DISARMERS - "Revelations" Another band who I discovered pretty much by accident this year, Sarah (now River) Shook and their band are now on their fourth album and if, like me, this is the first you've heard of them then listening to it will make you quickly want to make up for lost time. Mixing the winsome country strum of prime time Tom Petty with a bratty indie-pop insouciance, Revelations  mixes sugar ( Criminal , Nightingale ) and spite ( Jane Doe , You Don't Get To Tell Me ) to great effect. Give this band a listen now.  *** 39.     X - "Smoke And Fiction" If this really does turn out to be LA punk veterans X's swansong then rest assured they've gone out on a high note. A more than worthy follow-up to 2020's storming comeback Alphabetland , it sees them throwing everything from old-school pun...

  Approaching the upper echelons of our end of year list now - read on to find out what's made our Top 30 albums for this year... *** 30. BEFORE VICTORIA - "Moving Forward" Stepping away from his career as a writer and bassist for the Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing, Moving Forward  saw Marc Burrows' side project Before Victoria very much sprout wings of its own and fly. Mixing elements of grunge, goth, new wave and the odd disarming acoustic confessional, this is a hell of a varied album but one that never loses your attention throughout. Burrows can definitely congratulate himself on a job well done here. *** 29. THE LINDA LINDAS - "Growing Up" Having come to the public's attention with the blistering anger of their Racist Sexist Boy  single, Growing Up proved that the Linda Lindas were definitely more than just back to basics punk rock. Sounding like X-Ray Spex jamming with early Ash, this was a well crafted selection of songs with a lyrical m...

  Well, she kept THAT quiet from us! Carol Hodge has always been a prolific songwriter with this being her third album in two and a half years but Vertiginous Drops  landed on our review desk with very little preamble. With a stellar guest list including Chris Catalyst and Ginger Wildheart joining in, this is certainly a nice pre-Christmas surprise for sure. The opening two tracks, Best Will In The World  and The Price  are uplifting slices of power-pop to get Vertiginous Drops  off to a good start before the heartfelt piano-led torch song of Grayson (Things Always  Could  Be Worse)  is a real standout moment with Hodge's voice and the sweeping instrumentation combining to make something genuinely special. The icy electronica of Never Run Out Of Things To Worry About  is a marked contrast afterwards with its strident chorus and lyrical self-doubt making it another standout number. Clean The Slate , featuring Chris Catalyst on guitar with some...

  Top 20 time then - hopefully a few albums on here you might have missed first time out and will enjoy giving a much deserved listen to. Tune back in for the Top 10 tomorrow... *** 20.     CAROL HODGE - "The Crippling Space Between" Hodge's third solo album sees her in good form, mixing light and shade to brilliant effect. Informed by the strange climate that lockdown brought on, by turns angry and hopeful, despairing and optimistic, it runs the full gauntlet of emotions that a lot of us felt during those weird months. She may still be one of the UK music industry's best kept secrets but on the evidence of The Crippling Space Between , it's really time that somebody changed that and she received the recognition she deserves. *** 19.     MINISTRY - "Moral Hygiene" Times like this provide rich fodder for Al Jourgensen and Moral Hygiene  is arguably Ministry's strongest album for over a decade. As you'd expect, it doesn't let up on the heavines...

  We reviewed sometime Steve Ignorant, Ryan Hamilton and Ginger Wildheart collaborator Carol Hodge's sophomore album Savage Purge  in the early days of this webzine ( link here ) and she's followed up with her third in an impressively quick turnaround time. And any worries that this might have had a detrimental effect on the material involved are quickly assuaged when opener The Moan Of A Thousand Years  kicks into gear with a well placed diatribe against the British "mustn't grumble" mentality. The light and shade of Hodge's output are well represented by the second and third songs - Twenty Miles Up  is all about looking back at a bad relationship with the gift of distance and time and realising that ending it was probably the best thing you could have done. By contrast, the stark  Curtain To Fall  takes a look at the crippled state of the live music industry in the wake of Covid and worries for its future. The hypnotic  So Much For Summertime si...

  Getting close to the top of the chart now as we enter the alliteratively alluring Nite Songs' Top 20 albums of 2020. Some crackers in here and no mistake. 20. SPARKS - "A Steady Drip Drip Drip" ( Review ) Scary to think that Sparks are now almost half a century into their careers. And scarier still that they're still putting out albums as great as A Steady Drip Drip Drip  way after most of their contemporaries had given up the creative ghost. Taking in the group's formative glam stomp as well as excursions into everything from samba rhythms to music hall stylings to pure pop, this is just as much of a joy to listen to as ever. Great stuff. *** 19. DIABLOFURS - "Neon Satellites" ( Review ) With controls firmly set to the new wave era of the early '80s. Nottingham glitter merchants Diablofurs came up with one of the best debut albums of 2020 mixing Tubeway Army style electronica with pure power-pop sensibilities to great effect on tunes like Rival Gr...

  Carol Hodge is in possession of an impressive musical CV. As well as being keyboard player for Ryan Hamilton & The Harlequin Ghosts and Steve Ignorant from Crass' band, she's also worked with people as varied as Ginger Wildheart and the Membranes. Savage Purge is Carol's second album following on from 2018's Hold On To That Flame . Similar to its predecessor, it definitely owes a nod to Tori Amos in its sound with the downbeat piano-led laments of Stop Worrying Baby and the gentle Waving Not Drowning definitely hitting the mark musically. The defiant I Still Love Me and the angular Magic Bullet see her upping the tempo to good effect though and show that she isn't afraid to vary her sound up a bit where necessary as evidenced by the ultra-stark domestic violence lament In Case Of Emergency . Send Me Someone and Semi-Colon are similarly stripped down and brutally honest and are good testament to Hodge's ability as a songwriter before the epic five-mi...

  Well, here we go, part 2 of this month's Singles Bar as we finish rounding up all the good stuff that's landed in my inbox over the last few months while I was in reviewing hibernation. Hopefully everyone will find at least something they like in here! Cheers again and hopefully we'll see you with the next instalment either next month or in November depending on how much stuff lands in my inbox between now and then! Starting off with a band who I'm friends with from my days living on the Herts/Essex borders, Touch of Blue  reformed a couple of years ago and "Here It Goes"  (🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑), their new single, is a good slice of low-slung and loose Stonesy rock with a slight nod to the bar-room stomp of the Quireboys as well. If you're looking for something nice and simple to sink a pint to this coming Friday night then you could do a lot worse than this - downloadable from their Bandcamp page (along with a couple of other recent re-releases) if you want to i...