Nite Songs

  So then, we've finally got to the place where this list SHOULD have started if I hadn't gone down about thirty different musical rabbit holes in the last few weeks. Guess we'd better make up for lost time, welcome to the Top 50... *** 50.     SASSYHIYA - "Take You Somewhere" South Londoners Sassyhiya are a band who crucially understand that lo-fi indie music always works best when it has a mischievous sense of fun underlying it and  Take You Somewhere  has that quality in spades featuring odes to everyone from Kristin Stewart to pet cats while closer  You Can Give It (But You Can’t Take It)  is a righteous diatribe against bullies. A strong debut. *** 49.     JAMES SULLIVAN - "Vital Signs" Now on his second solo album and following the breakup of his band More Kicks,  Vital Signs  sees James Sullivan continuing to spread his wings impressively. The power-pop that was his old band's calling card is very much still there but Sulliva...

  There are some bands where the sight of some new music from them landing in your inbox gives your soul and spirit a much needed lift and a big grin to spread across your gob. And then there’s bands like Massive Wagons where the appearance of a new album has the effect of making your heart sink and cause a general grimacing feeling of “well go on then, let’s give ‘em another chance, who knows, maybe this one’ll surprise us.” The harsh truth is though that in well over a decade of output, the Morecambe rockers have only really managed one album, 2018's Full Nelson , that could honestly be described as being above average and the fact that they followed that with 2020's decidedly underwhelming House Of Noise  suggested that the opportunity for this band to really make their mark as the bright hopes of Britrock that some were touting them as had been and gone. For what it's worth though, Triggered  is at least a step back in the right direction. Oddly, the group that Massiv...

  Now on their fourth album, it's safe to say that life is very much ticking on the same as it always did in the world of Lancaster rockers Massive Wagons. In that they still sound as if they've pretty much teleported straight into this timeline from a Scorpions support slot circa 1978. When singer Baz yells "Maybe I'm old before my years"  on opening track In It Together  you can't help but roll your eyes at the irony of it all. To be fair, I always feel it's a bit unfair to peg Massive Wagons as a bunch of derivative retro-merchants as they at least show a lot more energy and enthusiasm in going about their craft than the detestable likes of Greta Van Fleet, Black Stone Cherry et al but at the same time it's difficult to shift the feeling when you listen to them that they're only one falsetto vocal away from essentially being a bunch of Darkness clones. And as much as I like the Darkness, cornball humour in rock 'n' roll is something that...