Nite Songs

A cold night on the roof of the Nite Songs Singles Bar. After a heavy shift sorting out two lots of singles and a consignment of EP's and mini-albums, your friendly reviewer was about to close the bar up for the night when he was distracted by the sound of sleigh bells on the roof. Climbing up through the skylight, he sees... ANDY: Santa? SANTA: Ho ho ho. That's right. A: Hold on a sec, what are you doing here? I've just finished my reviews for the month and was about to clock out... S: Have you forgotten what time of year it is, yer daft bugger? A: Oh...yeah. That. S: And you know what that means, right? A; Ah. Yes. S: Indeed. :throws a group of Christmas singles at your friendly reviewer: You'd better get these listened to then hadn't yer? A: You mean PART FOUR of this month's Singles Bar? Oh for... (interrupted by the sound of the sleigh taking off and heading back towards the North Pole)  Starting off with that staple of festive listening, the big Christmas ...

  Following a turbulent year, it's good to see Ryan Hamilton back with a new album. Since his previous effort, 2018’s This Is The Sound , not only have the Harlequin Ghosts changed guitarists with Main Grains/Spangles man Ben Marsden replacing Dave Winkler but Hamilton has gone through a divorce and has described Nowhere To Go... as being his breakup album, written while road tripping across the States to try and get his head in order. These things can go one of two ways - either a really well-handled album that you'll come back to when you're needing a bit of solace for some heartache or an absolute klutzfest which sees a previously respectable band well and truly tank their credibility (fans of Marilyn Manson and Rancid may allow themselves a rueful nod and a sigh here). I'm happy to report that Nowhere To Go But Everywhere  definitely falls into the former category though. Hamilton has always been a guy with a keen ear for a melody and he's on good form here. Ye...

Another new feature! I know, who'd have thunk it eh? Anyway, there was a time when any self-respecting music mag would have a singles review section every week but, let's be honest, those days are pretty much long gone in 2020 with the Top 40 these days being so meaningless and irrelevant that it might as well count for the number of minidiscs you've sold in Outer Mongolia. Nevertheless, there's still plenty of folks who are still stubbornly putting out singles either as stand alone releases or tasters for new albums and, y'know what, fair play to them. It's also fair to say that while I was taking a hibernation from music reviewing stuff there was a lot of singles piling up in my inbox and a lot of it deserved to be given some good press. So the original aim of this column was to kind of clear the decks and point you good people reading this blog towards some top tunes to make the lockdown a bit more bearable. And then I realised just how much of it there was a...