Nite Songs

  Welcome to the traditional Nite Songs end of year rundown. As we did last year, we're gonna kick off today with our Top 10 EP's and mini-albums before kicking off the Top 50 countdown in earnest tomorrow. As you'll know if you've been frequenting our Singles Bar over the last 12 months, 2021 has been nothing if not a varied year as evidenced from the sheer variety of stuff making up this list from sugar-sweet power-pop to ferocious punk. Read on for our picks and hopefully we might just help you plug a couple of gaps in your collection then tune back in tomorrow as we start the albums list. *** 10. THE SPANGLES - "Boys Just Wanna Have Fun" Sometimes covers EP's just work and this one from the Spangles was one of those where you could literally sense the band having fun as they were making it. Covers of Transvision Vamp, Kim Wilde, Joan Jett and the Bangles are all handled well with the melodies and hooks given a good old scuzzy glam-punk makeover to top ...

  "How come it's not busier?" asks my mate a few minutes before Saint Agnes are due onstage. "Well, considering it's a Tuesday night, it's probably the biggest Leeds venue they've played and they're a band who haven't really played up this way much before, I don't think this is too bad." I reply looking around the Brudenell which is about half full. Certainly I've seen more established bands pull smaller crowds than this here. "Yeah but...I mean, we've both heard their music mate, they should be huge, right?" he answers. I have to hand it to the guy, he's not wrong. In a just world, Saint Agnes would be huge. As it is, they're continuing to make good progress in recent years with even the likes of Kerrang! and the Metro newspaper devoting column inches to them in the last year or two, not bad for a band who your correspondent remembers playing the packed back room of the tiny Lock Tavern in Camden on one of his f...

Autumn’s here, the leaves are falling and the Singles Bar is open for business and having what can best be described as a mass clearout with no less than three parts to this month! Come in from the rain and cold and let's get you served up with something to take the edge off the chill... Kicking us off this month,  Brat Coven are a four-piece from Glasgow with a self-titled EP (🌕🌕🌕🌕🌗) who sound like some righteous collision between Dream Nails and the Runaways with the ferocious anti-dick pic culture snarl of Not Your Girl  being a particular highlight. The frenetic Ugly  is similarly raging against societal norms before the lurching  Ninety Seven  captures the creeping paranoia most women feel walking home alone at night. A very impressive first salvo - I'd say that this lot are well worth keeping an eye on.  Bandcamp Link Liverpudlians  She Drew The Gun  are one of those bands I've heard of on band bills without actually hearing any materia...

Welcome back to the Singles Bar as we look through this month's releases. A bit of a shorter than usual column this month with five singles and a mini-album to get through so let's get on with it, shall we?... Rich Ragany & The Digressions  are currently limbering up for their second album and on the evidence of  Heartbreakers Don't Try  (🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑), a tribute to Johnny Thunders with its lyrical references to You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory unless my ears deceive me, it should be well worth the wait. A supremely tuneful slice of Tom Petty style power-pop (two Heartbreakers for the price of one, you might say) with some driving piano courtesy of ex-Shush man and all round production wiz Andy Brook, this is good stuff. Bandcamp link here .  It's always good to see some Jesse Malin  in the review pile although the jerky blues of  The Way We Used To Roll  (🌕🌕🌕🌗🌑) isn't quite up to the standard of his previous few releases like Ameri'ka or...

Welcome back to the Singles Bar for our March instalment. As seems to be becoming a regular occurrence at the moment, this is another two-parter with this bit being all singles and the second part a mix of singles and EP's. Let's get that first order in and see what's on the radar this month then shall we?... The Dowling Poole   have been a regular fixture in this column over the last 6 months or so and their latest release Slow Genocide  (🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑) is a paranoid Sleaford Mods-style ode to the lockdown and the government's clueless handling of it featuring gruff vocals from Terrorvision's Tony Wright. Sinister and creepy, it's a good slice of political paranoia 2021 style. With the group's long time lyrical target Donald Trump now gone from the White House, it looks like the band are now squarely training their sights on the cabinet of leeches running the UK and there's plenty of anger here to stoke the fires of discontent. Bandcamp link here Saint Agn...

  The original plan this month was not to have a Singles Bar as, let's face it, there's usually very little out in terms of new releases in January (as the fact that pretty much all the albums we've reviewed this month came out in November/December last year probably testifies). However, upon investigating the inboxes we did manage to find just enough stuff to merit doing a smaller-than-usual column hence this one-off Singles Mini-Bar. Feel free to help yourself... The biggest name on our review list for this month is Tyla's Dogs D'Amour   with their new "Powder Dry EP"  (🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑). I think most people know that Tyla is one heck of a prolific songwriter and it's led to times in recent years where it's felt a bit as if quantity has sometimes taken precedence over quality for Mr Pallas. However, this mournful ode to old friends who've left this world far too soon is a good effort from the guy and you may find yourself with something in yer eye ...

  So here we go - the first Nite Songs end of year summary. It's been a very weird year and I'm sure I'll deal with some of the oddness when I come round to doing the first part of our Albums of the Year list tomorrow - certainly I don't think any of us ever envisaged 2020 turning out the way it did. One side effect of the changing nature of the music business and the circumstances brought on by the pandemic though is a massive increase in the number of bands putting out EP's and mini-albums this year. Extra time on people's hands? Quicker and more cost-effective than having to devote time to making a full album especially when you're stuck indoors and having to record it on your own equipment rather than using a professional studio? Dictated due to band members having to work remotely? Probably a bit of all the above. But either way, there's been some crackers come out which weren't quite long enough to be a full album and it seemed only right that ...