Nite Songs

  And so we come to the bit everybody's been waiting for - it's our Top 10 albums of the year. Did your favourite make it? Read on to find out... *** 10.     TUK SMITH & THE RESTLESS HEARTS - "Rogue To Redemption" Through his time with the Heart Attacks and Biters, Tuk Smith is one of those musicians who's frequently threatened to make a genuinely great album and never quite done it. However, with his new band the Restless Hearts, it would appear that third time's the charm and following on from their promising Ballad of Misspent Youth EP, Rogue To Redemption more than delivers its payload of scuzzed up sneering rock 'n' roll in the best Ramones/Hanoi Rocks/Generation X fashion. An absolutely killer record which proves that good rock 'n' roll is very much alive and well in 2024. *** 9.     THE VIRGINMARYS - "The House Beyond The Fires" The fact that the Virginmarys are a band who seem to keep getting stronger with every release is...

  Well then, here we go - last Singles Bar of the year. It initially looked as if disappointingly we weren't gonna have any festive singles this year but I'm happy to confirm that a few of them have snuck in here and we've even got a couple of mini-albums for your delectation. Eggnog anyone? *** Anyway, let's get the non-festive stuff out of the way first eh? And it doesn't come much better than Primal Scream  and Dexy's  coming together with Enough Is Enough (🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕), a musical ode to the new protest movement and it's a proper old school Billy Bragg folk anthem for the struggle which should inspire every single one of us to go out and man those barricades (aye, if only it worked like that?). But still, pretty much a must-get for anyone with a conscience. You know what to do - let's try and get this one to the Christmas number one spot aye?  Bandcamp Link I can't remember the last time I had a Neil Leyton  single turn up in my review pile but suf...

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...