There is something wonderfully tribal about Victoria Celestine’s latest single, not normally a “go to” sound for those in the pop field but it works brilliantly. Rather than opt for the usual dance infusions and clubland beats to drive the song, taking this primal sound not only makes it stand out but really drives the point home through the simplicity and power of such an approach. We know that Celestine is great at delivering succinct and standout pop, Good Heart To Hide amply demonstrated that, but this time out she proves that she is also happy to break the mould and try something new. And that of course is where the most memorable music is found.
For those of us with longer memories, the song echoes with the sonic ghosts of Dream Academy’s iconic Life In A Northern Town, mainly in its similarly tribal urges and demonstration that pop doesn’t have to follow the same tried and tested rules. But that is a long time ago now, a nice touch of nostalgia for us oldies and in the main Alive is a wonderfully different beast. This is tribal pop for the modern age, a slick and slender production that still appeals to the masses. It’s great when you stumble across a song that is so vibrant and appealing but is also much bolder and cleverer than it first appears to be.
Honesty is the best policy so I’m gonna come right out and address the elephant in the room that is the stumbling block of Noise Therapy’s sound right away. There is a major discrepancy in terms of delivery and production between the quality of the vocals and the instruments playing behind it. Okay, this is metal, it comes with a certain brutality, rawness and passion but when it comes to the vocal execution you can’t help
Borrowed Time is the sound of past musical traditions, modern sonic inventiveness and future music potentials all mixing liberally in what can only be described as a fresh move for pop. For pop this definitely is, but it is pop with a soulful heritage, Valentine’s vocals alone leave that sonic finger-print on the track. But as deft and addictive as the vocals are, this is pop music built also from some gorgeous textures. Rather than the perfunctory, identikit sound of most of today’s chart bound competition, real thought has gone into the wonderfully layered musical threads that form the song’s body.
Stay All Night is one of those songs that feels timeless both in sentiment and execution. People have been falling in love since the dawn of humanity and people have been chronicling it in song for almost as long. 
As every student of Greek mythology will know, Dionysus was the son of the mortal Greek Princess Semele and was fathered by Zeus, but after Semele’s death (of fright after Zeus revealed his Godly power to her) Zeus took the unborn Dionysus and attached him to his thigh until his birth.
It’s just one of those songs that seems to have really stood the test of time, at least in my house. New Miserable Experience, the album that this came from and the one that thrust them into the global spotlight was well named as during its recording founder member, songwriter and lead guitarist, Doug Hopkins, was forced from the band mainly due to record company pressure over his drinking issues.
They say that in life – and in music – timing is everything, and within ‘The Darkness Between the Leaves’ comes the feeling that we’re leaving summer and entering into the changing season of autumn, which, as I write this, we are.
It’s reassuring to find Arthur Rivers exactly where I left him last time, kicking off the album with the previously encountered single 
Describing themselves more as a collaborative project than a band, this musical tribe comprising of LiKWUiD on vocals, music director Zaven Embree and honorary member Willie Green in the role of engineer and producer, are the perfect response to the world we find ourselves in today. They stand for non-conformity and creativity as a way to promote love, peace, prosperity and aim to re-unite the disparate tribes that mankind is continually dividing into. Ebony Stoned is also a response to the patriarchal society that they see around them, the greed of capitalism and a rallying cry to instil hope, particularly in women, as the gender balance seems to be tipping against them at an increasing rate in the current political climate.
In a musical world that seems ever more dictated by fad and fashion, driven by bluster and bombast, concerned with big statements and immediate responses, it is reassuring to know that there are still artists unaffected by such concerns. Lucy Kitchen is everything that the usual modern approach is not. Her songs are deft and delicate, built on clean-limbed and gentle lines and embellished with only the absolutely essential sonic details. Beats are minimal, textures subtly woven and the music feels nothing more than gossamer and smoke-like layers skilfully interlaced to maintain a musical weightlessness.
The further down this dark, spacious path Leah Hinton takes her solo 
Ahead of the upcoming run of 
This may be their first album for eight years but as soon as Bothering Me’s boisterous Hollywood Brats style musical swagger starts emanating from the speakers, it seems like they have never been away. How quickly we fall back into line, them delivering acid-laced raucous garage rock and us lapping up every second of it.
Even on the first play of this album you come away with the feeling that these are songs forged by a very skilled writer and recorded by an experienced band. And you would be right, just one look at Mats Ronander’s resume reveals that he not only has a pile of solo albums behind him but is a go to, top flight session man and has toured as part of, not only home grown legends such as ABBA but has graced the ranks of the likes of Ian Hunter and 
There are so many well constructed, clean-limbed and classic sonic lines running through Nevertheless that it immediately feels like a song that you have been humming along to all your life. That simple guitar rhythm, the plaintive piano lines, the jaunty mandolin, they may all sound familiar but the cliche that suggests that this might breed contempt certainly isn’t appropriate in this case. Sometimes familiarity breeds commendation. There’s a new cliche to stick in the book for you.
Does Kate Bush actually make music that can be simply categorised as pop? Although it is an idea that has been levelled at many artists, normally out of some act of promotional hyperbole, Kate Bush is one of those few who makes music that only ever sounds like herself. With the exception of a few acolytes in later years, most notably the exquisite Bat For Lashes, Kate Bush conjures songs which are so original, so of the artist herself as to defy generic pigeon-holing. But pop will do as good as any.
There is very little new under the sun, as they say, especially when it comes to guys singing about cars. But as is always the way it ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it. Anyway, that’s enough cliche’s for the time being, you know what I am saying. And whilst Cool Ride is a guy singing about a car, it is the music that 
Stick the label “twisted neo-folk’ on something and I’m in. It already ticks three important elements for me. Folk music, or at least that music which beats at the heart of your particular cultural traditions, is where music begins. Someone much older and wiser than me quite rightly pointed out that “all music is folk music; I ain’t never heard no horse sing a song.”
Indie? Possibly not but their music is so weird, genre-hopping and changeable that I’m not really sure where it fits in so this is as good a place as any. Most of my postings in this category have been real blasts from the past so far but as these splendid people are currently on tour and they remind me at their most intense of things like The March Violets and James Ray’s Gangwar, that’s excuse enough to post them here.