Starring
Ali Friend and Ted Barnes, Amanda Bergman, Fairground Attraction, Jordie Lane, Neil Cowley Trio, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, Skinshape
The Front Runners
Your Hand Forever Checking On My Fever : Amanda Bergman
From the off, this album wins your heart with its grounded songs that are an example of excellent songwriting.
Sometimes you want an album that rewards exploration and the attentive listening that reveals magical details. At other times, though, you want something where the joys and delights are on the surface, ready to please as soon as you hear them. This is the album for those occasions.
This album came out in June 2024. From the opening notes of ‘Wild Geese, Wild Love’ this album sounds and feels as if it has been around since the days of Kim Carnes in the 70s and 80s.
Amanda Bergman is a singer songwriter who comforts and cares, her hand as the album title has it, forever checking on your fever. She’ll soothe your pain and if you need a loyal and understanding friend to help you out of a bad time, you’ll find her here.
It’s a quietly reflective album that finds answers within rather than from restless wandering.
These are songs that are rich in melody, with quiet understated vocals. There is nothing for the overwrought diva on this album. She sees no need to shout or whip up manic energy to make herself heard. Even when she dabbles in a more dancey electropop feel on ‘My Hands In The Water’ she’s bringing it to your living room, not the club floor. There’s a steady pulse to these songs that is insistent without being overbearing and demanding. Unconsciously my foot kept time tapping to these songs.
Quite simply, I loved this album from its opening notes to its final fade..
Taster Track : Wild Geese, Wild Love
Beautiful Happening : Fairground Attraction
Acoustic songs containing the life blood of all good pop. That, alone, is reason enough to listen to this album
How many bands can you think of who release a series of stellar songs, an album that goes double platinum, build a worldwide reputation before imploding in acrimony and bitterness and choose 2024 to reunite, tour and release new music. I’ll tell you - two! Fairground Attraction and the noisy neighbours from Manchester. I’ll guarantee that Fairground Attraction will make less money but warm more hearts.
A genuinely acoustic album is rare but it contains something that’s extra special. There’s something pure and authentic in acoustic music that is lost when you turn electric. That’s one of the many reasons that Dylan’s conversion caused so much fuss. It’s also why rock bands want to demonstrate they’re real musicians and include an acoustic number next to punk fury as the Jam did with ‘English Rose’ next to ‘’A’ Bomb In Wardour Street’ on ‘All Mod Cons’.
Fairground Attraction know this in their DNA. They strip things back to pop basics with the skiffle of ‘Learning To Swim’. They venture back to the 19th century with the accordion that features throughout, most effectively on ‘Lullaby For Irish Triplets”
This album has the sense of something lost in the attic for years that you rediscover and find to be still working. It’s a lazy, welcome return. Lazy in the sense of sitting drowsily in warm festival sunshine, with a cold drink to hand and your problems nowhere near. Wikipedia describes them as a rock band. If so, they rock like a cradle.
These are singalong, swayalong songs. There’s a simple sweetness and sincerity to something like ‘Sing Anyway’. It could almost amount to their manifesto.
It’s lovely to have Fairground Attraction back. Let’s not let them slip away again.
Taster Track : Sing Anyway
Bauhaus Staircase : Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark
OMD’s ‘ Bauhaus Staircase’ may be their final record. I’ll give you a moment to process that.
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😧
Enough time?
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It’s one of their very best.
When their debut came out in 1979, it was reasonable to regard it as a gamechanger on a par with the Sex Pistol ‘Never Mind….’. It showed that you could successfully combine the arty synthpop of ‘The Messerschmitt Twins’ with the gorgeous chart pop of ‘Messages’. They famously said they wanted to be both Stockhausen and Abba. They’ve remained true to that ambition for 45 years.
‘Here, the more political sounds of ‘Anthropocene’ and ‘Evolution of Species’ still retain a tune that is worth listening to in its own right. Yes, it’s possible that a line such as “Paradox as paradigm” from ‘Anthropocene’ is chosen more for its sound than its meaning, but it all adds, still, to the sense of glimpsing the future that has underpinned their best work.
Elsewhere it’s one irresistible pop gem after another. ‘Look At You Now’ is sugar sweet candy pop. It’s a song that arrives at the end leaving you wanting one more spoonful. And then another. And another. Songs such as ‘Where We Started’ and ‘Veruschka’ are made for hot technicolour gigs and leave you enthralled with bittersweet tears pouring down your face. The skip and jump to ‘Slow Train’ is pure Goldfrapp at their slinky poppiest. I should warn you that we’re in unshakeable earworm territory with this song.
OMD call out the technophiles, the music snobs and the posers. If you’re one of them, can you honestly say you respond more to the artscapes rather than the pop?
To end on a slightly maudlin note, it’s an inevitable sign of growing older that your favourite bands call it a day. I’m delighted that I was there for the start and still love OMD at the end.
Taster Track : Look At You Now
Another Side of Skinshape : Skinshape
Skinshape’s take on pop is both relaxed and relaxing. It marks out its own musical space borrowing from what’s gone before and twisting it into new and highly enjoyable shapes.
I saw Skinshape referred to as an underground band. With this release they seem to be blinking their way into the daylight. It’s certainly not intimidating or inaccessible. Guitars are bent a little out of shape, but without the distortion that might make for a difficult listen. There’s a little 70s funk in the choppy guitar and clicky beats. There’s some turn of the millennium chill too, straight from the early Lemon Jelly mould.
It’s also an album that highlights the influence that Khruangbin are having on contemporary music. The collaboration ‘Lady Sun’ with Hollie Cook sounds like Khruangbin playing reggae. ‘How Can It Be’ drifts towards a stoned kind of background music. It still works, but it has slipped a little out of focus. Starry effects supplement the mix, and this song in particular sways and moves loosely. ‘Ananda’ sounds as if it’s bounced out of a studio jam that no one saw coming. It’s a little different in a good way.
There’s a sense of freedom running through this record. It comes from being in charge of your music and unconstrained from what other people think you should sound like, allowing you to take a few gentle risks and explore musical routes less travelled.’Massako’ is a real treat, helping the album to crumble away like the last traces of a cheesecake that leaves you happy and satisfied.
This is an album where the tunes squirm their way into your head and take up a long term residence
Taster Track : Massako
The Chasing Pack
Indie Stories : Ali Friend and Ted Barnes
It’s rare to find an album as warm hearted as this one. Ali Friend and Ted Barnes know how to make folk infused pop that brings an unforced smile to your face.
They played together in a band called Clayhill. Ted Barnes has played extensively with Beth Orton over the years. There’s a mystery woman on the record too. Uncredited on Spotify, her vocals make a big contribution to the sound and feel of the album. They’re marinaded in the sound of village folk.
This is music from a bustling film set that can be found in the near past of a 1960s village green. ‘Catapult’ and ‘Day of Haze’ provide a breezy start, full of purpose and good cheer, an announcement that the big attraction is in town. Maybe that’s the unique appeal of this record. How often can you describe a record as being ‘ full of good cheer’? There’s even ‘ “yippie yi ay, yippie yi oh” in ‘Give Me Your Heart’. This is happy music.
It’s a harmless collection. It’s never going to change the world but it will make it a sunnier place. Sometimes pieces such as ‘Follow Me’ and ‘Life On A Heartbeat’ seem like extended snippets that were too good to discard but couldn’t be fitted into another song. Think of them like the most streamlined greatest hits - the ‘Hey Jude’ refrain, or the chorus of ‘Sweet Caroline’.
This is an album that sounds as if GNAC have met the Duckworth Lewis Method at a meeting of the Village Green Preservation Society. And that would have been a good day indeed!
Taster Track : Follow Me
Tropical Depression : Jordie Lane
Jordi Lane follows in a long line of radio friendly singer songwriters
You may not have heard of Jordi, but he’s acquired 77431 monthly listeners on Spotify which isn’t bad. He’s learned his craft well. These are Radio 2 friendly songs, easy to listen to without lingering long in the memory. Some music commands attention. Some music fires you up. Some music is ideal for having on while you’re doing something else. Jordi is settled in that last category.
That’s not a complaint, just a recognition that music serves different purposes and we want good tunes in every category.
He has a nice line in lyrics and a respectable set of influences. You can hear roots music, blues and country in the mix. The strongest is country, and this is the country music of rugged men, wandering across Australia taking work where they find it and displaying their sensitive sides.
These are above all pleasant tunes, reminiscent of Willie Nelson and Ray LaMontagne. He has a pleasant semi falsetto used on ‘Blame Me If You Want To’ and elsewhere. Honey Harper does something similar.
Honey Harper is a good parallel in another way too. There’s a song on his debut EP called ‘Secret’. Nothing else he’s released comes close to the gorgeous emotion that he’s found for that song. It’s something you’ll produce once in a lifetime. I have the feeling that there’s a truly magnificent song in Jordi Lane somewhere. He just hasn’t found it yet and he may have to spend his whole career searching for it.
In the meantime ‘Tropical Depression’ is a good enough way to fill the time.
Taster Track : Blame Me If You Want To
Entity : Neil Cowley Trio
The Neil Cowley Trio have reunited for their first album in seven years. It’s a jazz album that’s good for the soul.
I took something from this album that I don’t often take. It’s a sense that it’s a pointer to other types of music. Maybe it’s Cowley’s past involvement with Zero 7 and an overlooked electronic chill outfit called Fragile State that had me scurrying back to intelligent 00’s chill out. Perhaps it’s the fact that his trio have flavours quietly drawn from a wide range of influences outside the jazz canon. It could be as simple as the fact that this is an album that gives you the space to contemplate where music has helped you to feel this way before. Whatever it is, it’s a form of magical alchemy.
This isn’t jazz to get the party started or to encourage uncontrolled abandon. Look elsewhere for that. If you’re of the opinion that jazz has a problem with too many notes you won’t have that issue here. Control and economy is at the forefront. This is thoughtful and beautiful music.
It’s inviting, like a guide who takes you to a place of interest and leaves you to explore the museums, alleyways and objects of interest in your own way but always there to help you if you feel lost.
As a solo artist, Cowley wandered to the border with electronica, and some of that experience is brought back to his trio. The fragments of speech sampled in ‘Those Claws’ are not overdone but they give meaning and bring understanding to the piece.
Being back with the trio though makes for a very satisfying listening experience. There are no egos. Each member brings something special. They are a mix that has been well stirred so that the individual contributions blend as one. Cowley’s piano provides sweetness and melody, particularly on ‘Marble’ and ‘Shoop’. Evan Jenkins’ precise percussion adds a little exotic spice and Rex Horan’s bass is the seasoning that gives the finished dish depth.
‘Entity’ is a lovely album. More than that, it’s good for you too.
Taster track : Marble
Playlists
As ever this week's Taster Track playlists can be accessed at https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7cSveL7NpVp1xgrKxPe4av?si=SkFlSnvySeuYFpgG0WJFmA or via the Spotify link on the Home Page.
The link to the Youtube playlist is https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwV-OogHy7Eh_sy55y6i18Qj7w_Z3CQft
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