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SINGLE REVIEW: Grow – ‘Your Own Time’

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Not only is this the debut release from Halifax band Grow but it’s the first release from Grayston Unity Records. And if ‘Grayston Unity’ rings some bells, it should because The Grayston Unity in Halifax founded the label.

So I need to define – or try to define – the sound of this track. To be honest doing this has me scratching my head. The problem is that every time I listen to it I hear something different. It very definitely has something of the lushness and vibe of the psychedelic but it isn’t either psychedelic rock or pop. There’s something of the laid back drawl of Manchester in there. And then there’s the hint of Primal Scream. On the other hand it could have you reaching for psychedelic pop-rock. You see my problem.

At its base it’s a superbly written melodic kind of soft rock song but it’s what Grow do with this that makes it so bloody wonderful, There’s backing vocals so lush they hurt, There’s the touches of slide guitar, the piano that features so heavily and all that would enough but they go and add organ,

But there’s more, yes there’s more. This track is littered with subtle and clever touches of sounds that will have your brain spinning. And yes, some of those sounds, feels and vibes are definitely of the past but, and it’s a big but, this doesn’t sound shoehorned in. All you can do is sit back and admire what the band have done.

Look, this is a band doing their own thing, and that is a beautiful thing. It’s immediate for the ‘casual listener’ and the ‘closer listener’ will find much to appreciate over repeated spins. The brilliantly put together layers of sound just compel you to dive deeper and deeper. And I must say that despite what is undoubtedly complex production it still sounds like a band playing together.

The above is my attempt to explain why I love this track so much; I’m not sure it does. But I suspect this is one of those that’s going to hit different people differently. All I can really say is this song ticks all the boxes – suburb songwriting, great playing, wonderful arrangement and, most importantly, the sound of a band making their own music This is fabulous, go listen.

The single is available on all streaming services and available on vinyl via Bandcamp https://growtheband.bandcamp.com/album/your-own-time

SINGLE REVIEW: Since Torino – ‘transatlantic flight song’

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While I’m tempted to gush about Since Torino’ I’ll leave it with saying I’m a fan. Simple as that.

So, sometimes you think you get a band, you think you have a handle on their sound, And then they go and do something that makes you rethink what you thought. ‘transatlantic flight song’ is that release.

It still has that Since Torino feel; thoughtful and intensely personal, and carefully crafted and put together.It’s just that this song is built around retro sounding synths It’s, to coin a phrase, a retro synth ballad. And when I say ballad I mean that in the sense of it being a story narrated.It sounds like vintage electronica. It’s moody, somewhat dark and intensely atmospheric. It has words that make you want to listen again and again until you get them and the\ story they tell,

So while this song has me rethinking what I’d previously assumed about the band, somehow I always knew they would do that at some stage. And I love it when a band does that; I am not the type of person who demands a band always ‘sound’ the same, I just want their music to be recognisably them, and this is recognisably Since Torino.

‘transatlantic flight song’ is compelling and mesmirising. It sounds absolutely gorgeous. This is absolutely wonderful. You just have to hear this.

SINGLE REVIEW: Crooked Revival – ‘Demons’

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Sadly Crooked Revival have decided to call it a day but they have left us with a parenting gift. A big guitar heavy grinding gift.

‘Demons’ takes that – if I am forced to use this term, which apparently I am – classic rock format and, in that best Crooked Revival way, fucks with it.So yes, there are soaring melodic verses BUT instead of, well, heavy rock-ish bits that go in between they opt for the frankly disturbing grindingly loud. And it is an utter joy.

Things to love. The vocals that go from soaring sweetness to being on the jagged edge. Thunderous drumming. And, I’m leaving the best until last, the guitars. They go from melodic as you want to grinding out a sound that could leave you hiding behind the nearest sofa. And then there is solo, that in all its ‘short and sweet’ ness just evolves the best of a heavy rock solo.

Yes, I love this. Yep I love heavy rock and Metal but I also love heavy rock and Metal when it’s fucked with. And Crooked Revival do that so bloody well.

So take a few minutes of your day to set down or get ready to go crazy – whichever is your choice – crank up the volume and hit play. This is fucking brilliant parting gift.

EP REVIEW: HerOrangeCoat – ‘Ballads for this Age’

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I have a thing about music that sits in the area of folk influenced music; especially music that takes the folk influence somewhere unexpected. So I have to admit that I am doubly ashamed to be coming to this review of HerOrangeCoat’s EP so very late. My shame is only increased by the fact that she plays a ukulele, an instrument I adore.

And I am going to start this review by saying that while you can hear the folk in her music, it forms only a part of the rich layered sound of her music. This is a sound that varies but always has soul.

Ballad 1 (Sorry) starts with her voice and ukulele and I was immediately drawn into what is an intensely personal song. And as more layers are added the feeling of resigned sadness and hurt continues. The song ‘is not a cry for help, but rather a resolute, resigned defeat. It speaks to the vast mental health emergency, whilst detailing HerOrangeCoat’s own personal journey with anxiety’. As you might be aware I have a personal connection with songs that address mental health in a personal way. And this is one of the best I have heard. It’s haunting, and hugely compelling.

The words are simply incredible, but it is the way she sings them that stays in your head; this is not just singing but a performance that is about emotion and feelings. A song that is so much more than the sum of the words, the music and voice.

Addressing a very real issue Ballad 2 (Skin Off My Back) ‘highlights the lack of safety for women, the song is an intimate imagined account of the very real situation faced by many. These are the fears women and femme people live with daily, the potential situations we are forced to face, the legacy we are obligated to carry from mother to daughter’.

My first thought on listening to this song was that the lyrics sound so much like an actual incident, so highly personal do the words feel. The song also draws on the so-called advice to women from the ‘authorities’ after the Sarah Everard kidnap and murder. The song is both personal and universal; something that makes the message so very strong.

Musically it has something of the theatrical ballad about it; it’s quiet but it’s there. There’s something of Brecht there; it’s quiet but it’s there.

Ballad 3 (Jamaica ’59) is another example of the way she takes the personal universal; being ‘her response to the anti-immigration rhetoric and policy that has dominated the UK news during her adult life, through the lens of her own simultaneous white privilege and proximity to immigration. The song’s repetition of Jamaica ’59 is a reference to the year when her grandmother moved to England to become a nurse’.

While it may be easy to describe this as a lament about the state of the UK, I would describe this as a protest song. Her personal commitment to change is a call to action for the rest of us. And while I have heard many songs addressing this subject none have the impact of this one.

There is another thing about this song; it’s intensely catchy in places, although this is contrasted by the parts that have something I can only describe as ‘a bittersweet sadness’. The whole thing might be described as a sad pop-folk song if one was searching for a glib description. I suggest you don’t. This is a song that makes you think with words that combine the political with the poetic. A song with musical beauty.

Ballad 4 (Second Nature) ‘plays on the absurdism of the societal and political response to the climate crisis, or rather the lack of response. It comes from an acute anger at the inaction of successive governments’.

Look, I can hear the shouts of ‘not another song about the climate crisis’ but before you dismiss it, she is simply giving her opinion in this song. You may disagree but I urge you to actually hear the song and the words before you dismiss it. The lyrics are well argued AND poetic, the music achingly beautiful.

The final song ‘Postscript’ is a ‘note to round this off, marking that, whilst things are difficult, it is much better to be aware of it all, that there can be power in this’. This is sparse with her voice and wonderful swells of voices. Simply exquisite.

Summing this up is hard. Musically it has hints of folk, theatrical ballads and laments of ages past, rich pop and Brecht. It has a certain timelessness being, for me, completely impossible to place in any type of music coming from a particular time. It is mesmirising, Haunting, compelling and gorgeously beautiful. But it is the unexpected connotation of this music with songs about things that are very much of now that surprises and enchants. Another layer of wonderful is added by the thoughtful and personal lyrics. And yet another by her voice, a voice that ‘acts’ the songs rather than just singing.

This EP is beautiful beyond words. And I am telling the truth here, I simply have no words that can adequately describe it beyond that.

EP REVIEW: Ómoia – ‘The Weight of Silence’

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I have to admit that I once didn’t get music that sits sometime in the post-hardcore sound but I have come to love it. It is the shifts between feels and the excitement of that sudden switch to out and out guitar noise that do it for me. To put it simply, extreme light and shade. Why do I mention this? It’s because Ómoia sit in this sound space.

In the first of the two tracks ‘Guillotine’… sorry I’ve just got to step away from the review here to mention that the band describe ‘The Weight of Silence’ as an EP. In the days of my vinyl youth an EP was either a 7’ or 12’ single with more than two tracks. I have in my possession vinyl EPs with three, four and five tracks. A two track single where both tracks were equal ‘leads’ would have been described as a double A-side. Anyway just a passing thought that shows without doubt that those of us who got into music in the vinyl age are just living in confusion when it comes to streaming.

Anyway, back to the review. The two songs explore raw emotions and deeply personal struggles. And to reflect this the sound here, when it gets heavy, is rawer and heavier.

‘Guillotine’ takes the contrast between the melodic and heavy to an extreme. The melodic is a gorgeous as you could want but the heavy is an emotion laden howl that is as disturbing as it’s loud,

But even in the melodic sections there is a disconnect between the sound and the words that knocked me sideways in the opening part of the song. The song ‘grapples with the overwhelming emotional and psychological weight of living with an eating disorder, where the pressure to consume spirals into panic, cravings suffocate, and self-acceptance feels elusive’ and does this with a rawness and honesty that I find almost too much but at the same time find intensely compelling.

There is a feeling of being alone in the melodic parts followed by a feeling of emotional suffocation in the heavy that tells you what the song is about musically, and that is the brilliant thing about this song.

And the playing, completely wonderful. There are subtleties in the sound that draw you in and encourage you to sonically explore.

‘All Monsters Are Human’ sounds, to coin a phrase, heavy and heavier. It roars with guitar, frantic shifts in tempo and breakneck riffs. And the vocal makes equally impossible shifts in sound, speed and tone.

The song ‘is a dark, introspective portrayal of depression and self-perception as monstrous, questioning the possibility of shared pain and the hope for escape from isolating self-loathing’. And this is what it sounds like. If you’ve ever wondered what it feels like to be in a deep depression feels like, this will tell you.

This EP sounds amazing with outstanding playing and a vocal that is intensely compelling. Combine this with the raw and honest personal lyrics and music that tells their story, and you have something that has a raw emotional beauty. Terrifyingly good.

SINGLE REVIEW: Since Torino – ‘portree. 1992’

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I was completely bowled over by the first two releases I reviewed from Since Torino – ‘Snow’ and ‘Everything Else’. Well, I say bowled over but it’s more honest to say I fell deeply in love with them. The same is the case with ‘portree. 1992’; the first trak to be released from the band’s upcoming EP.

Like the first two releases ‘portree. 1992’ can’t be put into any straightforward musical genre; and this in itself is something to be loved, I guess you might say that it has elements of Emo, but then again it equally has elements of Jazz. Somehow it feels close to Radiohead, except it’s not as dense sounding as that comparison might give the impression.

The thing is that me groping around blindly for some sort of musical comparison is not the important thing, the important thing is how it sounds as a whole. And to put this into a phrase would be to say it burns with an emotional intensity that is almost too much to take.

It’s slow, achingly beautifully slow. There’s a growling guitar but it’s way back in the mix. There’s a bittersweet sounding guitar that plays over this. And then there’s inventive sparse as you want drums that weave through this. But there is also a vocal that I can only describe as a drawling whisper that sings words you have to listen to very very closely to hear’ words that even you don’t hear them well to get what the song is about have an intense emotional impact on you. One is aware that something of great significance must have happened in the town of Portree in 1992, and whatever that was is deeply deeply personal. To me it’s a song about loss. And I feel this through the music as much as the vocal.

And yes, if you have to know the song does build to something but it isn’t the guitar fest you might assume. It’s actually a horn, And this, unexpectedly as it may be, is just so right it reaches in and twists your heartstrings. No-one would be upset it you shed a tear ar this point in the song. I’m not afraid to admit I did.

‘portree. 1992’ is achingly beautiful. It sounds incredible. It burns with a fragile emotional intensity that leaves you in bits, but you can’t help but want to hear it again.

The info

The upcoming EP is called ‘a long night down to calgary’, and the band wrote, recorded and produced it over the past year. It’s a six track soft-concept record, and will be released in February 2025.

SINGLE REVIEW: Daisy Dorothy – ‘June’/’Homebound’

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Two years ago I reviewed Daisy Dorothy’s debut EP and I was bowled over. And now we have her second release, I have to say I’m equally as bowled over. I may gush.

‘June’ takes her voice, an acoustic guitar, subtle backing vocals and violin, and weaves it into something musically magical. This sparse music, so much more than the sum of its parts, reflects the theme of the song, the month of June; It’s languid and lazy and sits somewhere in the intersection between Folk and Americana without actually being either of those.

Now I said that the song was about the month of June but it’s entirely possible that the month of June is being used metaphorically to represent something entirely different. And this is the beauty of her lyrics; there’s the possibility of interpreting them in different ways, that there are layers of meaning that compel you to really listen to the words.

The more uptempo ‘Homebound’ has a slightly more Folky feel but there’s that Americana feel in the finger picked guitar and violin. This has a fuller sound; there’s a lushness to the sound. And again the musical feel exactly fits the song; there’s a joy in there, the joy of being in your home, your own space and with someone special.

In both songs, as with her debut EP, I am drawn to her voice and the words she sings. Yet in truth I am equally drawn to the beautiful music. It would be better to say that the whole is utterly compelling. The other thing that makes these songs is the feel; they sound real, recorded live; somehow it adds to the power of the songs.

These two songs are beautiful, it’s as simple as that. The song writing is wonderful, her voice and music is compelling, and the whole is a musical joy.

SINGLE REVIEW: Fox, Red – ‘Every Crack a Canyon’

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First off, some information Fox, Red is an international project featuring members from Germany, the USA and, crucially for the purposes of LSF, Sheffield. The Sheffield based member is Thomas Bower; the Thomas in Thomas and The Empty Orchestra who I last reviewed in 2020. That done, let’s dive in.

The band themselves describe themselves as being ‘international indie sound’; I beg to disagree. Yes, there’s the chiming ‘indie’ guitar and the slow/faster structure but ‘Every Crack a Canyon’ is slowed right down, the frantic tempo of Indie replaced with a building atmospheric feel. Carefully placed, and played, guitars are layered into a visual soundscape that’s all about mood and emotion. Can something this achingly beautiful be described with the word ‘Indie’? I suggest atmospheric guitar rock as an alternative.

Here I need to circle back to something I said about the guitars being ‘carefully placed’. What I meant by this is that the track is made up of layers of different guitar sounds. There is a chiming guitar, a guitar that growls, a guitar that provides this gentle highlight and more; it’s an orchestra of guitar. And as the track builds gorgeous bursts of extra vocals are added. And over this, and part of it, is a voice. A voice that seems at times to be almost speaking the words rather than singing. The voice, like the music, is about dynamics. It’s all about the build, the swell of sound in density and volume. It’s this that reached in and takes a hold of your soul.

‘Every Crack a Canyon’ is an atmospheric and cinematic slow burner of a song that burns with a beauty that hurts. This is my new addiction.

The info

Fox, Red is an international project featuring members from Sheffield (UK), North-
Rhine Westphalia (DE) and Washington State (USA). Formed initially as a folk/alt-country duo, the band expanded its membership as a result of contact through the tattoo, punk and spoken word scenes in the UK and Germany.

Fox, Red carries an enthusiasm for storytelling and dark narratives that has evolved into an atmospheric and theatrical indie sound, reminiscent of bands like The National, Death Cab for Cutie, Interpol and Arcade Fire.

The group released their first single, ‘White Horses’, in September 2024.

The band plans to release an EP and tour across Europe and the UK in 2025.

Fox, Red is:

Thomas Bower (vocals/guitar)
André Deutscher (guitar)
Alina Weber (drums)
Randi Köppl (bass).

EP REVIEW Wolforna – ‘Tales Of The Damned’

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I’m late bringing this to you, for which I apologise, but it’s so good I thought better late than never.

Wolforna do raw heavy rock; heavy on the sound of full impact guitars, soaring vocals and thunderous drums. But, this is the crucial thing, their music is full of nuance; odd sounds that you don’t really expect to hear. It’s that twist that makes it soooo good.

There’s a theme that runs through this EP both in sound and, if I’m not mistaken song; Wolforna have embraced dystopia, unease, the sound of a world falling apart.

OK, so they’re easing us into it with ‘Your Tongue, My Teeth’. The feel here is full-on heavy rock attack. But in the guitar based glorious grind there’s something else – anxiety inducing weird sounds, backing vocals with that ‘edge’.

‘What’s that In Old Money’ is a big song. It’s intricately constructed with many many changes, one moment it’s a huge riff, the nest a ‘quiet section’ with massed vocals and delicate guitar. I have to admit that as an old style back in the day heavy rock fan, this is ticking all the boxes and rocking my world.

A disturbing voicemail introduces ‘Copium’ an off-kilter sinuous song that is distinctly unsettling. Yep, it rocks hard but it’s melodic, and that sweet melodic sound just does sit alongside that off-kilter sound; that’s the key to this, it’s what does it for me.

‘Zombie Knife’ takes their sound somewhere else. It’s the sound of a terrifying night. It crawls, it’s dirty, it slinks, it’s dark as fuck. This is epic, this is huge. It’s cinematic. It’s the sound of a band pushing the envelope of heavy rock as far as it will bloody stretch.

The EP closes with ‘Chains’. A song that I can only describe as a slow heavy rock ballad. Grinding guitars, piano, sweet as fuck vocals all combine into something incredibly powerful. A fitting end to a brilliant EP.

The thing about Wolforna is that while they clearly take their musical cues from old style back in the day heavy rock, their sound takes that and adds to it, stretches it and takes music from then until now into it. And yet it’s still heavy rock.

There’s only one short way to describe this EP; bloody incredible, The longer way is say that this EP is the sound of a band writing and playing jaw droppingly fantastic songs Beyond that I have no words.

SINGLE REVIEW: Silverfish – ‘Serpentine’

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As you will know, if you’ve been keeping up with my reviews. I am not that keen on Indie UNLESS it has that certain something, that special thing. This release from Leeds’ band Silverfish has that certain something.

The song, unless I’m very much mistaken (Entirely possible, to be honest – Ed). is about the whirlwind of an obsessional lustful love. The band explain ‘Serpentine explores the complex dynamics of lust and love in relationships, highlighting how these forces often push and pull against each other. The verses capture the more lustful and playful side of romance, before bursting into choruses enveloped in deep affection and devotion, ultimately arriving at a moment of balance between lust and love’.

The words are fantastic, so well worth a close listen. That’s the first special thing. The second is that the band have injected a sinuous, slinky and twisty feel into the track that is a joy. Not only does this follow the theme of the song but it’s a frankly wonderful musical touch. Yep, it follows that slow and quieter, and then absolute frantic rush that we are all probably familia, but with spot on playing and clever musical touches, it’s something special. All this and you can dance yourself silly to it.

In short, ‘Serpentine’ is a wonderful joyous track. This is bloody fantastic.

The info

Leeds-based indie-rock/pop outfit Silverfish deliver vibrant, punchy energy while creating space for vivid and rich introspection. The four-piece band take inspiration from the likes of Foals, Sticky Fingers, and Radiohead to create distinctive indie-rock music filled with character and variety.

First formed in late 2021, members Tom Gannon (vocals), George Bolger (drums), Oliver Mullan (Lead Guitar) and Ben Norton (Bass, Synth) and all met at the University of Leeds.

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