My first encounter with The Beer Snobs was reviewing their last single release – ‘I’m A Terrible Liar’ – and a fine song it is too. A whole album’s worth of their music seemed to me to be a fine, fine thing. Let’s dive in, friends.

Opening song ‘Dusk Til Dawn’ does not disappoint. It has a tune that is earwormy to the extreme. How I have to address something tricky here; this is what it sounds like. Well firstly the song features whistling, one of The Beer Snobs musical trademarks. It sounds broadly like folky punk pathetique with something of Otway & Barrett thrown in for good music – strummed guitar, a fab bassline and sparse drums. This is until the chorus where it suddenly blooms into 60s’ pop. So musically this is a winner but there’s more. The thing about the band is the lyrics; the words tell a story, so listen closely.

‘Town Street Special’ is a change in mood musically. It veers towards something I’m calling lo-fi diy in a kind of upbeat 60s’ pop way. With, by the way, a great lead vocal. This is until, in a seemingly random, but brilliant way, it revs up at the end into a raucous almost Lynyrd Skynyrd guitar freakout. What doesn’t change is that this is a song about something, the words tell a story.

Look I’m almost at the limit of defining the sound of these songs, but I’ll try. ‘Just Can’t Put My Finger On It’ sounds strangely like a cross between early REM, The Buzzcocks and the Beatles. But this isn’t the point, the point is that it’s a blast of a song. Great words tumble over you, bringing a smile to your face.

The sound of ‘Pet Shop Cunt’ brings to mind something post-punk – it’s dark, you get me. And yes, the band’s take on that post-punk is diy but it’s genuinely absolutely fucking brilliant.

Next up is ‘I’m A Terrible Liar’ so go here to review my review. Mind you come back, hit the back button once you’ve read it, OK.

‘Tied Down’ is kinda Americana in some ways but it’s played at Buzzcocks’s speed. Like some of their other songs it seems to be about the life of the ordinary person. ‘The Duchess’ returns to that amped up diy 60s’ sound. It actually seems to be a song a song about the Duchess of York. I’ll leave that here.

Bloody hell, the band shifts into The Animals’ R’n’B for ‘Girl With The Flaxen Hair’. It seems to be a straight take on the story of a girl who leaves, gets married, and the narrator wishes she remembers him. It features the trademark whistle. It also features a groove and a bassline that positively insists you get up, get down and shake your body into a frugging frenzy.

‘Something’s Got A Hold On…’ is a rattling pop song. But without really knowing what it’s about I suddenly find myself emotionally moved. It has this heartfelt thing going on. I don’t know, my heart gets the song, but my head doesn’t.

And all too soon we get to the closing track ‘Atomic’. Now this, I kinda expected it to be a protest song but it isn’t. It’s a song about chemistry and why you should have listened during chemistry at school. The reason being Pointless. Look, I kid you not. It’s brilliant, funny, weirdly singalong, and has a spoken word outro that literally made me spit out what was a very good mouthful of tea. A joy.

This album has it all. Musically and lyrically. Yes, The Beer Snobs do their own thing but they do so bloody brilliantly. They kinda have that archness of The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band ‘doing’ various styles of music but like them their songs are sometimes humorous, sometimes about the lives of the average person in the street, and sometimes their songs seem to be about one thing and then something else. And then again sometimes they are a pure, simple and raw blast.

The thing that comes through as you listen to this album – and this won’t be once, this is addictive – is the joy of the music, the obviously wonderful words. And it’s these which make it so good. Actually it’s beyond good, it’s fucking wonderful. So make this part of your life right now.

The info

The Beer Snobs are:

Tom Priestley on Drums and Harmonica
Michael Dailey on Guitar and Vocals
David Sowden on Bass and Backing Vocals

This song is released on Valentine’s Day but this is no song about the joys of love and coupledom; it is instead a song for the broken-hearted and the currently uncoupled, so to speak. It is an anti-Valentine’s Day song, to coin a phrase. If you’re wondering about the title, it’s likening the ability to have good relationships to the ability to write love songs. It’s obvious now you know, isn’t it.

Maeve (vocals) explains ‘To say I’ve been unlucky in love is probably putting it nicely… I used to give all of my time and energy to a series of relationships, but I got nothing in return. At the time I was honestly perplexed as to where I kept going wrong… in retrospect, it was more a matter of putting my time into the wrong people… but that’s a song in itself’. And that is the story the song tells right there

While the song may be about something, let’s say not too good, the song itself is the sweetest pop song – bedroom-pop vocals, the smoothest tune, a great slow groove. It’s classy and catchy. And the sound is so so good; it’s rich but not too dense. You can hear that they could have loaded layers of sounds onto this; but they haven’t, it’s just right.

Lucky Iris do great pop, every release is a joy. But ‘(i’m not good at writing) love songs’ is something else – a step up, an extra level of fabulousness. It’s pop with class, style and emotional depth. It’s beautiful, wonderful, perfect pop.

Luna Pine’s releases always give me a bump of joy, a thrill of excitement. What they do is to make songs that layer music, voice and words to tell a story, to describe a feeling. And yes they have a ‘sound’ but their songs sound different; it’s a case of form follows function if you get my drift.

Their songs are always based on something personal. I’ll leave Lotte to tell us about this one.

‘This is a song about not feeling good enough for the people in your life and feeling isolated from the people that you love. It was written with my friends Kieran and Ryan after I was diagnosed with an extremely bad anxiety disorder that confined me to my house for months a couple of years ago, and then not long after my friend and longtime musical collaborator who wrote a lot of Luna Pines material with me took his own life. It ended up almost feeling like a conversation with him when I was recording it, with the call and response between the female and male vocal on the track amplifying that’

There is something intimate about this song; you feel drawn into the song, you share your space with the song. Everything is low key, there’s nothing that jolts you away from your connection with the song. And yes, in line with their ‘sound’ it’s a dense sound – the vocals are kind of submerged; But at its heart it’s a song with a great tune. This is more obvious at the start but it’s there as a constant reminder. It has, and this may just be me, the feel of a great 70s’ soul ballad. I know, strange for a sound that is so ‘of now’ electronic alt-pop, but it’s there deep in the mix.

I could use words like clever and technically impressive to describe the song but that’s missing the point. This is an intimate and emotional song. It sounds gorgeous and is about something deeply personal. And it is beautiful

I adore big emotional ballads; and the sadder or more tortured they are the more I love them. To put it simply ‘They Weep’ is this in spades. I think you’re probably asking why at this point. I shall address that.

Firstly we have a song that Rague explains is about ‘A man embracing the expectations that have been put upon him his whole life. He sits with his son and passes onto him the beacon he has always carried’. And the words that convey this are heartbreakingly wonderful. The key here is that they are written from Rague’s heart. These are words to be listened to; and if you do properly I defy anyone to not feel them deep inside, and indeed, have tears in their eyes.

Then we have a vocal performance – and it is a performance – that is pure emotion. If you’re looking for something to compare it to, let’s say Bowie at his most tortured, a hint of Billy Mackenzie of The Associates, Thom Yorke, and Anohni. You understand that I’m not saying that Rague sounds like them; it’s the style, the way the song is delivered, I’m evoking here. And I make no apology for reaching back here; it’s just herring that voice takes me back to hearing those people.

And that emotionally drenched vocal is performed over a musical backing that at its heart is a piano ballad. Yes, there are clever, subtle and sparse sounds added to this; at least until, as all great ballads do, the sound swells. The sound evokes both the great ballads of way back when, and electronica of the 80s. There is, if you forced me to say it, something of Ultravox about it.

So we have a song that has words that are pure emotion, performed in a heart wrenching way, with music that adds to the emotional power of the song and is beautiful in its own right. The combination of those is a song that will rip into your soul, that has a beautiful sadness, that comes from the heart. This is one of the best debut singles I’ve heard in ages.

The info

Rague is a musician from Sheffield/Leeds.

‘They Weep’ is the first single to be released from Rague’s forthcoming EP, which is entitled ‘My Superstition’.

‘My Superstition’ is a collection of four songs that tell four stories of lives that have been moulded by superstition and a fear of the unknown – of people who are at the mercy of their desires, and would love others to be at the mercy of theirs.

Rague says ‘At its core, ‘They Weep’ is a piano ballad, with metallic brooding sounds that unravel and unfurl alongside intimate vocals. It was inspired by the poeticism and vocals of Benjamin Clementine, Thom Yorke and Aldous Harding, and the production of Bjork, Forest Swords, FKA twigs and Arca’.