All This Time

CD single  Upside Records Ltd/Sony

An interesting artist, Maria Mena and maybe one of Norway’s best. Her father was a drummer and her mother a playwright. Her first album ‘White Turns Blue’ established her in Europe but a later set ‘Apparently Unaffected’ included an international hit in ‘Just Hold Me’. Still only 23 and a keen writer of her own material, Mena is putting out Ash Howes Radio and Original Radio Mixes of ‘All This Time’ in the UK. Will the dark-haired beauty make an impact here ?

This a co-write with Martin Sjolie and starts with a semi-whispered vocal over staccato piano before acoustic guitar and what sounds almost like a mellotron in the back mix. Lyrically Maria is looking inwards and pitches between autobiography and confessional shot though with optimism.  This material will always find its way into female teenage hearts, as Amy Studt and Michelle Branch have proved in the past.

I like the avoidance of the overworked electropop beat that seems to accompany every female vocal single you ever hear at the moment ; this has a more whimsical charm and could almost be from a musical. For this listener, pleasant but not a knockout. I’m sure Mena goes deeper on her forthcoming album ‘Cause & Effect’

Pete Sargeant   www.fairhearing.co.uk

Day In Day Out

CD single diffusion music www.myspace.com/the universaluk

A Liverpool quartet with Mod leanings, The Universal are a proper rock band with roots in the Kinks/The Action era but as influences rather than any kind of template. Life is grim out there for many and the essential purity of expression of electric guitar rock is like a battery, standing outside whims and fashion and best of all a mystery to those who TRY to be ’street’.They don’t really get it and never will. You cannot imagine Simon Cowell or Mr Waterman ever listening to this kind of punchy music for pleasure, as there’s nothing for them to airbrush or sweeten up or mould and milk for profit.

Lead track of the two on this single is ‘Day In Day Out’ is the panned-stereo guitar assault that they look like they are capable of delivering. Vocalist/guitarist Terry Shaugnessy sounds edge-of-angry and the axework has a tinge of The Creation about it. I suspect the drummer is a Ruts fan, that band’s drummer Dave Ruffy is a longtime pal of your scribe and wrote the book on versatile postpunk rock stickwork.

Coupling cut ‘The Time has Come’ has a great stabbing tempo with shades of ‘I Can’t Explain’ chop-chords though the solo has soul-blues drive. If the lyrics are pretty generic for this kind of music, that doesn’t detract from the group’s overall passionate and precise impact. Good to hear an outfit who seem to care more about their sound than how they look and that momentum will give them strength in getting heard amidst the torrent of lame acts that infest the airwaves at present. Their album has arrived here so we’ll try to feature that in the near…

Pete Sargeant www.fairhearing.co.uk

Echo

Blix Street Records www.maiasharp.com
With three writing credits on Bonnie Raitt’s ‘Souls Alike’ album and with this relationship leading to her working with this site’s hallowed friend Don Was, Sharp has proved that she has in her own way as much to give to the biz as her songwriter dad Randy Sharp. Sharp plays keys, guitar and sax besides singing and vocally she has worked not only with Raitt but Art Garfunkel and Buddy Mondlock ( check the ‘Everything Waits To Be Noticed’ album).

But it is likely that her time turning around song origination and same-day release per MyDamnChannel.com really honed Maia’s songwriting chops. Trust Was to pull that kind of thing off.  On this release, Don plays bass and other instruments and on the sticks we find none other than Jim Keltner!!

One good reason to check out this record – Sharp’s beguiling tuneful and versatile voice. Put this in an organic instrumental setting very close in overall feel to the last and excellent Vonda Shepard set ‘ From The Sun’ and listenability is guaranteed. Selected from a few years’ writing, these selections were put together to thread a mood for the album and it works, not least due to Was’ unerring production skills.

Bonnie guests on guitar on opener ‘ Death By Perfection’ ; while ‘Whole Flat World’ rocks its way through a gorgeous melody, fine sax interlude and wahwah touches. Is this pop, rock or jazz ? Does it matter ? Check the strident Petty-style crash into ‘Polite Society’, this is writing with impact, incessantly catchy, all ringing guitars and that fabulous singing. You know when Jackson Browne chooses to rock out ? This is up there with him in this mood and could almost be a Cotton Mather powerpop gem of a song. ‘Unbreakable’ uses a loping tread to tell the tale and may be the best vocal on the record, irresistible chorus underlined with warm keys and yes Don, Bonnie has left her mark on your slide playing!

Sharp confesses that for the first time on her own releases, something of ‘her own truths’ slipped into the songs, in toto. This is pretty brave, so often when this happens and writers get insular the only reaction the hapless listener can have is “ For chrissakes, go and GET A THERAPIST!!” Phil Collins’ endless works of self-pity come to mind. The song ‘The Girl On Her Way’ is a great example of a story that many creatives can empathise with. When that approach is centred on romance, viz. ‘ Real Thing’, something inside you gives a small sigh. Now these aren’t songs to be shouted out in stadiums, one foot on the monitor. It’s intimate music that gets feverish as times, fine mix by Krish Sharma.

Most appealing though has to be Sharp’s notion that perfection is not what she is striving for with this release, maybe that’s why it connects. In summary, this release is as good as any Marc Cohn set or the better Aimee Mann works, it’s that successful. To this listener, anyway

Pete Sargeant    www.fairhearing.co.uk

Animate

www.blacksoulstrangers.com Squeek Records
Intrigued by the winsome but starkly confident single release ‘ The Haunting’, we received this full album release with interest. An Irish four-piece but without U2/The Script influences, BSS don’t seem hellbent on creating an image, though there is a great buzz around them – rather they are delivering a set of songs here.

A stately acoustic start to opener ‘Panic Sets Direction’ gives way to an electric driven pelt with instrumentation in and out as the song progresses. And it’s catchy, with a vague echo of The Undertones but – for me – less mannered singing.

Like The Parlotones, they have a very able drummer in Brendan O’Mahoney so a dynamic edge is ever present enabling main songsmith Barry Gorey a range others might envy for his writing. Film people have picked up on the more atmospheric offerings, always a clue that a band has more than just danceability or a saleable look.

‘Lies’ is a little too close to the Jam on pacing for me but they are going here for that stabbing feel, so far enough. Subtle background vocal work impresses and the bridge rolls nicely with the drums of top of it all. This is probably the best ‘grower’ on the set, it must be said. Fourth cut ‘Leave’ cries out for a female co-lead vocal and its mixture of stridency and tension works a treat, a future single I suggest and even better if strings could be added. Of other tracks ‘Tristia’ is quite alluring, quasi-martial drumming et al and neat production touches. ‘Witchita’ sounds truly like  band that’s already famous with that chattering Cars-speeded-up guitar drilling away and again drumming that holds it all together plus the best bassline on the record. Curiously, closer ‘Harp sounds as though it should be sung by Neil Young !

On this showing a quality act with wide appeal given airplay. Word of mouth will get them there even if radio doesn’t, if they can sound like this in a live setting

Pete Sargeant

www.fairhearing.co.uk

Johannes

www.cocoslovers.co.uk

Smuggler Records

Sporting one of the classiest album covers we’ve seen in a while, this album is a family effort. It’s by a whole group of relatives based around deal in Kent ( England’s South East corner county, foreign readers ) and aiming at being part of the current version of ‘The Folk Scene’, whatever shape that is presently taking. If you’d then expect the songs to be the stars of the disc rather than the ego-trips of the performers, you would be correct.

Starting out playing festivals, the ensemble spent time in Europe exploring different ways of living (it says here) and writing material influenced by that. That’s a hint at living rough sometimes, I would guess. A notion abhorrent to your scribe, ‘roughing it’ being a surefire way to unleash the inner Victor Meldrew. However all this has equipped the group to appear at the upcoming Cambridge Folk Festival so at least they’ll be heard by some open-minded music lovers given that the gathering isn’t for one type of music, rather a melting pot of global performers of all styles and all the better for it.

Folky song titles abound on this set – ‘The Howling Wind’, ‘Oh Rosa’, ‘A Beggar’s Land’, ‘Old Henry The Oak’…

First track ‘Time To Stand’ is a strident number with a great rolling feel that Radio 2 would love and some work has gone into the harmonies ; a Celtic breezy sound lifts ‘The Howling Wind’. The instrumentation takes in guitar, bass, banjo, fiddles but all in support of the vocal performances. They do sound a little earnest at times, but that seems to go with this style of music. One man’s sincere is another man’s po-faced. I like the fact they sound like a committed unit, can change tempo’s and emphasis at the drop of a snare beat and avoid sounding too close to the dog-on-a string ambience of the Levellers. Who could resist the ensemble singing on ‘I Am The Road’ ? Not this reviewer. ‘Dead In The Water’ sounds too like The Watersons’, too solemn by half. This band are best heard on the warm and well-paced ‘Fire On The Moon’, as good as any contemporary folkrock outfit.

Closer ‘Oh My Love’ has a plaintive female lead vocal against gentle insistent guitar and sounds utterly heartbroken, maybe not the greatest way to end a set ! Sprinkles of banjo and unhurried, this definitely weaves a mood in an early Fairport/Eclection way.

This music makes most sense and impact in a live setting, but what a great souvenir this cd would be after attending a show

Pete Sargeant

www.fairhearing.co.uk

Wildblood

www.carmandierecords.com
A solemn orchestral intro gives way to a snappy folkrock approach and ensemble vocal. Earnestly impassioned in its own way, the group’s lively rhythm section  set up a relentless churn, offsetting a stately chorus. There’s a hint of Richard Thompson here, the master of windswept pastoral heartbreak and elemental anguish. Maybe the sepia countryside sleeve art depicting a regal stag against a forest gave the game away, this isn’t city/automated jittery music, it’s the dead opposite and touches on a separate strands of loneliness and dilemmas.

On third cut ‘Right On Time’ an acoustic chug again underpins the song which incorporates buzzy guitar lead lines and a conspiratorial vocal delivery ; semi-martial drums support twinkling and weaving guitar melodies against another plaintive vocal on single ‘Concrete’.

‘Boxing Underwater’ misses yours truly entirely. But on ‘Something Wrong’ the progfolkrock  noble tempo works well and there is no chest-beating as the dynamic arrangement clicks. It’s probably the best-realised cut on the set and essentially elemental folk, from any chosen perspective be it instrumentation, phrasing, whatever.

‘Biplanes At 2AM’ cries out for a female lead vocal, ring Kate Rusby lads ! On ‘Where The Devil Loses out’ the group sound at their most confident, edgy pacing at the core and another wrought tale, with a positive guitar lead overlay. Surely this is a live favourite ? Closer ‘Night Vessels’ has a sad and sombre ambience.

The October Game have an overall Dickensian feel (and he never strayed from human interaction tales, after all) and honed storytelling flavour, the selections are consistently well-played and hauntingly sung though there are precious few smile-inducing moments. The set certainly showcases Luke Williams’ aching voice in great style but they need a ‘Tear-Stained Letter’ or ‘Old John Robertson’ or two to balance up the record’s mood

Pete Sargeant      www.fairhearing.co.uk

Tonight

CD single  www.cookingvinyl.com

Ms Bryden has a new album coming out – ‘What Does It Take?’ on Cooking Vinyl – and of course we are already fans of this lady. She has a great and passionate and moreover versatile voice, is a great chordal guitar player and has a cracking stage presence, plus a crisp-as-lettuce road band. Not much to dislike then !  The last Borderline show we caught was rocking, romantic, funny and all points between. In short, Nell Bryden deserves to be heard by a lot more people. She could flatten most ‘X Factor’ hopefuls and has tons more character than any of them..so there.

Oh we forget, Bryden writes songs that roam from torch to tortured, pleasant to pleading, swinging to heartbroken. This means that no one song is typical or representative. You could say  this of Rodney Crowell or Nikka Costa or even David Bowie ( Dave, please call Carlos Alomar and Earl Slick and get back into the studio ?  ‘Tonight’ is a jaunty, smoky evening-out song which shows off Bryden’s nightclub style and she sounds totally comfortable. The song could have been written any time in the last seventy years, but is none the worse for that. Try keeping your toes still while this is one !

This ms ain’t afraid to go out to Iraq to entertain the troops (twice) so if you go to see one of her UK shows be prepared to surrender.  Beautiful and gimmick-free, Nell Bryden is exactly the kind of act we like to champion
Pete Sargeant      www.fairhearing.co.uk

April Rain

www.site.delain.nl
Sensory – www.lasersedgegroup.com
I think this is out any day on Roadrunner and as a kind of follow up the original Delain project recording ‘Lucidity’, with its stirring compositions ‘The Gathering’ and ‘Frozen’, this new album finds Delain as a band ready for the road and fronted by the totally alluring songstress Charlotte Wessels. The lady seemed awed and humbled by the fantastic reception granted to the the group as they opened their ‘April Rain’ European tour in London at the Relentless Garage. The symphonic metal / rock bands seem to bring out a more civilised and musically knowledgable audience than most ‘metal’ gigs where the collective IQ can be extremely low and it seems de rigeur to block other punters’ view and talk gibberish at top volume to your equally simian and odorous mates. A crisp and impressive set by Achilla with their Paganini-tinged guitar player set the tone for this show.

Yes, Delain do observe the traditions of this strand of music – clear vocal passages, keyboard-driven verses, hard-edged guitar chords of various distortions and thunderous drum clatters plus the viciously-toned solo’s BUT there is quite an element of Tori Amos -tinged melodic ranging and phrasing which lifts Delain away from the absolute stereotype   orchestral metal into something with wider appeal. It ain’t just headbanging and it is striking how many of the band’s arrangements really do frame Charlotte’s vocal performances to maximum advantage.

As the bass player Rob had just left the band we Londoners got to see the first ever live appearance of a man who looked like a tall Viking warrior racing ashore armed with a six-string electric bass – one Otto ‘The Baron’ Schimmelpenninck ! I hope I got that right, you wouldn’t want to annoy this chap. How splendid a player he turned out to be, fitting into the group as well as anyone ever could and complementing Sander’s drumming.

Martijn Westerholt is a keys man well-known in this area of rock ; Ron Landa is a dextrous and always melodic guitarist, much closer in feel to Ernie Isley than the tattooed grimacing oafs who pass for axemen in most metal combo’s.

On this album the songs showcase Wessels’ voice to optimum effect with a 3D mix by Jacob Hansen. The title cut is fabulous, soaring and layered but with skill not dampening feel and dig the double-tracking of the vocal. Every ingredient is clear, would that all records sounded this punchy. The often staccato tempo’s demand a high degree of interplay and dynamic touch.

Guest singer Marco Hietala is easily accommodated into the duet-track ‘Control The Storm’, such is the ability of this group. A splendid guitar solo also jumps into this one.

The weird flanged intro to ‘Virtue And Vice’ seem to float the tune on a sonic cloud, mixing heaven and hell ; whilst ‘Go Away’ is too frantic too often. ‘Start Swimming’ has a lovely acoustic lilt and Charlotte eases up on the vocal to sound quasi-Celtic for this song. My favourite track is probably ‘I’ll Reach You’ with its chordal cadence and melodic thread plus a quite addictive refrain.

If Tarja Turunen’s ‘Winter Storm’ album captured the dark mysticism of winter then Delain can rightly lay claim to distilling the sound of an emerging electric-storm ridden spring

evening

Pete Sargeant     www.fairhearing.co.uk

Walk Away Slow

CD single Mercury Records
Intrigued by the video of Ms Page performing her co-write of the lead song on this three-tracker, we were pleased to find her opening for The Noisettes at London’s Roundhouse venue. Her punchy four-piece slammed this number out among other own material and left us impressed. Still in her early twenties, Tiffany has a crisp chordal guitar style and what might once have been called ‘a sassy voice’. At the show her energy-fuelled guitarist though clearly talented and confident seemed to play too often exactly what Page played but in double-time and needs to be locked in a room with some Cheap Trick albums to get the hang of making two-guitar arrangements work with counterpoints and single-note lines but this didn’t take the shine off the performance of the songs. Page is a rocker as a singer, somewhere between Joan Jett and Joan Osbourne though she may have heard of neither. The sharper the drumming the better these sort of songs sound and her rhythm section at the gig were on the money.

‘Walk Away Slow’ as a song is a close cousin of Lou Reed’s ‘Vicious’, with its steady 1-1V tread and bursting chorus, extremely catchy and probably radio-friendly. But her other numbers at the show sounded just as good, notably ‘Heaven Ain’t Easy’ and ‘Somebody I Used To Know’. On this disc, Page has a co-write with Ted Bruner called ‘Something About Him’ taken at a stately pace again with an expansive chorus and a kind of Tubes-flavoured guitar take on Spector for an arrangement that works a treat  ; plus of all things an atmospheric acoustic version of Muse being the flamboyant ProgRockers’ ‘Supermassive Black Hole’. Fine vocal and plenty of drive so a very listenable attempt.

Can’t see this lass dancing in a monochrome video with a lookalike either side or for that money in an autopsy room with a telephone on her head – but I can see her easily tapping into the market for rockier female singer-songwriters as the sonic progeny of Sheryl Crow or a subtler Chrissie Hynde. The quality is already there. I hope she’s recorded ‘He’s Buggin’ Me’, her Roundhouse opener as it sounded like a future single to me

Pete Sargeant      www.fairhearing.co.uk