A Smile To Break A Young Man's Heart

Time to remember the joys of youth, manage the stresses of middle age and accept the importance of remaining true to yourself. These records will help:

Bangs & Talbot, Danny George Wilson, Mitski, The Rallies, Taz Modi

Pop In The Real World Taster Tracks 2026 (Spotify)

Pop In The Real World Taster Tracks 2026 (YouTube)

No Better Time : The Rallies

Best for : Waking up summer and kickstarting your future

This is the time of year when schools are setting free their 16 and 18 year olds to take 'study' leave for their school exams. In the next couple of months they'll have the results and the future is theirs.

They won't know it yet, but 'No Better Time' is the soundtrack for this part of their lives. They won't know it because it's not until you're looking back from middle age that you remember the thrill of standing on the edge of unknown opportunities and the unwavering optimism of that time in your life.

That's all captured in the sound of The Rallies. They wrapTom Petty-esque harmonies up in clothes of jangling American power pop. It calls up the feel of the 60s without sounding dated. It's the same trick used by the Cosmic Rough Riders and Camera Obscura on their last album.

It's not just a nostalgia fest though. I'm just back from a few days' holiday. Yesterday was a long day waiting at the airport, flying in cramped economy class, crawling though the M11 and M25 rush hours before arriving home stale and weary. This album is exactly what I need this morning to release the benefits of the holiday and get my head back in the right space for whatever is coming my way.

The opening track 'This Time' showcases their warm vocals and harmonies, chiming guitars, hook laden bass lines and propulsive drumming to perfection. It's not the last time you'll hear them. 'I Believe' is a positive blast of aural sunshine. 'Love' is just one song that builds to a great crescendo, leaving you on a high and knowing that at this moment anything is possible.

These are songs that may sound familiar but are welcome and very well done. Their secret is that they don't play like four individuals who have just met, but as a band that instinctively supportss and covers each other, reinforcing strengths and bringing out the best in each other.

Put simply, this is a very good, pure pop album.

Taster Track : This Time

Smokin' Aces : Bangs & Talbot

Best for : Lovers of sunny music setting a good time vibe

Chris Bangs is the coiner of the term acid jazz, a DJ, producer, record company owner and much more. Mick Talbot began his musical life with the mod revivalists Merton Parkas before co-founding the Style Council with Paul Weller. Before you've even heard a note of this album you know you will be in for an uplifting and happy forty minutes or so. It's the feel of summery good vibes, the soundtrack to Mod Heaven.

It lies adjacent to lounge jazz, but you're more likely to be won over by its funk and Northern Soul appeal. It's full of music that is as cool as the condensation dripping down a glass of your favourite lager. It contains its own unique energy, toe tapping throughout and made for dancing or at least sashaying into parties. This is the sound of youth, even if it's a youth remembered through the misty, rose tinted spectacles of your 60s and 70s. It may not change your life but it will make your day and night a lot better.

Everything on this album fits together effortlessly. There are times when it seems to have no beginning or end, delivering the meat of a tune without an introduction or fade out. It's difficult to imagine it written down. It seems to come straight from the heart and soul, through the fingers to the instruments.

It also sounds as if it's brought together by an army of contributors as the result of many hours jamming and improvising together in a Ronnie Scott's type basement where daylight cannot penetrate the smoke filled rooms. It comes as a surprise then to see that the song credits on Spotify reveal Mick Talbot as the sole performer on most, if not all, the tracks. He plays keyboards so that makes everything else a production tour de force. Lovers of jazz, funk and Northern Soul are nothing without an encyclopedic knowledge of the origin of every note and inflexion of the rarest records, and they'll appreciate the influences of every note here.

Highlights come thick and fast. When you listen to 'K-Jee' you'll be transported to the musty, dark atmosphere of your favourite cinema as you listen to the Pearl and Dean theme. 'Keep Love Moving On' adds soulful vocals to the mix, as does the bouncy and catchy 'Soul Sauce'. 'The Last Minute' propels the album to a satisfying conclusion.

Throw off the shackles of your day life and drink deep at the fount of Bangs and Talbot. It will refresh and revitalise you.

Taster Track : Soul Sauce

Involuntary Memories : Taz Modi

Best for : Lovers of beautiful, tranquil music

Taz Modi has crossed these blog pages before as a founding member of Portico Quartet. He refuses to be confined by genre, and you'll find here a melange of different influences. In the venn diagram of music he operates at the point where pop, classical, electronic and jazz intersect to make something ambient.

There's one big difference though from Portico quartet. Where they tend to experiment with ideas, he keeps it simple and beautiful. Melody rules these tracks. They're written for the head, not because they require lots of brain matter to understand them, but because he knows that, occasionally, the head needs some respite its busy thoughts. This is music to reboot to. It's contemplative and reflective, perhaps even meditative if that's what helps you..

With headphones, Modi's music is a truly immersive experience. It's as if you're listening to it in an echo chamber with the sound of the music, and only the sound of the music filling your hearing. It's the aural equivalent of being in the biggest, best IMAX cinema with the screen filling every Planck Length of your vision. (As everyone doubtless knows, if an atom were the size of Planet Earth, a Planck Length would be the size of a single tree. Thanks Google.)

The piano on 'Involuntary Memories Pt 1' builds slowly and gorgeously to pull the plug on stress before transitioning seamlessly and perfectly into 'Involuntary Memories Pt-2'. 'Empty Floor' and 'The Best Way To Erase The Click' highlight the influences of David Boulter and Olafur Arnalds at his most accessible. 'Reminiscence Bump' captures that feeling of satisfaction and the stirring of action when an insight regarding a troubling problem suddenly drops into place. And, 'When I Was Your Age' demonstrates that even music for the head can make an emotional connection with your heart.

This is music as the antidote to the business of modern life and its threat of overload.

Taster Track : Reminiscence Bump

Nothing's About To Happen To Me : Mitski

Best for : Understanding one person's view of the modern condition in songs that reward repeated listening.

Mitski lives in a quiet world but her head is filled with noisy, overwhelming emotions that spill out in frustrated rage at unexpected moments. Pity the sleek, aristocratic cat who is the object of her outburst in 'That White Cat'. It's a moment that, in real life, leads to unsettling silences as you consider if it's quite normal behaviour or the hint of something threatening that could come your way.

Her music is a study in the collision of opposites. The outwardly gentle grapples with the emotional screamer. The soft bumps up against the harsh and the calm sits side by side with the disturbed. This is music that gives you a jolt as it draws you into her internal life painting a compelling picture.

She finds the unusual in the commonplace. You may not see immediately that the white cat on the cover has one blue and one brown eye. That's the kind of detail Mitski notices straight away. Things are different from how they first seem and that's what makes them both disconcerting and interesting.

As she builds her musical universe Mitski knows exactly the sounds that she wants to achieve. Take the quiet but relentless riff that carries 'If I Leave' until it explodes. The simple melody of 'Cats' is made strange by its stretched and twisted musical lines. 'I'll Change For You' and 'Rules' are chamber performances. The sounds of a city that build to an almost painful cacophony in 'In A Lake' serves as shorthand for the album as a whole.

'Nothing's About To Happen To Me' is a 'state of the individual' address and you'll want to return it to pick up its details and nuances again and again. In exploring the mental turmoil of someone on the edge, she's a close neighbour to Father John Misty.

Mitski makes complex and challenging music that is satisfying and rewarding. It's worth taking the time to get to know her properly.

Taster Track : In A Lake

Arcade : Danny George Wilson

Best for : Celebrating individuality in pop

Many people remember Danny Wilson's 'Mary's Prayer', a number three hit from 1987. That's not Danny George Wilson. He's the man who founded the folk rock band Danny and the Champions of the World twenty years later. It's hard to believe that people haven't confused the two, as I did. It may also account for the admirable commitment and dedication he shows in his music to being his own man, unshaped by public expectations.

Many things have changed in the pop world in the last twenty years and it's a sad fact that the Top 40 doesn't encourage diversity as it once did. Through no fault of his own, the chances of Danny George Wilson achieving significant chart success are minimal. The silver lining is that it makes for a certain kind of artistic freedom that allows him to remain true to who he is.

Wilson exploits this freedom fully. The heavy chamber strings on opening track 'Strange Weather' are unexpected and startling and they demand your attention both to the song and what follows. In 'Before September' the violins squeal and almost screech , wrenching out the emotion in the song.

His voice may tread close to being one that only a mother or wife could love at times but that's a sign of character and personality. He sounds old, cracked and experienced, another sign that he's not bothered by the need to fit in. Willy Nelson, the older Paul McCartney and the vocal achievements of Keith Richards are cut from the same cloth.

The vocals give a melancholy feel to the songs, rendering them misty and heartfelt and if they're bitter-sweet, the balance is firmly towards lemon juice rather than saccharine.

He relaxes a little towards the end and that prevents the album becoming too intense and introspective. 'Grain of Sand' has a more upbeat feel. He sounds as if he is finally singing out to us rather than into himself. The tinkly and noodly lounge sweetness of 'I'm Lost' sounds throwaway in context but is nevertheless an enjoyable way to close the album

Danny George Wilson has made an album that is unmistakably his own. That's a highly commendable achievement.

Taster Track : Strange Weather