DOOF! (And Other Satisfying Words.)

Argento, big long sun, BMX Bandits, The Darling Buds, June McDoom,                    Sophie Yau-Weeks, Studio Electrophonique

The quirky, the quiet and the quite loud

Love Songs and Spiritual Recollections : big long sun

Best for : Marching with geeks

Here's a band that might drive you mad with their penchant for the lower case. Their name 'big long sun' and similarly stylised song titles play havoc with the start of a sentence. The lower case may suggest a desire not to be noticed, but it actually draws attention to them.

That's no bad thing when you're dealing with a band who capture woozy melodies and care free harmonies so delightfully. Add wonky guitars that drone like 60s band Traffic, the soaring strings of early Motown and clattering, bang away drums and you have something addictively pop. big long sun are an eight piece band who crowd together around a basic demo with everyone free to add touches as they wish. There's a feeling of spontaneity and improvisation at the heart of these songs, a willingness to try things out for the first time as the song is recorded.

They're definitely a little geeky, The Polyphonic Spree's younger siblings wearing onesies. Their sound is sunny, naive and totally charming, as if it's the product of your first psychedelic experience. They could be the beginnings of a cult community's house choir. Their music is less a form of seduction and more a case that once you are in their company you'll never want to leave. Call it the Stockholm Syndrome in pop.

These songs have the kind of melodies that can drive you mad. In years to come you'll recall them randomly. They'll torment you all day but you won't remember where they came from. This is music that edits out the prologues and introductions, the bridges and the needless soloing to leave you with all that's best in the song. It's as if the New Seekers wandered into the Windmill scene and decided to stay, bringing sweetness and light to the sounds of Black Country, New Road and others.

Towards the end they become a little darker and subdued - on tracks such as 'oh god am i' and ' a remedy'. That's not where you want to find them. Retrace your steps to the sounds of 'such a lovely day', 'heavy (on your mind)' and 'my stars aligning' for the kind of dopamine rush you can only find in the purest pop.

Taster Track : such a lovely day

Misty Mountain : Sophie Yau-Weeks (No relation!)

Best for : Hushed Americana reflections

It's rare and bold for an album to maintain such a strongly consistent tone from first note to last as Sophia Yau - Weeks' 'Misty Mountain'.

Sophie writes small songs set in big worlds with no one to talk to about her all consuming thoughts. They're suited to early mornings as a grey dawn breaks with no promise of sunshine. What lies ahead is a day of chores, with just her own company for comfort. Listeners may be torn between those who embrace its melancholy loneliness and those who feel it drags and drags you down without something more upbeat to break the spell.

And yet there's much beauty in the match and blend of music and lyrics.' Misty Mountain' opens the album with slowly strummed guitar awash with quiet electronica and hushed vocals. It's sparse without sounding harsh, with a melody that grows insistently and makes for a strangely appealing atmosphere. The self-questioning, complaining doubt of 'Nobody's Laughing has a sincerity at its core that is hard to find these days. The duet she has with herself on 'Monster' is attractive and effective. The quiet urgency of 'Fly Away' hints at taking control and a more energised approach.

Music, to be fair, is intended to take second place to lyrics. This is the story of where and who she is now. She sings quietly and you want to listen. You're eavesdropping on conversations she's having with herself. Technically it feels like a one woman show. On that level it's a show to inspire pride in her work. She's at one with a tribe of female, classic, American singer-songwriters that includes the likes of Mary Chapin-Carpenter.

Beauty without excitement. Admiration rather than love. Intimacy without engagement. That's what this album offers. There are many worse qualities.

Taster Track : Nobody's Laughing

Same Sun / Same Sky : The Darling Buds

Best for : Rediscovering your youth with relish

There must be many reasons for recording a new album a mere 34 years after its predecessor. You feel you have something new to say. You want to return to something you loved. You fancy the chance of reflecting on the past to make sense of it and its place in your grown up life. Perhaps each of these was a motivator for The Darling Buds. I suspect though that the main driver was to discover the joyful rush of youth.

Back in the 80s and 90s I can't pretend they were a band I knew. I only knew of them. This is a record that feels as if it has been stored up until it can be contained no more. These are the kids who dared to ride the biggest, scariest roller coasters and loved every minute spent on them. There are times when Andrea Lewis could be in Dubstar vocally, but the band have other ideas. The result is constantly surprising as you're pulled in separate directions and aren't sure which way to turn.

From the beginning, in 'Hey Saint Jude' you're in the presence of an indie spirit that is louder, noisier and more forceful than their surviving peers achieve today. There's something exhilarating and exciting about this that excuses the hidden melodies of the early tracks. They are there, but they're covered in sonic clutter. It's bracing and rewarding to search for them in a song such as 'Intruder'. Remain calm. By the time of 'Leaving The Scene' the many hooks have truly surfaced.

The brass that appears in 'Oh No You Don't' is like the final contributor at the top of a mass playground bundle. It's the essence of boisterous and physical youth. They only truly pause on 'Giddy In A Good Way' and then only so that they can have a reassuring word with their younger selves. 'Pretenders' is the stand out track. It's extrovert. It shouts out in preference to keeping everything close. It's constantly moving, not slumped in a chair in a darkened room. It represents submission to a joyous, headlong rush, tumbling to the brink of chaos. Andrea Lewis is willingly swept away with it.

With this album, The Darling Buds pinpoint their place on the musical spectrum. From a standpoint firmly located in the mid 80s ' early 90s indie scene, you can feel their links to the spirit of punk, particularly Buzzcocks. You can also hear how they influenced the best, most credible parts of Britpop in the sound of Elastica and Echobelly.

The Darling Buds refuse to grow old. 'Same Sun / Same Sky' challenges you to reach out and recover that feeling for yourself.

Taster track : Pretenders

Follow The Light : June McDoom

Best for : Rich, siren enchantments.

It's a phrase I've used before, but I'll make no apologies for that. June McDoom's musical world is strangely beautiful and beautifully strange. It's a world built from her Jamaican heritage, her deep love of the pastoral and her own strikingly different imagination.

Follow her light into a world that feels full of fairy tales and legends. Her music sounds hallucinogenic, the vocals other worldly. It's a jumble of familiar fragments used in unfamiliar ways. It's the kind of music Calypso may have used to keep Odysseus on her island. Closer to home, it's the kind of music you may sense drawing you further into the heart of the forest after you have lost your way. June McDoom is a member of the collective of strange women from the woods who, through a form of madness, change rules for living in the name of seduction. She's a white witch concocting music out of potions only she knows.

It's a sound that can be both enchanting and beguiling, and it's quite possible that beguilement and enchantment is the purpose of this record, not just how it sounds. This is deep dream folk that blends everything into a single rich and luxurious mix. Baroque chamber strings and ghostly atmospheres intertwine. Everywhere you'll find exotic arrangements made from familiar pop fragments but they drift through the songs, they don't drive them. Here you'll find the harp alongside the recorder while pipes waver briefly in the foreground.

Others have created similarly strange worlds before. Rosie Carney converted Radiohead's 'The Bends' into something similar. Austra has always had the ability to create her own musical universe. It's rare though to find something crafted so perfectly and in such detail.

'Follow The Light' is an album requiring much more than one listen to imbibe fully and appreciate. Its rewards are tantalisingly great.

Taster Track : Dream Dub

Studio Electrophonique : Studio Electrophonique

Best for : Sad but melodic bedroom synthpop

There was always someone at school who was effortlessly popular. They were the one that everyone wanted to be close to, the best boy or the golden girl. And then, as we all do, they left. To their dismay they found the real world a lot harder to deal with. Nothing fell into their lap. They made mistakes and faced rejection that they couldn't overcome. They had to rely on hopes rather than expectations and found that they weren't always realised. Into their perfect life a big dollop of sadness fell.

'Studio Electronique' is about them.

Sadness predominates, like the feel a seaside town closed for Winter. There's something of the lost and struggling in the mix. The absence of hope is the strongest presence in these songs. The vocals plead as they clutch for what might be their last shot at happiness. Songs are filled with bad meals, awkward taxi rides and a lack of alternatives. There are desperate, fumbled declarations of love at the heart of songs such as 'The Last One', a fear of loss in 'David and Jayne' and an inability to recognise happiness when it is near in 'Taxi Ride'. By the time you reach 'Him Without Her' you're hearing the sound of the last few grains of sand tumbling through the hourglass as your last hopes disappear.

The album's slow descent into emptiness may not be everyone's cup of tea, but the songs also contain the kind of emotional melodies that bring you to the edge of tears. There's a beauty in their bleakness. James Leesley's vocals are deadened and flat but completely engaging, the kind that make you want to reach out and comfort him.

The real life Studio Electronique was a home studio in Sheffield that launched bands such as The Human League, Heaven 17, Pulp, and ABC. 'Studio Electronique' is about as far from the image of a glossy recording studio as you can get. These are bedsit songs. Naming the album and the act after that emphasises the feeling of having been left behind.

'Studio Electronique' belongs in the indie world of, yes, Sarah Records and the first synthpoppers who tried to capture feeling rather than show off the technology. The monotone approach has a connection with the electronic world of Suicide, although in a smaller, very British way.

It may sound bleak, but really it's emotional and quite moving in its way.

Taster Track : Taxi Ride

Duglas Stewart's Frankenstein : BMX Bandits

Best for : A sweet home-spun set of curios

The original Dr Frankenstein created a monster by collecting body parts and reassembling them as best he could. He was the archetypal mad genius. I wouldn't describe Duglas Stewart as a mad genius but you can hear why he has called this album his Frankenstein.

This is an album where all the rules for making records are broken, and a devil may care attitude to throwing everything and anything into the mix rakes dividends. Why else would a spoken word sample saying "Consider for a moment, your armpit." introduce the otherwise straightforward song 'Hey Little Tomboy'.

What we have here is a musician scavenging his musical treasure box and letting nothing go to waste. Much of this feels like an exposition of the things that make Duglas Stewart happy in life, whether it's a cover of Dylan's ''I'll Be your Baby Tonight', revisiting the 50s with The King and I's 'Hello Young Lovers' or simply playing a few seconds of a toddler's chant in 'Daddy Daddy'. Stewart suggests a man who has had his dreams. They've never quite come true but he keeps trying with a Buster Keaton purity and belief that all will come good whatever the setbacks. There's a vein of sadness running through these songs, but they are always brimful of interest. They have the simplicity of demos that are briskly worked through and not overthought, using music boxes, an accordion and whatever else came to hand.

The album opens with 'Unbreakable Heart'. It's a little different, but sweet too. It has a slowly swaying , arms aloft melody perfectly suited for a Friday night in the village hall rather than closing Glastonbury. There are moments of self reflection and awareness in 'Stupid', the happiness of a doodle that only the creator could really love in 'Tones', the noodly ambience and more darkly psychedelia of 'Into The Moon' and the morris dance folk of 'Do Your Thing'. Taken as a whole, it feels like a less polished version of They Might Be Giants around the time of 'Flood'. You'll be glad that 'The Long Fade' lives up to its name because you'll feel regret at leaving this world behind you

Douglas Stewart's Frankenstein. It may not be the work of a mad genius, but it is one of a kind and a lot of fun.

Taster Track : Unbreakable Heart

Miraggi : Argento

Best for : Anonymously allowing you to drift away

Argento is German electronic musician producer David August and percussionist Lorenzo Setti. Together they've created a musical travelogue inspired by time spent on the Italian coast.

I like the idea of this, summoning up a little piece of Italy you can call your own where you can escape from the city at weekends. 'Tramonto' comes closest to conjuring the intended feeling. It's soothing, calm and sun soaked, capturing the sense of lazily watching big ships sail by.

However, like a package holiday that does not mislead but falls short of expectations, this doesn't deliver. The signs are there from the start. 'Vento Del Sud' is closer to library music than ambient. It's there to fill background space, ignorable if you choose but not rewarding attentive interest. 'Sabbia' is more engaging, with a melody and rhythm that lift the spirits, but the remainder of the album gradually drifts toward screensaver backing for people who don't really want to listen to music but may have it playing while they are out to keep their dog calm.

The album becomes too easily left behind, too easily relegated to the background and too dispensable. It has the impact of an introduction to a song by Air, but not its main body. 'Ritmi Marini' is typical. It feels like the product of work, not a labour of love and inspiration, lacking personality because at its heart it feels programmed.

In the end, this felt like too long spent looking at someone else's holiday photos.

I've not needed to offer an alternative review for some time, but Pitchfork gave it a creditable 7.8 review and here it is Argento: Miraggi Album Review | Pitchfork

(And if it's any consolation, I recently heard 'Epikur' by David August in his solo electronic guise, and it is excellent.)

Taster Track : Sabbia Su Sabbia