Songs For The Dreamers And The Oversleepers

Spring is here. And so are these beauties.

The Apartments, The Field Mice, Foxwarren, James K, The Molotovs, Tyler Ballgame, Vanbur, War Child Records

Pop In The Real World Taster Tracks 2026 (Spotify)

Pop In The Real World Taster Tracks 2026 (YouTube)

For The First Time Again : Tyler Ballgame

Best for : Those who like grand declarations of love and emotion.

Back in the '80s, at university, there was a postgraduate student who blagged his way into the girl's hall of residence to serenade the girl he'd fallen for that week from the corridor outside her bedroom. (It wasn't me!) Romantic or creepy? Fast forward to the 2020s and a Portuguese restaurant where the waiter is serenading my wife as she tries to enjoy her chosen fish dish. Flattering or awkward? In both cases it's a fine line between the two and in both cases it's more about the performer and the performance than the feelings of the recipient of his advances.

It's a fine line that Tyler Ballgame wanders perilously close to at times. He has the voice of an angel with a bad smoking habit - pure but also, on 'For The First Time Again' , attractively cracked. He aims for the big ballads and huge emotions of Roy Orbison and the Walker Brothers, and often achieves them. But he also topples over into The Darkness' over the top performances, or, worse still, the realms of an LA Elvis impersonator.

On 'I Believe In Love' his voice swoops and it soars before coming around again into an world class chorus. It's his answer to his producer's challenge to write the biggest song in the world and he makes a fair stab at it. In the operatic pop of 'Sing How I Feel' it works, but on 'Goodbye My Love' he wails like a lovelorn student, suffering as no one has ever suffered before. Elsewhere he offers a guilty pleasure fire sale with songs destined to feature at weddings and funerals for years to come.

He can be more restrained. On 'Ooh' and 'Waiting So Long' the restraint shows the quality of his songwriting, leaving the concert hall to sing for the people on the street. Otherwise I fear that over its running time this becomes an exercise in style over substance.

I didn't resent the time spent in the company of this album. More than most, it's a question of personal taste. If it works for you, that's great. You'll love it. Some other reviewers are in that camp, so for balance here's a review that appeared in Mojo.

For The First Time Again Mojo Review

Taster Track : I Believe In Love

Wasted On Youth : The Molotovs

Best for : Gaining a day pass back to the glory days of punk and Britpop

It's 50 years since punk and 30 years since Britpop. Listen to The Molotovs and you'll feel they've never been away. This sounds as if they were rummaging through an old chest, found the template for three cord rock, thought "this looks fun" and gave it a go.

Fortunately they deliver their version of Britpop punk very well. The Molotovs are a trio, formed of siblings Mathew and Issey Cartlidge on guitar and bass respectively and drummer Will Fooks also known as Ice. They look as stylish as Menswear, but they sound as stylish as The Jam. They're as loud as Oasis, but as youthful and effervescent as Ash. It may not be new, but it provides an adrenaline rush that is a lot of fun.

There's an innocence here filtered through the frustration of impending young adulthood. Their attempts to assert outrageous behaviour - the use of the 'C' word in the quieter 'Nothing Keeps Her Away' - are endearing more than shocking, all part of the carefully presented image. Image is important, but the substance is there to back it up too.

This is an album to ignite the fuse of those too young to be part of the 70s and 90s, while raising a smile of recognition and good memories for everyone else. There are encouraging signs of a new guitar led cohort on the way, with The Molotovs in the vanguard alongside bands like The Cords and The Clause. All three are good, The Molotovs are the most immediate and pogo friendly.

Wasted On Youth is a joy from first note to last. This is what youthful rock and roll should sound like - energetic, loud, melodic and memorable. 'Get A Life' is the Jam returned to the forefront of our memories. 'Daydreaming' is the song that Oasis never got around to recording. 'More, More More', 'Nothing Keeps Her Away', 'Geraldine', Newsflash' and the perky 'Rhythm of Yourself' - the highlights just keep coming!

The Molotovs - welcome to our latest three minute heroes.

Taster Track : Rhythm Of Yourself

2: Foxwarren

Best for : Curious nibblers

This is a bit different. The five members of Foxwarren worked up these songs alone at home before meeting to shape the direction of each song. What they've produced is a highly entertaining blend that's both art and a mess. It's collaborative working as an extreme sport. Nothing here should work. All of it does.

It's easy to describe this as the stuff of dreams. It has the same vivid implausibility and non sequiturs that dwell there. It's also the sounds that they've carried in their heads, released in a stream of consciousness. Here, you'll find an inventive hotch potch of samples, fragments, melodies and loops overlaid on what once might have been intended as classic singer songwriter tunes. This is pop that Avalanches made on their debut, with the style and attitude of Big Audio Dynamite.

Every song is characterised by momentary but abrupt changes of direction. It's overflowing with ideas with nothing left out or going to waste. There are times when you hear something and think "That would make a good song" rather than "That is a good song". The effect is to encourage you to delve deeper though, rather than wheel away in frustration.

This is a warm sounding record and not just because of the seagull beach sounds of 'Yvonne'. It takes you on a trip from the opening song. 'Dance' takes you through a number of different styles over its 2'37 running time. 'Sleeping' takes you back as it blends hip hop beats with an orchestral setting. ''Say It' is the sound of the ballroom entering the cocktail lounge, mixing swaying dance rhythms with lounge keyboards. The bassline of 'Wings' brings a soft rock focus to the twinkling lounge performance. 'Deadheads' is simply the sound of pure pop before its soul is broken by the preferences of corporate producers and money men.

Try it. You might be enchanted and enthralled by what you find.

Taster Tracks : Say It

This Is What The Music's For : The Apartments

Best for : Triggering sad emotions and painful memories

If the album title was the answer, what was the question? In the case of The Apartments, the music seems to be for setting out the sadness in his experiences and attempting to spark defiance and resistance. It's used as a kind of therapy, a calm response to an emotional collapse as you survey the wreckage before attempting to rebuild a life.

That doesn't sound like a bundle of laughs, and it's not. There is a biting wit to song titles such as 'Death Would Be My Best Career Move' but that's as far as it goes. These are songs about denial, and attempting to resurrect something long dead. They're the kind of songs to attract the sophisticated core of an arts scene who listen with eyes dimmed by moist memories. Peter Milton Walsh was once regarded as the sad boy of sad core, and that's not unfair.

So what will stop you leaving The Apartments to wallow in their misery, their losses and their sadness? Simply this. Everything here is a gorgeous example of how to construct a song so that it has depth and impact. 'It's A Casino' sets the bar. It's serious and intense, night time music that deals with deep feelings for both the experiences and the music they lead to. He has a poet's eye for detail - the chiffon scarf in 'Afternoons,' for example - and he assembles those details into moving lyrics. In the same song he reveals, in the "ba ba bas" that at the heart of all the sadness lies a pop sensibility. His voice invites you to listen as it draws you in. The brass is perfectly pitched, adding melancholy to 'It's A Casino Life' and the sense of triumphant, new possibilities as defiance builds to a crescendo 'You Know, We're Not Supposed To Feel This Way'.

Walsh was once, and for a short time only, a member of The Go Betweens. In terms of mood that fits. His songs are a mix of Burt Bacharach and Leonard Cohen with the faintest flicker of Dean Wareham added for spice.

This is a beautiful, emotional and grown up record. Its rich and textured songs will have you marvelling at their quality.

Taster Track : Another Sun Gone Down

Friend - James K

Best for : Unknowable, gorgeous music

It's rare to find an album that is so determined to remain unknowable. James K is clear that she has been presenting a version of herself since she was born. Like Moby, Bowie, Beck and others, that may be because she doesn't want to be defined by any one album. Or perhaps she wants the freedom to be someone completely different in future.

For now, in this version of herself, and on this album, she's proved herself to be a leader in the field of chilled, electronic ambient dance. Technically and atmospherically it's a big achievement, almost too big. The album is over an hour long. It feels like music that has been all around us always but not in the form it's presented here. There are echoes and shadows of something familiar, but it's hard to tell what it is. At some points it feels like a visitor from 'come down' rooms at the turn of the millennium. At other points it feels as if it's heard through deep sleep. It's disquieting and reassuring at the same time. I don't want to analyse or understand it, I just want it to be there.

'Days Go By' sets the template for most of this album. It's drifting music, the kind of music that Dido might have made if she was less concerned with casting herself as Everywoman. That tone remains pretty constant. Four tracks in and the glitchy 'Idea.2' suggests something different might be coming but it soon settles down. Tracks such as 'N' Balmed' and 'Rider' can feel smothering, but they're gorgeous, a weight pressing down on you to squeeze out stress. 'Oh God' is livelier, although it takes a while to realise it. 'Play' feels like a stretch into a more energetic world, the one track you could describe as dancefloor ready.

I've seen her compared to Liz Fraser vocally. I'm not sure that I get that in my version of what I'm hearing, but I do hear a similarity to the Cocteau Twins in the way that she creates her own, all consuming sonic universe. The closest comparison to her vocally is Enya, around the time of her break out album 'Watermark'. Perhaps that's in the use of misty effects. In the closing track 'Collapse (Falling Forward Blissfully All The Time)' there's also a feel of Durutti Column in play - another distinctive artist.

In this album she invites you to listen to her performance in this current role. It's a starring role, and it's well worth coming to the show.

Taster Track : Days Go By

Of Becoming : Vanbur

Best for : Exploring where Radio 3 meets Radio 6

If, like me, you've spent far too long in hot, traffic jammed cars with the radio stuck to Alexander Armstrong on Classic FM you'll have a less than positive view of classical music. Vanbur may help to change your mind, or at least feel more tolerant.

The trouble with Classic FM is that it plays it so safe. Radio 3 seems to take more risks and, in many ways, it's the most accepting and flexible of the BBC's radio stations, finding room for the likes of Olafur Arnalds, Nils Frahm, Hans Zimmer and more in its schedules. Admittedly Vanbur tread close to the border between the two at times. At its weakest it seems tied to mystic Celtic territory, but when it's good, which is often, it's the moment when you hold your breath so as not to break the feeling of imminent pleasure.

'Aevum' is spinetinglingly gorgeous. It's the feeling you find on entering a cathedral, empty except for an unseen but softly heard choir, the acoustics allowing the music to wrap itself around you without revealing its source. 'My Own' is classical music for the wary and uninitiated. Its gentle, ambient sounds are something to treasure. 'Strange Kind Of Creature' dispels any thoughts that you're in for a mushy listening experience. 'Friends of Mine' is an unexpectedly dream soaked song, the vocals coming as a pleasant surprise. 'My Dove, To Sleep' is a sweet composition, successfully placing the lull into lullaby.

This is an album that is only occasionally minimalist, as in the beginning of 'Apricity'. For the most part it's orchestral and cinematic, full of swelling emotions to play over the closing credits of a romantic, blockbuster movie. It's also an album that draws you into a world that contains new classical music that offers something to ambient and classical lovers alike without frightening the curious.

Taster Track : My Own

Help 2 : Various (War Child Records)

Best for : Hearing what a beautifully curated album sounds like.

I've avoided reviewing compilations before. Compilations generally were for the 'Now' Generation, not for serious music listeners.

There are exceptions. Rough Trade used to issue an annual review of the year that allowed you to dive into music you may never have tried. Saint Etienne's Bob Stanley and Pete Wigg have curated a whole series of compilations exploring the most niche corners of pop through the ages, as has Jon Savage . And the first Help album for Warchild set a template 30 years ago for how a compilation could be. It's just a shame that it never took off as a thing! Until now

Forget, for a moment, the laudable charitable aims of Warchild, the selfless efforts of all who brought this album into being and the generosity of everyone in the chain to waive their revenue from the project. In this review I want to consider Help 2 only as a musical project. Believe me when I tell you that it surpasses any expectations you may have had for a compilation to be a creative venture in its own right.

This is a record that's driven by belief, particularly the belief that it could be made at all. That's embodied in the spirit of James Ford who mixed the album from his hospital bed while undergoing aggressive treatment for acute leukemia.

It's also a record that puts reputations on the line. No one's doing this for the money. There are no throwaway tunes amongst the 23 tracks on the album. All the choices here are ones that the acts feel will add to the project. And there are some surprises in store. Ezra Collective, the first jazz band to win the Mercury Music Prize in 2023, offer a dub reggae track. Wet Leg's woozy acoustic strum in 'Obvious' couldn't be further from 'Chaise Longue'. Olivia Rodrigo's cover of 'The Book Of Love' is stunning. It's heartfelt and sincere, builds into something quietly euphoric before fading away.

As with 'Help 1', there's interest  in the contributions that cover other songs. You can learn something of the quality of the record from the original artists chosen for this. Try The Magnetic Fields, Nick Drake, Elliot Smith, Jeff Buckley, Velvet Underground, PJ Harvey and Buffy St Marie. Their ghosts help to tie the record together. Depeche Mode make 'Universal Soldier' their own. Beabadoobee turns 'Say Yes' into something more haunting than the original.

It's a test of an artist's quality that if you asked them to play something you haven't heard before, they could deliver the goods. Black Country New Road, not my favourite band, come up with a new song 'Strangers' that may be the best thing they've done. The Last Dinner Party confirm their status as one of the UK's most exciting, swashbuckling bands. Damon Albarn's collaboration with Grian Chatten and Kae Tempest, 'Flags' is brilliant, effectively three poetic songs in one, all of them great. Cameron Winter, of Geese, wins the award for trying something genuinely alternative and even experimental with the stirring anger of 'Warning'. It's an outlier, even in an album filled with brave and risky choices.

I've only scratched the surface with that run through the tracks here. I could have highlighted a completely different set of songs and it would have been just as good a guide to the album.

'Help 1' promised cultural change that never quite materialised. 'Help 2' promises the same. Hopefully, this time, it can be realised.

Taster Track : Flags (Damon Albarn, Grian Chatten and Kae Tempest)

EPs and Other Songs

At first I felt a little cheated by The Field Mice's 'Coffee'. Seeing it as a new release unleashed joyous and excited feelings of anticipation but, wait a minute, they don't sound like they used to. Get over that though, and this strikes as a very decent song. It haunts with a dark melody and a feeling of intense but suppressed longing and passion. This is the Field Mice turned towards a soulful RnB and Massive Attack feel, and scores an impressive 8/10 on its own merits.