Taking Selfies, Not Pictures Of You

 It seems football's not coming home  after all. While it's delayed in the departure lounge, try these five albums to lessen the pain.

The Night Album : Digitonal

Best for : Lovers of music that helps you to reboot

Remember when being told to take time out as a child was akin to a punishment? At some point we realise that we need an antidote to excessive tiredness and over stimulation. Digitonal got there before us, and has prepared the ideal music to help it happen.

Electronica, jazz and ambient have been close neighbours for years but, somehow, they're still in the place where the majority of its artists are nowhere near becoming household names. (Perhaps it's because they also have names like 'Digitonal' which sound more like corporate development start ups than musicians!) They go about their business under the radar, often turning to soundtrack work where their invisibility is their greatest asset. It's time for that to change.

Digitonal makes music that is quietly beautiful and calming. At a time when England are daring to dream that football is finally coming home before being bullied off track and Arthur Fery was suggesting that he could be the new Roger Federer but had to settle for being the newTim Henman, we're all a little too hot and over excited. Turn off the TV and turn on this record.

This is music filled with a sense of wonder and meandering shapes. You'll take that from 'dotdotdot', 'For The Birds' and others. The walking jazz bass of 'The Winter Journal' brings something cheerful to what can sometimes seem the dreariest of seasons. 'Exit City' has the feel of an Air album track, which is where their best music can be found. 'Evening Song' is typical of music that is for the edges of the day - first light and the tranquility of a Summer dusk. There's a rhythm to these pieces that feels like the rhythm of your body when you're happy, confident and in control. It's a surprise to realise that it's not driven by beats. When the percussion makes an entrance to 'sparrowhawk' it comes as a jolt.

Above all, this is music for stilling your mind and allowing time for reflection. It's not meditation or mindfulness or therapy. It's a friendly reminder of the need to take time out. Now, time to get on with the day or settle down for the evening.

Taster Track : Exit City

Making Friends Is Easy : Loney Dear

Best for : Intense drama in song form.

This short album, at just 26 minutes it's barely longer than some EPs, shows a more intense side to Loney Dear's music.

Written in response to the loss of key people in his life, this is a set of baroque psychodramas.. It's not a comfortable record, and perhaps not to everyone's taste, but it presents an emotionally consistent and coherent world.

This is a record that captures an emotional Summer storm of feeling. It may be brief but it's not containable. As the music builds, you sense that it could be heading inevitably and helplessly towards an explosive breakdown that never quite arrives. At the point of release, the songs tumble over into the calm after the storm. It's not a calm that marks recovery, but an assessment of the damage done and the devastation lying in its wake.. It's an odd, not quite satisfying, feel. You have the build up and you have the aftermath . but not the event itself.

Loney Dear has proven many times that he can write a killer melody, but they are not obviously present here. You'll find them strongest in the two instrumentals that close the album, 'Expectation ll' and 'Coda'. Perhaps the emotion is so great that he is literally lost for words. The music is string laden and keyboard propelled and it's an equal partner in creating the tone..His vocals are tremulous and vulnerable, perhaps even fearful. That's where the appeal may lie for some. It's the feel of an intense, philosophical Swedish drama, befitting the land of Ingmar Bergman.

'Making Friends Is Easy' is released on Peter Gabriel's Real World record label, and there's something of the tone, if not the sound of 'Intruder' from his 'Melting Face' album. There's also a faint echo of the panic induced opening to Kate Bush's 'Hounds of Love' and a fear that something wicked this way comes.

Some albums feel as if they are written to appeal to a wide audience. 'Making Friends Is Easy' feels as if Loney Dear has written it for himself. It makes for an interesting work of art.

Taster Track : Alain

Blue Gum Way : GUM

Best for : 70s album rock meeting 21st Century ideas and technology

'Blue Gum Way' is an album of big songs. Very big songs. If you've seen the original Star Wars film you'll know that it opens with a huge space ship passing over the screen towards the back of the auditorium. Wow! It's followed by an even bigger, unbelievably immense space ship that's sleek, polished and full of menace. Remove the threat, and that's what you have with this album.

This is an example of where having a lot going on and to unpack in a song is a good and satisfying thing. Take 'Expanding Blue'. It works because each different musical element passes the baton for a song to the other.

It feels both classic and contemporary. Imagine a group of progressive rock musicians who were abducted by aliens in 1971 and continue to develop their art before returning to Earth in 2026. That's the feel of this album. GUM are not afraid of grand gestures and big solos but they are offered with restraint. The lead guitar should please both followers of the Rock God and those who are too cool for Rock school. This is music played by top musicians who have reached a level of effortless peak performance. The effects are drawn as much from amusement arcade bleeps as studio technology, and that accounts for some of the album's appeal.

'Man Alive' is a rock hymn that builds without following a straightforward or anticipated path. The music in 'Phosphene Scream' is cinematic, the music you want to hear when you're fighting away demons and bad guys. There's a mildly hallucinogenic feel to the bent and stretched strings on 'It Happens Almost Every Day'. In ambition and inventiveness it occupies a similar space to Ed O'Brien. Across the album there are flickers of dance / club culture in some of the effects.

I'm hesitating here because this is undeniably a good album but it's easier to be impressed by it rather than thrilled. You can admire it without being a passionate advocate of it.

This is for you if you like music conceived and executed on a grand scale.

Taster Track : Expanding Blue

Foreign Tongues : The Rolling Stones

Best for : Showing that life is too short for just making money.

The Rolling Stones have been around for 64 years. There are three key questions to think about as you approach their new album. First, can they still be The Rolling Stones? Secondly, are the songs any good? Finally, have you changed so much over the years that they are no longer for you? The answer to the first two questions is a resounding 'affirmative'. The answer to the final question in my case is also positive.

'Beggars Banquet' is special for me. It's when I discovered that songs didn't need Top 30 TOTP potential to blow you away. The run of ten albums to 1981's 'Tattoo You' is, for my money, the strongest and most consistent run of rock albums by any act, despite the occasional misfires, dodgy album covers and unacceptable behaviour. 2016's 'Blue and Lonesome' re-established their blues credentials, and 2024's 'Hackney Diamonds' showed they had rediscovered how to have fun while making music. 'Foreign Tongues' delivers the best of those last two albums and stands proud alongside that earlier run of ten albums.

The gap of 35 years between 'Tattoo You' and 'Blue and Lonesome' is when they became no more than a corporate entity. That's behind them now. 'In The Stars' highlights how the band may be Mick, Keef and Ronnie' but the musicians and singers surrounding them are an integral part of their current sound. Together, the ensemble (!) is as tight as a pair of new jeans. And if the new Charlie on 'Hit Me In The Head' sounds as good as the old Charlie, it's because the drum track is made from parts he recorded in 2021. 'Rough and Twisted' has the authentic blues rock power riffs of their best work.

When you've done it all, you know what works and you'll repeat it while keeping it fresh. There's the brass of 'Exile On Main Street' on 'Divine Intervention. It's brilliant. 'Ringing

Hollow' reprises their country honk songs. This is the the sound of their true loves being brought out to play. Some of their 'Sam and Dave shuffle' makes it into their cover of Amy Whitehouse's 'You Know I'm no Good'. The melody of 'Covered In You' is their softer side and its harmonica is another tribute to their blues heritage.

To be clear though. This is not merely a rehash of old glories. They're playing with the energy of 20 year olds. It's a reflection on their lives and the state of the world around them too. You'll hear that in 'Side Effects' which is a joyous excavation of who they are.

'Foreign Tongues' is a reminder that, if The Beatles were the perfect pop band, The Rolling Stones' were, and are, the perfect rock and roll band.

Taster Track : In The Stars

You Could Have Just Said That : The Davenports

Best for : Finding something new in the familiar

This is a low key treat. It's indie pop that has found its own niche, not alternative but friendlier, gentler and more welcoming than much of the mainstream.

Some of the reason for that is to be found in its homespun quality. Despite the suggestion of a family business, The Davenports is Scott Klass, solo. He's recorded and produced the album at home, following the maxim that if you want something done well, do it yourself. And before you roll your eyes and think that 'homespun' means sticky back plastic plastic and compromise, think again. This is 'homespun' in the sense of being crafted via a labour of love.

Here you'll find attention to detail rooted in a natural understanding and love for pop. It comes from a mindset that doesn't want to copy the crowd but to adapt what it likes. Everything that's good about this album is easy to find. It's open and friendly and full of charm. Its appeal will find you as soon as you press play.

The songs are like an itch that you can't quite reach. They squirm their way into your brain and you'll remember fragments throughout the day. It feels warm and lovely, like an old cardigan that is currently unfashionable but you hope will return to be the next big thing.

Try not to analyse how the songs work, just let them play around you. It's enough that the rhythms and melodies are gently off kilter, unforced and tumbling out of unexpected places. Its strings will lift you like a paraglider on thermal currents. His voice is neither smooth nor gravelly. Let's describe it as chalky and come back for more.

The songs may be small gems, but some of the influences are big names. Think of Klass as a poppier one man Simon and Garfunkel or Beach boys. Moving a little more up to date, if you like the sweeter side of Fountains of Wayne, you'll love this.

We should make room in the world for The Davenports to thrive.

Taster Track : I Am Lying