Waking the Superhero Who Overslept

Dag Och Natt, Doublespeak, Echo & the Bunnymen, Imperial Teen, Nicole Atkins,       Pye Corner Audio, Westside Cowboy

Everything from supergroups to super groups and solo superstars.

Apples For Isaac : Echo & the Bunnymen

Best for : Staying to hear the end credits of a stellar career

This is a tricky one. I enjoyed it a lot, but it still felt like a bit of a comedown from their peak. It's not a disappointment exactly, more an Echo and the Bunnyment making something in a way we've not heard from them before.

There aren't that many Bunnymen left now, just Ian McCulloch and Will Sergeant. If this were a band starting out, you'd salute it as melodic, catchy and full of promise. But this is Echo and the Bunnymen and, like their song 'Brussels Is Haunted', they can't escape their history. 'Apples For Isaac' is emphatically not a Goth or post punk album. It doesn't reach for the artistic heights of 'The Killing Moon' and it doesn't brood in an attractively menacing way as they did on 'The Cutter'.

It feels like a last hurrah from a Messiah whose day has passed, the bit of film that comes after the end credits have rolled. It can still draw a crowd, but it's not the main event. A friend saw them live recently and observed that Ian McCulloch's voice is shot. Fortunately, in the studio, it doesn't crash and burn. It's aged and a little strained but certainly not unlistenable. The music has gone the same way. As 'Honey' shows it's a little tatty around the edges. Any disappointment is in the production which is thin, as if missing a level.

Enough of what it isn't. This album does have some good reasons for listening to them. They have a knack for writing a catchy chorus and improvising a song around it. The lyrics, particularly in 'Brussels Is Haunted' are literate and snappy. Angst has been replaced by lightness. 'Hijacked' is even a little camp. 'Lab Rats Rain' is a welcome blast of early 70s Roxy Music with some excellent saxophone.

On their own merits, the songs are easy to like, the kind you'll find yourself humming and singing quietly as you wander down the High Street. For many bands that's more than enough and perhaps it should be with Echo and the Bunnymen. If they're not who they were, who they are now still has something to offer.

Taster Track : Brussels Is Haunted

Years and Years : Dag Och Natt

Best for : Swedish shoegaze

If I were drowning, shoegaze - the variety played by Swedish band Dag Och Natt at least - is the music I would hear. That's gloomy I know, but it's the best music I know for surrendering to the elements.

In all its forms shoegaze is like water. It's fluid and immersive but it's harder, perhaps, to get your bearings while you're listening to it. It can drag you down, or create a deep rooted euphoria. It can feel massive and it can feel like the loneliest, most personal music you have ever heard. Sweden may be the best place to listen to its full breadth, meaning something whether you're enjoying its longest days or the endless nights. With its haunting sounds, it's also great for Halloween.

It certainly feels as if Dag Och Natt know shoegaze and how to use it. They've mastered the reverb and tuning effects that are the genre's hallmarks. They're off to a winner there because you'll know immediately if you are going to enjoy this album. It's atmospheric, hypnotic and much more than worthy, but there are points where it loses me along the way.

Having three female vocalists in the band helps. As you'll hear on 'Iron Man' and elsewhere it reinforces the feeling that shoegaze can be the sound of mythical sirens, souls or demons calling through the night. The band carve out their own place within shoegaze with the edge of industrial, grinding machinery that features in 'See-Through'. It carries you along, willingly, on its unstoppable flow. 'Tunis' is epic, with everything you could want from shoegaze. It's heavy grade, not lightweight. 'Setting Sail Again' sounds calmer, with the feel of standing on the shore watching debris washed up in the overnight storm. 'Arstaberg' brings the album to a fitting end as it winds down to a single, pulsing beat, the surviving heartbeat that remains.

Succumb to Years and Years and let the music take control.

Taster Track : Tunis

Drama : Nicole Atkins

Best for : Classic MTV pop rock

'Drama' is well named. Sometimes, all you need is something that reminds you of the glory of pop, something with big emotions and over the top musical displays. Let's call it peacock pop and note that Nicole Atkins is very good at it.

She's a songwriter first and foremost, drawing influences from the golden ages of pop, but she's no slouch at performing either. She has confessed to writing this album to escape from loneliness, but it's also a celebration of MTV pop that's brightly coloured, delivers pristine sound and a lot of fun. She plays to memories of when music meant something rather than being something you could relegate to the background.

It's a statement start. 'Trippin' On Teardrops' is an immediate return to the days of 60s girl groups, dressing up forlorn, teenage heartache with a Spectorish wall of sound and a Brill Building melody. There are songs here to enjoy with your closest girl friends, songs like 'Singing In The Mirror' - a f**k it to all the mean boys out there.

Songs such as 'Like A Stranger' and 'When The Night Falls' are a dream for BBC Radio 2 playlisters. She duets with Chris Isaak who brings Roy Orbison to the party. 'Like It's The First Time' pulls everything out of the classic pop chest - including a spoken word verse to add sincerity and a play out that doesn't want to fade away. She has one ear on making new songs such as 'Fo No One' for the Great American Songbook (her words) and she accurately describes 'Like A Stranger' as having a Judy Garland vibe. 'Danny' is as good a slice of 60s cinematic pop as you'll find this side of 1970. The album ends on a highlight with 'Softly, As you Were'. It's the perfect piano ballad for after the audience has left, and there's a little bit of Elvis Costello in it too.

It's hard not to like these songs. It's even harder not to feel your heart lift and a smile cross your face as you take it all in.

Taster Track : Like It's The First Time

It Goes On : Westside Cowboy

Best for : The new Indie rock.

Sometimes it feels as if only the young want to change the world. If that's the case Westside Cowboy, have taken up the baton by casting a light on the age of anxiety.

There's another reason this is an album that could only be played by the young. Listen to a song such as 'Paperchains' and you'll marvel at how anyone can play that fast and not tumble over into chaos. They play with a dexterity that most older musicians simply couldn't manage.

Everything they play has an urgency. They demand to be heard. To that end, their music is more of a drill making its point than the product of a craftsman's tool kit. Any subtlety comes from their lyrics, which share a poetic sensibility with Fontaines DC. It's the product of a mindset mature beyond their years. When they do quieten down, as on 'Patchwork' and 'Take My Leaving As I Love You', it can feel like the quiet of restless sleep. In summary they're the ugly sound of being young.

I want to say that they capture the feel of the Velvet Underground but, like 'Beatlesque', it's a comparison used so frequently that it's become meaningless. What triggers it is that Westside Cowboy also buzz and drive relentlessly through their songs.They combine male and female singers perfectly. The men bring the rasp and occasional growl of Lou Reed and John Cale, Aoife Anson O'Connell brings the balancing sweetness of Mo Tucker. You sense too that they are a band capable of great melodies but they choose not to dilute their message with too many of them for now.

Westside Cowboy are a band that keep their songs in the real world, even as they feel they should disconnect from it.. Some sources say they don't even have smart phones. They're an exciting pointer to the future of indie rock and they'll be up there come the 2026 awards season.

Taster Track : Worried Age

Doublespeak : Doublespeak

Best for : Signposting you to songs unknown or long forgotten

Doublespeak are a supergroup featuring Vince Clarke (Depeche Mode, Yazoo and Erasure), Neil Arthur (Blancmange) and Benge ( a producer who has worked with many artistically credible electronic acts). 'Doublespeak', the album, is a covers album.

Choosing a covers' album for your debut is risky. If it's going to be worth doing, your treatments have to be a) different and b) better than the originals, or they seem to have no point other than to send you back to the original. When you come to this album, you need to feel it is new and not think "I haven't heard that for a while."

Doublespeak have eclectic tastes. They've selected music that will appeal to the cool kids and to the 70s compilation suburban audience. They've dived deep into the world of electronic pop with songs from Fad Gadget, Young Marble Giants and Act while also pulling out soft gems from Abba, John Harford and Carpenters.

Starting with the less familiar songs, Fad Gadget's 'Back To Nature' is a bold opener and it's not bad, perhaps a scene setter rather than the album highlight but rewarding your time in listening to it. Young Marble Giant's ' Brand - New - Life' is a treat. It's given a sway to take away the choppy edginess of the original. It could have backfired but doesn't. As the album proceeds though. The prevailing tone reveals itself to be something with a tone that brings you down and is, to be honest, a little dull.

The familiar tracks are more of a mixed bag. Abba's 'The Visitor's cannot be diminished, the sparkle of the original and its melodies are simply unquenchable.The same can be said of John Harford's 'Gentle On My Mind' where the gorgeous melody lifts an otherwise downbeat treatment into something memorable. The Carpenters; 'Goodbye To Love' becomes commonplace. The original may be slushy and cheesy as a souffle. Doublespeak's version has collapsed, unable to withstand the weight they've placed upon it. It's David Essex though who is worst served. In its original form 'Rock On' was a masterpiece in minimalism, unlike anything heard before. Here, it is dragged into a dark, threatening space that overcrowds the original. It's a fail, lacking respect for the original.

There are some good moments here, but not enough to send me back to it time and time again. It's not the worst covers album in the world, but neither is it the best.

Taster Track : Brand - New - Life

More Songs About The Sun : Pye Corner Audio

Best for : Ambient electronica that tells a story.

This is a surprise. If you were expecting Pye Corner Audio's trademark mix of hypnotic but abstract bleeps and pulses, think again. There are tunes here, and good ones at that.

No one is better at creating the sense that music has travelled great distances through clouds of static to reach you. On 'More Songs About The Sun' though, it's as if Martin Jenkins has paused on his journey to look back at life on earth and explore its darkest dreams.

He's aided in this by the influence of Ride's Andy Bell on four tracks and Ian Rankin's prose on 'The Breath of Now' which is worth the price of admission alone. Between them, Bell and Rankin help to tether the music to Scotland and a space adjacent to shoegaze without compromising the Pye Corner Audio feel of retro futurism and cosmic exploration. Rankin brings the grubby side of life to life, creating a bleak,noir feel that calls to mind Arab Strap.

This is still very much a Pye Corner Audio record. It drones. It builds. It fades away. There are elements to each song to make you giddy. It also holds out the promise of an end to difficult times. The music seems to tell its own story, each piece coming as a new chapter. It makes for something more structured and substantial, yet surprisingly warm in the end.

'Euphoria' is a surprisingly perky start, like stumbling into a great party that is already in full swing. 'Cycle' contains vocals. Vocals that are deep in the mix and fuzzily distorted by distance, but vocals all the same. In places the music is as muscular as ambient electronica gets. 'Inverted Dreams' suggests a 1960s view of new worlds in the cosmos. 'The Race Is Run' is the stuff of restless dreams, but wait! 'Rays of Sunshine' is just that - warm and dappled. It's followed by the compelling but not over heavy sound of 'As We Begin' and the lovely gentleness of 'My Shimmer', straight from the years of millennial chill as performed by Brian Eno.

'More Songs About The Sun' constantly surprises. It's a treat.

Taster Track : The Breath of Now (for the joy of Ian Rankin's narration)

All Over You : Imperial Teen

Best for : Shameless fun

I'm looking at a picture on the wall of Imperial Teen's 2019 album 'Now We Are Timeless'. It shows an impressive iceberg representing something monumental and stationary yet fragile and impermanent. The album covers themes of contemporary dread, loss, pain, and a world in crisis, serious stuff like that. The opening lines of their new album are:

"I just wanna get you in the bed.

Light you up like a cigarette."

It's safe to say they're on a different tack with 'All Over You' and it's a tack that focuses on shameless fun.

Imperial Teen are Roddy Bottum's side project from Faith No More. There's a real sense of shaking off the shackles that restrict him in a serious heavy metal band. Here, he's having a good time as himself and holding nothing back. Imperial Teen may have been making music together for around 30 years, but this album has the fresh, immediate appeal and youthful exuberance of a teenage band just starting out.

Roddy Bottom was one of, if not the, first members of a heavy metal band to come out as gay back in 1993. The feeling of release that allowed him to be himself and live his life to the fullest is exactly what you hear in these songs. They're immediate. I played 'Overdrive' twice in succession to check I'd heard it correctly and once more at the end to savour the refusal to hold nothing back. The songs are chanted as much as sung and are totally addictive. This is an album that is full of songs that could be the final run to the climax of an exhilarating, technicolour concert leaving you breathless and begging for an encore that never ends.

Some may be offended by some of the lyrics and attitudes, but don't let them spoil your enjoyment of one of the sparkiest and most celebratory slices of synth pop for some time. This is an album to sit with the 'out there and in your face take us as you will' work of the Scissor Sisters at their most raucous. It brings back the world of Electric Six or even the B-52s when they let rip the "Tin roof, rusted" in 'Rock Lobster.

You may not know it yet, but you need to let this album into your life, just to feel free for 36 minutes.

Taster Track : Overdrive